An act of love and revenge

 Richard Steinhardt, Isidor Steinhardt and Artur Steinhardt

 Regina Steinhardt, Eve Steinhardt (our  mother), and Lisa  Steinhardt in Paris

 Artur Steinhardt in Israel during the war

 Paula Neumann and Else Steinhardt in front, Regina and Isidor Steinhardt behind.

Dear Sir / Madam,


I am the great  grandson of Isidor Steinhardt, born in 1873. I have all the  documentation to prove this together with birth certificates and photos. In 1998 my Mother gave me his gold Doxa watch which the King of Montenegro awarded him.

I have been researching our family history and writing a biography of my mother who lived in Paris during the war with her mother.

Isidor's story is extraordinarily sad. His wife Regina, my Great Grandmother was sent to Terezin and then onto Treblinka and my  great aunt, their daughter was rounded up in Paris and died in Auschwitz. Their oldest son, Arthur emigrated to Israel with his wife Flora and then  went on to live in South Africa.

But the interesting thing about Isidor is that he was a very well known journalist who worked for the Neue Frie Presse as foreign editor and he was read by everyone before his name and his person was erased from history. On the Neue Frie Presse he worked with Theodore Herzl and he worked closely with Baron von  Aerenthal. If I could understand German I would read his articles, because the Neue Freie Presse archive  is online now.

He is on the picture on the steps in Sarajevo when the Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated.

It makes me absolutely furious to  think  what they did to my great grandparents and my great Aunt and of course my mother and grandfather and grandmother and uncle were deeply affected by it.

I regard rescuing their memory as a transcendent act of love and revenge.


 
Sincerely, 



Philip Hall