Steinberg, Ettie (1914-1942), was the only known citizen and former resident of Ireland to die in the Holocaust —the systematic, state-sponsored murder of Jews and others by Nazi Germany during World War II (1939-1945). Nazis captured Steinberg and her husband and young son in France in 1942. The family died at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland that same year. Steinberg and her son, who was born in France and never lived in Ireland, are the only Irish citizens known to have died in the Holocaust.
Esther Steinberg was born on Jan. 11, 1914, into a Jewish family. She was probably born in the town of Veretsky (or Veretski) in what was then Austria-Hungary . The Steinbergs moved to Ireland in 1926. Ettie and her siblings attended St. Catherine’s School in Dublin , the Irish capital. Steinberg worked as a seamstress before marrying Vogtjeck Gluck, a Belgian Jewish goldsmith, in 1937. The couple moved to Antwerp , Belgium, before relocating to southern France just before the start of World War II. Their son, Leon, was born in Paris in 1939.
Nazi Germany took control of France in 1940. Jewish people in France then began being rounded up and taken to concentration camps. Steinberg, her husband, and their son moved from place to place to avoid the Nazis, but they were arrested in Toulouse in September 1942. The family was taken to Drancy, a transit camp outside Paris. They were immediately sent to the concentration camp at Auschwitz, where they were killed. A memorial to Steinberg was erected in Malahide, County Dublin , in 2014.
