Salomon Sterinberg

Salomon was born on 6 July 1893, the son of commercial agent Haskal Sternberg and Chava Sternberg. From 1908 to 1911, he attended the Public Commercial College in Chemnitz. From then until 1934, he worked as an employee of the Jewish firm ‘Brüder Neumann’ (stocking and glove export). His father died in May 1922, and his mother ten years later.

On 6 December 1934, he married Margarethe Helene Naumann, a saleswoman from Chemnitz three years his junior, who worked for the paper and office supplies wholesaler Alexander Wiede. It was here that the couple decided to change their surname to “Sterinberg”. The marriage remained childless. In 1935, Salomon worked as a dispatch manager.

During the November pogroms of 1938, he was “in hiding”. His business was listed in the “Directory of Jewish Industrial and Wholesale Enterprises”, compiled by the Chemnitz Chamber of Industry and Commerce, which led to its liquidation in January 1939. From then on, he carried out unskilled labour in the building and civil engineering sectors.

Following the asset seizure order in April 1939, he was forced to perform compulsory labour at the Fritz Todt horticultural construction firm in Siegmar–Schönau, as well as at the E. F. Barthel lighting fixture factory in Altchemnitz. The couple were forced to move several times to ‘Judenhäuser’: first to Kurt-Günther-Straße 33 (Reitbahnviertel), which no longer exists, then to Apollostraße 18 (city centre).

In June 1941, the security order was extended to include Salomon’s wife, who was forced to perform hard labour: initially cleaning duties, and later at the Josef Witt Spinning Mill.

On 14 February 1945, Salomon Sterinberg was deported to Theresienstadt. During his time there, he was forced to carry out clearing and warehouse work, and was deployed as a guard (ghetto guard). Later, he described himself as a “political prisoner”.

On 9 June 1945, he returned to Chemnitz. His former home had been bombed out, so he found accommodation with his parents-in-law on what would later become Rembrandtstraße. He took part in voluntary work schemes in the city, became a member of the SPD and, on 7 September 1945, a founding member of the Jewish Community of Chemnitz, to whose executive committee he was elected in 1947. In 1950, he was elected to the advisory board of the Federation of Jewish Communities in the GDR.

Sterinberg found work from 1946 to 1951 as a clerical assistant at the Chemnitz tax office, and subsequently as an accountant at the Council of City District I. Between 1957 and 1959, the Ministry for State Security unsuccessfully attempted to recruit his flat as a safe house. In the spring of 1961, Salomon resigned from all his posts due to ill health.

He died in Karl-Marx-Stadt on 1 March 1968 and was buried in the town’s Jewish cemetery. In 1974, his widow also died there and was buried in her husband’s grave.