During most of the year, the family traveled through the Limburg countryside and Settela’s father worked as a trader and a violinist in a Sinti orchestra at village festivals and fairs.
Her mother ran the household and raised the children as they moved from village to village. The village of Susteren was one of the more “...permanent locations of the Steinbach family—on the Baakhoverweg, on the slope of the road, next to the orchard of de Zeute, where the family caravans resided. Local residents remember that the children of the Steinbachs regularly came to ask for water. On summer evenings, they could hear the melodious sounds of the family’s violins in the village".
The family had originally come from Germany and heard about the worsening situation of the Sinti and Roma since the Nazis had come to power. But like many other Sinti and Roma and Jews, they felt safe in the Netherlands. However, in May 1940, the Nazis occupied the Netherlands. According to Nazi ideology, Roma and Sinti, like Jews and other minority groups, were racially inferior, but the Nazis did not initially target them. It was only in July 1943 that the Nazi government issued an order prohibiting travel by wagon anywhere in the Netherlands and forced them into one of 27 guarded assembly camps. The Steinbach family tried to evade the order, but eventually they were forced into the central assembly camp of Eindhoven, built in 1929 as a winter location for Sinti and Roma.
On May 14, 1944, the Dutch police received the order to move all "Gypsy families" from the assembly camps to Westerbork transit camp. The Steinbach family was among those moved, all except Heinrich, the father. He and other men had been arrested a week earlier and taken to Camp Amersfoort. He survived the war, died in 1946 and was buried at the cemetery of the city of Maastricht. How he managed to survive is unknown.
At Westerbork, Settela, like all the other Sinti and Roma girls and women, had her head shaved as a sign of humiliation; she wore a torn sheet to cover her bald head. Altogether 574 "gypsies" ended up at Westerbork, but more than half of them were either not Roma even though they lived in wagons, or they had foreign passports, and were therefore released from the camp. The remaining 245 Sinti and Roma were put on a cattle train and deported to Auschwitz on May 19, 1944.
The transport reached Auschwitz-Birkenau on May 21, 1944. The Nazis registered and imprisoned the deportees in the "Gypsy Family Camp". Those deemed fit for work during the "selection" were deployed in the IG Farben industrial complex belonging to Auschwitz (Auschwitz-Monowitz) and in sub-camps with the aim of "extermination through labor". The others were kept in the so-called "Gypsy Family Camp". Between July and August 1944 the SS liquidated the "Gypsy Family Camp" and murdered more than 3000 Roma and Sinti in gas chamber number V. Settela Steinbach, her mother, two brothers, two sisters, her aunt, two nephews, and niece were among those killed.
After WW II
After the end of World War II, Settela became an iconic symbol of the Holocaust. German Camp commandant Albert Konrad Gemmeker had ordered Rudolf Breslauer, a Jewish prisoner in Westerbork, to film the Sinti and Roma entering a deportation train. Just before the doors of the cattle car closed, Settela stared through the opening, perhaps at a passing dog or the German soldiers. Her head was wrapped in a white scarf, and her eyes filled with fear and uncertainty. This seven-second sequence of the film immortalized her life in one of the most haunting images of the Holocaust.
The image has come to symbolize the countless innocent victims of the Holocaust. For many years, the identity of the girl in the film was unknown, and people referred to her as “The Girl with the Headscarf”. Many believed that she was Jewish, as no one was sure of her ethnicity. Finally, in 1994, Dutch journalist Aad Wagenaar researched the footage, uncovered her story, and identified Settela as Sinti.
Settela’s image evolved from symbolizing the dehumanization of Holocaust victims and the innocence of countless children who were torn from their homes and murdered in concentration camps to represent the forgotten Roma and Sinti genocide during the Holocaust. Her case serves as a reminder of the importance of remembering all victims of the Holocaust, regardless of their ethnicity or background.
Settela was 9 when she was murdered in 1944. Today, she would have been in her late 80s. What would her future have held if she had been allowed to live?
