Lest We Forget

Four brass-plated plaques lie flush with the sidewalk in front of Ruth Steinfeld’s childhood home in Ladenburg, Germany.

Stolpersteine, they’re called, meaning “stumbling stones.” Each is a memorial to a single individual who was snatched from their daily life and into the nightmare of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi atrocities, for no other reason than being a Jew.

On a clear day, they glimmer, kissed into brilliance by the sun.

“Alfred Krell,” reads one inscription. Ruth’s father. “Deportiert,” (deported) to Gurs internment camp in France in 1940. “Emordet,” (murdered) in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942.

Another is dedicated to Ruth’s mother, Anna, who met the same fate.

Two other memorials round out this family cluster: one plaque offering the fate of Ruth herself; another for her older sister, Lea.

“Überlebt,” the etchings read of the two. Survivors.

NEVER FORGET Ruth Steinfeld (left) and sister Lea Weems (right) hold hands with their mother, Anna Krell, before Hitler’s atrocities tore their family apart. Anna and her husband Alfred Krell were murdered at the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942.

For Ruth, 91, Holocaust Remembrance Day (this year, April 23-24) is personal. She’s a Holocaust survivor on a mission.  

“My purpose in life is to show people that this can happen again. It happened before and it can happen again. We need to be aware of that,” she says. “And forgiveness. I used to hate the Germans. I had to forgive myself for hating them. You can’t live your life hating people. I look at all these wonderful people in Germany now who greet us with open arms. They’re beautiful people.”

Ruth sits in her Houston home this day, recalling her childhood, upended by Hitler’s heinous acts. She and Lea were left parent-less, struggling to stay afloat in a cruel world they no longer recognized, like a small flotilla against monstrous waves. 

The indignities started even at Ruth’s birth, on July 8, 1933. The year Hitler came to power as chancellor of Germany. Under his dictate, Jews in Germany weren’t allowed citizenship.

Mini memorials called Stolpersteine (“stumbling stones”) are inserted in the sidewalk outside of Ruth’s childhood home in Ladenburg, Germany, showing the fate of her parents, murdered at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Ruth and Lea survived, thanks to their mother’s selfless, brave decision to send them away via a secret French group that rescued children.

“My sister Lea had a birth certificate because she was born in 1932. But in 1933 when he took power, that changed. I was stateless. It’s as if I was non-existent,” Ruth explains.

So, in 2023, at age 89, Ruth applied for German citizenship under the recently adopted Section 15 of the Nationality Act, that allows individuals who were denied German citizenship from 1933 to 1945 – due to persecution on political, racial, or religious grounds – to seek naturalization. Ruth – grandmother to seven and great-grandmother to ten – was granted that citizenship at age 90. 

She promptly celebrated with a trip to Germany last fall with daughters Michelle Bercow and Fredda Friedlander, and niece Judy Mucasey, Lea Weems’ daughter. Lea died in 2008.

While Ruth has visited Germany a few times over the decades, this pilgrimage topped the proverbial cake with an Emerald Rhine River cruise. Highlights included meeting a second cousin for the first time – a violin virtuoso – in Amsterdam. They revisited places Ruth lived, and the sites where ancestors are buried. They consumed their weight in bratwurst and pastries and shopped and explored quaint cobblestone towns. Cologne, Mannheim, Strasburg, Basel, Ladenburg, and Sinsheim filled their itinerary.

Word of a Holocaust survivor on the cruise ship made the rounds, with passengers seeking out Ruth to hear her story. And she spoke to German high school seniors while there, in keeping with her goal to keep the story of the Holocaust alive.

Ruth (center) talked to German high school students while on her trip to Germany last fall, in keeping with her mission to educate people about the Holocaust.

Especially memorable was their visit to the synagogue in Mannheim. Inside is a plaque honoring her mother, father, and maternal grandparents, Jacob and Bertha Kapustin. 

“We took the taxi to Mannheim, but the synagogue was closed. There were security guards there and they wouldn’t let us in,” explains daughter Michelle. 

As fate would have it, the synagogue’s cantor walked up, opening the doors to them. “He walked with us and heard her story. And when she saw the plaque, she started crying, and my cousin started crying,” Michelle says. “It meant so much to Mom.”

They also met with an archivist in Sinsheim, learning about Ruth’s father and his businesses. He had owned two specialty grocery markets in Sinsheim with one of his brothers before the Nazis shut down that livelihood. Ruth’s parents then moved to Ladenburg, to live with her grandparents.

“It was the trip of a lifetime, learning so much and getting to do and see so many things,” says Michelle. “She was so happy. That made us happy.”

Ruth sits in her home this day, pointing out black and white photographs of her mother and father. The family’s lives changed forever the night of November 9, 1938. Kristallnacht, “the Night of Broken Glass.” The family was eating dinner when two Nazi soldiers broke into their home with axes, shattering everything, glass everywhere. The only item that survived the mayhem was the yahrzeit memorial candle, lit for Ruth and Lea’s grandmother who had recently died.

In the fall of 1940, the Nazis rounded up the family from their Ladenburg home, along with other townspeople, sending them to the Gurs internment camp in France. “We were treated like animals,” says Ruth. Once there, they separated men from the women and children. 

BIRTHDAY BASH Ruth’s family celebrated her 90th birthday with a get-together that spanned the family generations. Front row (pictured, from left) Ben Becker, Lily Becker, Avery Beleiff, Madison Beleiff, Ruth Steinfeld, Fredda Friedlander, Abby Markowitz, Millie Feldman, Allison Feldman, Grant Feldman, Alex Friedlander, Max Friedlander, Lauren Friedlander, and Stephen Friedlander; second row (from left) Gary Friedlander, Doug Bercow, Michelle Bercow, Judy Mucasey, Cindy Moulton, Sunni Markowitz, Lisa Friedlander, Michael Friedlander, Matt Bercow, Jennifer Beleiff, Mark Faigen, Mark Mucasey, Jeff Markowitz, Debra Gaitz Cohen, Brad Beleiff; (back row, from left) Casey Markowitz, Gary Markowitz, Jake Bercow, and Lane Montano; (in the very back) David Betz.

She never saw her father again.

Her last image of her mother hammers like a deep pain in the pocket of her chest.

“She was in the street, waving goodbye to me and Lea as we were taken away on a bus,” Ruth says, her voice going soft. 

“We didn’t understand what was going on at the time, but our mother knew the only chance for me and Lea to survive was to put us on that bus with this secret group that rescued children. Imagine how brave our mother must have been, how unselfish, to send two little daughters away. Our mother gave us life twice. At birth, and then in sending us away with this group so we could live.”

That French group, Oeuvre de’ Secours Aux Enfants (The Agency for the Rescue of Children), took busloads of children to the Château du Masgelier orphanage in France, where they helped calm the children with song. “They had us sing so we couldn’t cry,” Ruth remembers. 

The agency found placement for Ruth and Lea. A French family, who volunteered to take them in. Their farm became a place of peace for the pair. Ruth loved tending to the family’s goats, and they played with their cute dog, Pedro. A snippet of a normal life with Louise and Jean Chapot, and their daughter Paulette. If anyone asked, they were told to say they were Christian. 

SHARING HER STORY Ruth Steinfeld has been a dedicated volunteer at Holocaust Museum Houston for decades. Here, she stands in front of a wall of local Holocaust survivors, most no longer living. (Photo: hartphoto.com)

Ruth and Lea came to the United States in September 1946, stowed away on an old U.S. Navy cargo boat headed for New York City. Ruth was 13, Lea, 14. Their maternal grandfather, Jacob Kapustin, greeted them, but died within six months of their arrival. Eventually the Jewish Family Service gave them the choice of Minneapolis, Seattle, or Houston as a place to settle. “Lea picked Houston because she wanted to meet a cowboy!” Ruth says.

The hole in their heart didn’t go away. Every school permission slip that needed signed was a reminder. No parents. 

The two girls eventually got an apartment together, buoyed by a skill that could earn them money. They had gone to typing school.

At 16, Ruth got her first job at Zero Foods, working for its founder John Baugh, a company now recognized as the world’s largest food distributor, Sysco. Then she met her husband Larry, since deceased, at Houston’s Jewish Community Center. “Larry, too, was a German Jew, and on the night of Kristallnacht, he was on a boat coming to America,” she says.

Life began in earnest, welcoming daughters Susie, Fredda, and Michelle. Ruth attended cosmetology school, opening a successful hair salon. 

All the while, Ruth kept her secrets. She didn’t talk about the Holocaust to clients, nor her daughters. 

“I used to avoid talking about it when my girls were growing up,” explains Ruth. “They’d ask about their grandparents, and I’d sort of avoid the subject or walk out of the room. When my girls wanted to go to a camp, that had a different connotation in my mind. When I waved goodbye, everything would well up inside of me. I’d remember that horrible old bus and me wailing hysterically, because I wanted to stay with my mother.” 

Ruth Steinfeld, with her late husband, Larry Steinfeld, who was born in Hameln, Germany in 1930. He arrived in New York with his family in 1938 to escape Nazi Germany. Larry was a longtime docent at Holocaust Museum Houston. (Photo provided by Holocaust Museum Houston)

Then one day, Michelle, a student at The University of Texas, asked her to speak about her Holocaust experience to her Yiddish class. “I only had hazy ideas of her past and her story,” Michelle says. “I really don’t remember what I knew or didn’t know, but she spoke German and French, and she was just Mom.”

Ruth decided to take that leap. Michelle remembers the talk. “It’s only then that I really heard the whole story. I felt proud. I feel very honored whenever my mom talks about it,” she says, her voice cracking. “I still get emotional about it.”

In 1981, Ruth and Lea went to a conference of Holocaust survivors in Israel. There, in a book, was a list of Holocaust victims. Her eyes fell to page 264. Her parents, Alfred and Anna Krell. Killed in Auschwitz on Sept. 9, 1942, four years before the sisters arrived in the United States.

She learned that 1.5 million Jewish children were killed by the Nazis. And she vowed she’d speak for those children who couldn’t. Her mission took on sharp focus: ensuring the next generation stands up to fight hate, racism, and antisemitism. 

Family friend Cindy Levin Moulton, a lawyer, helped Ruth write a memoir Forgive, But Never Forget in recent years, detailing her life as a Holocaust survivor. Cindy’s mother, Gloria Levin, deceased, was Ruth’s close friend for 40 years.

“Ruth has spoken to hundreds, maybe thousands, about her story. I’ve heard her tell her story many times and I still cry every time she tells it,” says Cindy. “She has a tremendously positive outlook on life and brightens every room. If you’re having a bad day, talk to Ruth and she’ll turn you around to where everything’s better.”

Trips to Germany have helped heal her wounds. “I went to my house in Ladenburg once, and I cried and cried. And the old woman who lives in it cried with me.”

Houston Holocaust Survivor, Ruth Steinfeld, stands in front of a slide of her parents in the Destroyed Communities exhibit at Holocaust Museum Houston. Born in Manheim, Germany in 1933, her family was initially deported to the internment camp of Gurs in the French Pyrenees. (Photo: hartphoto.com)

And many decades back, she tracked down Paulette, the daughter of the French couple who took them in. “We recognized each other immediately,” says Ruth. 

“I asked her why her family did that for us. Why would they take two little Jewish girls in during such a dangerous time? And she said, ‘Wouldn’t you?’”

Paulette has since died. But Ruth and Lea’s family honored the Chapots several years ago in a ceremony in France, sponsored by Israel’s World Holocaust Remembrance Center, Yad Vashem. The center’s program, Righteous Among the Nations, pays tribute to non-Jews who took great risks to save Jews during the Holocaust. The Chapot’s granddaughter, Besma Caron, represented the family.  An emotional Ruth spoke, thanking the family for their selfless sacrifice.

Ruth feels Lea’s presence at every talk. To this day, Lea is a presence at Houston’s Holocaust Museum, telling her story of survival via video. Ruth and Lea’s family have been actively involved since the museum’s inception. Ruth’s husband was a dedicated docent.

“Lea is always with me. She’s part of me. We survived together,” Ruth says. “I had a psychic friend tell me back in 1979 that one day I would speak before large groups of people. I said ‘No way! That’s not something I would do.’ But she was right. It’s my main goal in life. Talking heals. Talking is important. We talk and educate so it can never happen again.”

Editor’s note: Read more about Ruth and Lea’s story, as well as the stories of other local Holocaust survivors, in Houston’s Holocaust Survivors: And the museum that shares their stories by Russell Weil, Jan. 2019, at thebuzzmagazines.com. Visit hmh.org for more on Holocaust Museum Houston.