The Jewish widow Rosa Steinberg was forced to sell her clothing store in Emden in East Frisia in 1938, due to National Socialist repressions. When Jews were banned from living in the town, Rosa Steinberg and her son Heinz moved to Berlin-Schöneberg on March 1, 1940. Around 1942 Heinz Steinberg met the non-Jewish coal merchant Paula Bierdel, whose husband was a soldier on the front. When he was threatened with deportation at the beginning of 1943, Paula Bierdel took him in to her home in Schöneberg.
After a denunciation, the Gestapo arrested Heinz Steinberg at Paula Bierdel’s home at the end of September 1943, along with his mother Rosa, who happened to be present at the time. It is not known where or how she had lived in hiding before her arrest. They were both deported to Auschwitz on October 14, 1943. Rosa Steinberg did not survive. Her son died in the camp prisoner infirmary on January 15, 1944.
In June 2017 Stolperstein cobbles were installed outside their former home at number 35 Ringstraße in Emden, commemorating Rosa Steinberg and her sons Heinz and Werner.