Born in 1927, Dora Steuer and her two-years-younger sister Berta Steuer lived with their parents, the textile merchant Aron Steuer and Klara Steuer, née Fahn, at 17 Turmstrasse in Essen. After the birth of her third daughter Antoinette (Toni) in 1936, Klara Steuer became seriously ill and was subsequently admitted to various psychiatric clinics. In February 1941 she was taken to the Landesheilanstalt Hadamar (Hadamar Provincial Mental Home), a death centre in the National Socialists’ euthanasia programme, where she was murdered on the very same day.
Aron Steuer felt forced to put his daughters into care. On 15 June 1938, the Dinslaken Jewish Orphanage took in Dora and Berta, while Toni lived in the Jewish children’s home in Cologne from 28 June 1938. On 28 October 1938, Aron Steuer was deported from Essen to the Polish border as part of the so-called Polenaktion (the forced expulsion of Jews who were Polish citizens). After his return to Essen, he was arrested again in September 1939. For three years he was held prisoner at the Buchenwald, Ravensbrück and Dachau concentration camps, and he died in Dachau on 7 August 1942 as a result of ill-treatment and deprivation.
Dora and Berta were among the children from the Jewish Orphanage in Dinslaken who were able to leave Germany for Brussels on 20 December 1938 with a Kindertransport. They were taken in by a Jewish family of merchants called Speyer, in Kortrijk. In May 1940, the Speyer family, like many other Belgian residents, fled together with Dora and Berta from the approaching German Wehrmacht (German Armed Forces) to southern France. Once there, they took different escape routes. The Speyers, who were Dutch nationals, tried to obtain their own visas for emigration. Beforehand, however, they made contact with Ottilie Gobel Moore, who welcomed the two girls to her estate in Villefranche-sur-Mer in early 1941.
In the late summer of 1941, Ottilie Gobel Moore procured visas and tickets for Dora and Betti Steuer as well as eight other children for the ship passage from Lisbon to New York. In a two-week odyssey, the small group crossed Spain and Portugal and finally reached the port of Lisbon, where everyone could board the SS Excalibur on 4 October 1941. On the day of their arrival in New York, the New York Post carried the headline: “Angel of child refugees brings 10 of them here from Europe”.
Toni was less than three years old when her older sisters left Germany in December 1938. This was probably the reason why she only left Germany with the last Kindertransport of the Comité d’Assistance aux Enfants Juifs Réfugiés (Assistance Committee to Jewish Refugee Children, CAEJR) on 15 June 1939. In Brussels, she was taken into the household of Renée de Becker-Remy, president of the CAEJR. In May 1940, the CAEJR acuated its children’s homes. On 14 May 1940, more than 90 boys and girls, including Toni, boarded two freight cars at Schaerbeek station in Brussels. Their destination was the still unoccupied south of France, which they reached after a four-day journey. During the first few months, the children lived in difficult conditions in a barn on a large farm in Seyre, then from mid-1941 in a remote village near the Spanish border, the Chateau de la Hille. There Toni became the little mascot of the home due to her age and her carefree nature.
Toni Steuer was one of the children from La Hille who were able to leave for the USA with the help of the American Friends Service Committee. On 25 June 1942, the SS Serpa Pinto reached New York. The five-year-old Toni with her cuddly toy in her arms became a popular photo motif. A few weeks after her arrival, Ottilie Gobel Moore was also able to take Toni Steuer into her care. Thus Dora, Berta and Toni Steuer were reunited after four years of separation – an almost unbelievable rescue story. AS
Portraits of Dora, Berta and Antoinette Steuer: © The descendants of Dora and Betty Steuer, Susan Sanders and family