Steiner Maria

Steiner, Maria Maria Steiner was born in Düsseldorf, Germany in 1906. During the 1930s she lived in Vienna, and was married to a Jew who immigrated to Shanghai, China. Steiner was acquainted with Hedwig Mendelssohn, a Jewish widow born in Brunn, Czechoslovakia. Mendelssohn married in 1941, and in 1942 her husband, Ludwig Mendelssohn, moved to Argentina, and before he was able to secure a visa for his wife, new laws were passed in Austria making it illegal for Jews to emigrate. When Hedwig received a deportation order in the middle of 1942, she turned in desperation to Steiner, who collected her from the assembly point for Jews going on the transport, claiming that she was a relative. She even managed to get Mendelssohn identity papers under the name Hedy Steiner – ostensibly her stepsister. For 35 months, from May 20, 1942 until the end of the war in May 1945, Steiner hid Mendelssohn, first in her own apartment, and later in a rented apartment that she managed to get for her. She shared her ration cards and clothing. Rumors began to circulate among the neighbors that Steiner was hiding a Jewish woman. The official supervisor of the building and Gestapo agents came to Steiner’s apartment a number of times to check, but nothing was discovered. In addition to the help she gave Mendelssohn, Steiner also managed to help the Trinkls, a Jewish couple who lived in Vienna. Steiner got visas to Paraguay for this couple, which eventually allowed them to escape to Italy. Steiner endangered herself by hiding a Jewish woman, a crime that could have led to deportation to a concentration camp, and eventually to death. She received no payment for her activities, and shared her food and clothing during a period of rationing and scarcity. After the war, Mendelssohn discovered that her husband in Argentina had divorced her and married another woman. She completed her side of the divorce in Austria and continued to live in Vienna. On June 25, 1968, Yad Vashem recognized MariaSteiner as Righteous Among the Nations.