Steinfeld, Rosemarie (1922-2014)
STEINFELD, LEBEK, SACHS, INGLIS
Posted By: Paul Nagy (email)
Date: 12/31/2014 at 14:03:15
Rosemarie Steinfeld
August 6, 1922 - December 14, 2014Rosemarie Steinfeld, 92, a longtime resident of Tenafly (Bergen County), New Jersey, died peacefully in her sleep on December 14, 2014, at the Methodist Manor Retirement Center in Storm Lake, Iowa.
A daughter of Marianne (née Sachs) and Erwin Lebek, Rosemarie was born on August 6, 1922, in Königstein (near Frankfurt am Main, Germany). She grew up in Breslau (a city in the eastern German province of Silesia, now the Polish city of Wrocław) and in Berlin. Her religious background became a critically important issue after Hitler took control in the early 1930s. Considered a “Mischling” at the time, she had two Jewish grandparents on her mother’s side and two Christian grandparents on her father’s side. She grew up in a relatively secular family. She had one brother, Klaus. Her father taught Latin and Greek and later became a principal. Her mother was also an educator.
Rosemarie was preparing to enter the University when her education was cut short by Hitler and the Holocaust. She moved to Berlin where she worked throughout World War II, always in fear that she might be the next to be deported. Towards the end of the war, she lived stoically in Berlin during months of Allied bombing. Her only brother, Klaus, was killed in Auschwitz in 1943. She did not know as the war ended whether her parents had survived the war.
Rosemarie left Germany in 1948 and after a year in Ireland, finally arrived in New York City in 1949. There, she met Harry Steinfeld, who would become her husband in 1950. They purchased a home in Tenafly, a suburb of New York City, where they lived for fifty-three years. They had two sons, Peter and Andrew. Rosemarie committed herself to her home and prided herself in raising her two boys. Once they got to high school, she restarted her career, working as an accountant in several firms in New York and New Jersey. She, also, loved singing in the choir at the Presbyterian Church in Tenafly.
Both sons went through college and completed graduate studies. Peter married, had three children, Coryn, Nathaniel, and Gwendolyn, with his first wife Laura Inglis, and settled down in Storm Lake. Serving in many different countries, Andrew has worked as a Foreign Service officer with the U.S. State Department since 1980.
In 2003, Harry and Rosemarie moved into Otsego Place, an assisted living facility in Storm Lake where their son Peter is a professor at Buena Vista University. After Harry died in 2007, she moved to independent living at Lake Pointe Villa in Storm Lake.
She is survived by her sons, Peter, of Storm Lake, and Andrew, of Washington, D.C.; three grandchildren, Coryn, Nathaniel, and Gwendolyn; one great-grandchild, Layla; Peter’s second wife, Julie, and her children, Sarah and Todd; her nephew, Martin, of Stow, Massachusetts; and her niece, Helen, of Newcastle, UK; as well as by numerous relatives and friends, who will all miss her and long remember her stories that kept us connected with the past.
Private graveside services will be held at a later date. The Fratzke & Jensen Funeral Home in Storm Lake is in charge of the arrangements.
Copyright © 2014, Fratzke & Jensen Funeral Homes
Buena Vista Obituaries maintained by LaVern Velau.
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