Steuers Popping out of the Woodwork

Another connection made! Thank you Marjorie for writing your article on her husband reclaiming his German citizenship. Julie contacted her because of it and contacted me thanks to Marjorie.

Now I have a bit more information on another child of Bernhard and Henriette (Eisner) Steuer. Up until now I only knew that Eva was born on 29 Oct 1866, Brzezinka, Upper Silesia, Prussia.

Eva was Bernhard and Henriette’s first born, as far as I know. She and her sister Lina were the only two daughters that lived long enough to marry. They were also the only two that I couldn’t find information on their spouses and/or descendants.

This Eva Steuer married Herman Hiller. They moved to Breslau at some point. I was told they owned a successful clothing store called Hillers Department store. Herman was a commodities trader.

So far only know about Herman and Eva’s daughter Ellie who married Ernest

Cohn/Kohn. She was listed as a survivor in the newspaper “Aufbau, Sep 1944-Sep 1946” in the “Published Lists of Survivors”. She died 25 Jan 1956 (Gunther was 10 years old).

Ellie’s husband Ernest was forced to leave his family behind by the Nazis when he fled Germany to Cuba, and later to the USA. Ellie and Ernest’s children were put in an orphanage and stayed there until their father was able to arrange for their escape in 1939 with the help of Jewish charities. Everything they owned was left behind.

Ernest sent his two daughters to South America. I was told that Gunther escaped from a Jewish orphanage in Berlin, in 1939, on the last ship out before war was declared. Gunther departed Hamburg on the SS Hamburg on 10 Aug 1939. He arrived in New York on 18 Aug 1939 at the Port of New York. On the passenger manifest he was listed as Guenther/Hermann Nathan and he was 13 years old.

Gunther registered for the US Army on 05 Sep 1944. Ernest was listed as next of kin on his WWII draft information. They sent him to train with the Office of Strategic Services, a wartime intelligence agency. At the time he lived in St. Joseph, Buchanan County, Missouri. He found himself back in Berlin, this time hunting war criminals.

He spoke fluent German and worked undercover finding former SS officers, prison guards and other Nazis suspected of murdering Jews and other ethnic minorities during the Holocaust. One story relayed is:

On one occasion, he tracked a former high-ranking colonel to a political meeting in a beer hall. The former colonel had been tipped off that he was being followed. While turned away from Mr. Kohn, the former colonel pulled his pistol, turned and pointed it at Mr. Kohn and was about to pull the trigger. That’s when a U.S. soldier accompanying Mr. Kohn saw what was happening from across the room and shot the colonel in the head.

“That was as close as he got to getting killed.”

Gunther returned to the US and settled in St. Louis, Missouri where he started and operated his own business. Many years later he was one among others who helped found the St. Louis Holocaust Museum.