Rosemarie Steinfeld

Rosemarie Steinfeld, a longtime resident of Tenafly (Bergen County), New Jersey, died on December 14, 2014 at Methodist Manor Retirement Center in Storm Lake, Iowa. She was 92 years old. Private graveside services will be held at a later date. The Fratzke & Jensen Funeral Home in Storm Lake is in charge of the arrangements. Rosemarie was born on August 6, 1922 in Königstein (near Frankfurt, Germany), the daughter of Marianne (nee Sachs) and Erwin Lebek. 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 would become critically important after Hitler took power in the early 1930’s. She would come to be considered a “Mischling;” 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 was a teacher of Latin and Greek and later a principal. Her mother was 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 WWII – always in fear that she might be 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 53 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, and worked as an accountant in several firms in New York and New Jersey. She loved singing in the choir at the Presbyterian Church in Tenafly. Both sons went through college and completed graduate studies. Peter got married, had three children (Coryn, Nathaniel, Gwendolyn) with his first wife Laura Inglis, and settled down in Storm Lake. Andrew has served as a foreign service officer with the U.S. State Department since 1980, serving in many different countries. 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 died peacefully in her sleep. She is survived by son Peter (Storm Lake), son Andrew (Washington, D.C.), three grandchildren (Coryn, Nathaniel, and Gwendolyn), one great-grandchild (Layla), Peter’s second wife Julie and her children, Sarah and Todd, nephew Martin (Stow, MA), niece Helen (Newcastle, UK), and numerous relatives and friends who will all miss her and long remember her stories that kept us connected with the past.

Rosemarie Steinfeld

August 6, 1922 - December 14, 2014