Celestinius ‘Willy’ Steinbach (1929–1944), on the right, his brother Philibert (1932–1944), in the middle, and his cousin Frans (on the left) in Brunssum, Netherlands, 1935. Celestinius Steinbach was one of ten children born to Heinrich and Emilia Steinbach. In 1943, the family was forcibly interned in a camp in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Together with his mother and eight siblings, he was deported on 16 May 1944 via the Westerbork transit camp to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. None of them survived, not even his sister Anna Maria ‘Settela’ Steinbach (1934–1944), of whom a short film clip showing her being taken away on the deportation train has been preserved. Celestinus Steinbach was transported to Buchenwald on 2 August 1944, but was transferred back to Auschwitz-Birkenau on 25 September, where he was murdered.
The image comes from a collection of around 3,600 glass negatives preserved at the Limburgs Museum in Venlo, the Netherlands. Most were taken by the photographer Jan de Jong. He wrote the following on the envelope for this image: ‘J6578, 30 March 1934, Brunssum. The little violinist.’ Research has shown that the photograph must have been taken in 1935. It was not until 2014 that the Belgian Rob Hendrikx identified the boy with the violin as Celestinus Steinbach. The Limburgs Museum holds three further glass negatives from 1935 depicting members of the Steinbach family.
