A haunting portrait of Anna Maria Steinbach is August’s Portrait of the Month. We chose it because August 2nd is Roma Genocide Remembrance Day. On that day in 1944, nearly 3,000 Roma and Sinti people, mostly women, children and the elderly were sent to the gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Anna Maria was probably one of them. She was nine years old.

Anna Jacobs died a year ago on the same day in the Jewish calendar that her beloved husband Jack passed away eight years before. That was a poetic synchronicity that reflects the wonder of her life. She couldn’t have known consciously that it was the date. She had not seen a calendar in weeks. Did he call her?

A haunting portrait of Anna Maria Steinbach is August’s Portrait of the Month. We chose it because August 2nd is Roma Genocide Remembrance Day. On that day in 1944, nearly 3,000 Roma and Sinti people, mostly women, children and the elderly were sent to the gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Anna Maria was probably one of them. She was nine years old.