Long Beach super-senior dies at 114

Goldie Steinberg, a longtime Long Beach resident who gained fame as the sixth-oldest person in the world — and the oldest living Jewish person in the world and oldest Long Islander — died on Sunday at age 114. 

For more than a decade, Steinberg lived at the Grandell Rehabilitation & Nursing Center, and was surrounded by family and friends when she passed on Aug. 16. 

“Goldie was a very special person,” said her grandson, Peter Kutner, 45. “She was one-of-a-kind. She was also a very selfless person; she always put others before herself. She was a fixture at Grandell; she will be deeply missed.”

Steinberg died of natural causes, a representative at Grandell said.

On Sunday, relatives who couldn’t be present were invited to say their goodbyes via videoconferencing, Kutner told a Melville newspaper.

“We all told her how much we loved her,” he said. “She waited until everybody in the family said goodbye, and then she was gone.”

When she became a supercentenarian — someone who reaches the age of 110 — five years ago, Steinberg’s milestone birthday caught the attention of people from around the country, and she was even being studied by researchers from Boston University School of Medicine’s (BUSM) New England Centenarian Study, who contacted her due to her impressive age. 

One of eight children, Steinberg was born in Kishinev, Romania — known today as Chisinau, Moldova — on Oct. 30, 1900. At the age of three, she survived the Kishinev pogrom, in which rioters killed more than 40 Romanian Jews, injured 600 and destroyed 1,500 homes and businesses over three days. 

Steinberg came to the United States at the age of 23, an opportunity given to her and her two sisters by their wealthy uncle.