He has been described as "Belgium's principal Holocaust historian"[1] and was best known for his three-part history of the subject entitled L'Étoile et le Fusil (French; lit.

[2] Steinberg studied at the Free University of Brussels (ULB) under Jean Stengers, initially interested in the history of the Belgian far-left.

[5] Steinberg is best known for his magnum opus on the Holocaust in Belgium, published as L'Étoile et le Fusil ("The Star and the Rifle") between 1983 and 1987 which grew out of his doctoral dissertation.

[2] There had been approximately 66,000 Jews living in Belgium on the eve of the German invasion of May 1940 of whom at least 28,000 were deported and killed in Nazi concentration camps.

[6] According to the historian Lieven Saerens, the series analysed in minute detail the steps taken by the Germans to further isolate the Jews and the devastating role which the 'policy of the lesser evil' of the Belgian authorities had played here.

He served as a historical expert witness called during the much-publicized trial of Kurt Asche in West Germany (1980–81) and was on the committee responsible for designing the permanent exhibition at the Museum of the Deportation and Resistance in Mechelen, Belgium in 1995.