Career
Born into a Jewish family in Lviv, Galicia (then Austria-Hungary), he came 3rd, behind Henryk Friedman and Izaak Schächter, in the Lviv City championships in 1933. In the period between 1935 and 1939, he lived in Łódź. In 1935, Gerstenfeld shared 4th with Jakub Kolski, behind Izaak Appel and Achilles Frydman, in Łódź (quadrangular).
In 1936, he played a match against Szpiro in Łódź, shared 2nd with Schächter, behind Szpiro, at Częstochowa (POL-ch elim), and tied for 2nd with Appel, behind A. Frydman, in Łódź (ŁTZGSz).
In 1936/37, he shared 1st with Paulin Frydman and Appel in Łódź. In Summer 1939, before World World War II broke out, he returned to Lviv.
According to the secret agreement between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany (Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact), Lviv was captured by the Soviets, and then incorporated to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in Autumn 1939 (the German–Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Demarcation). In 1940, he shared 1st with Mark Stolberg in Kiev (Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics-ch semi-final).
In September–October 1940, Gerstenfeld took 17th in Moscow (the 12th Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics Chess Championship).
In June 1941, he was at 3rd place in Rostov-on-Don (the 13th Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics-ch semi-final), when Operation Barbarossa, the German attack on the Soviet Union, interrupted the event. The exact cause of his death remained unclear. According to one source, he became a victim of Nazi atrocities in Autumn 1942 (the Lemberg Ghetto or the Belzec extermination camp), but to others, he was shot by Nazis during the mass killing of Jewish people in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, in December 1943.
Rostov-on-Don was liberated by the Soviet Army on February 14, 1943.