Stolpersteine

When you walk through Eppendorf, my neighborhood, a central district of Hamburg, Germany, you see the streets are lined with elegant turn-of-the-century town houses, cafés, small bars, restaurants, shops, and numerous small rivers flow through the district at the north tip of the innercity lake Alster. And then you see a large number of bronze colored cobble stones in the sidewalks, in front of some house entrances. These are sidewalk memorials as I call them. Eppendorf had like the Harvestehude and Grindel quarters a large Jewish population until the second world war. These are silent memorials to those who have lived among us until then.


These bronze colored paving stones are called Stolpersteine ("stumbling blocks") in German. They are set into the pavement in front of the entrance of buildings. Each stone has an engraving of the name of a person who had lived in that house and who had been deported and killed during the years of the National Socialism. The stones are simple but effective daily memorials embedded in the sidewalk.


In the area were I live in Hamburg nearly every house has these stones. Some have even 10-12 stumbling blocks. On the picture I posted you see one of the stones in front of the neighboring house were I live (photo).


Stolpersteine is since many years a privately financed project of the artist and craftsman Gunter Demnig from Cologne. He says: "You have to take a low bow infront of the house to read the stone engravings."


The United Nations statement of the Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27:


"We recognise that humanity is still scarred by the belief that race, religion, disability or sexuality make some people's lives worth less than others'. Genocide, antisemitism, racism, xenophobia and discrimination still continue. We have a shared responsibility to fight these evils."


This commitment applies to every human being. Never forget.


Gunter Demnig lives and works in Cologne, and sets his stumbling stones everywhere in Germany.


Here is a nice flickr group of photographs:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/stolpersteine/pool/