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January 18, 2007
Stumble Stones
They are called stolpersteine -- stumble stones. They are meant to trip memory.
"Here lived
Berta Spiegel
Born "Scheuer"
[In the] Year 1879
Deported to Theresienstadt
Dead 16-2-1942"Berta Spiegel, whose maiden name was Scheuer, and her husband, Josef Spiegel, ran a sporting goods shop at 6 Buccheimer St. in the Cologne suburb of Muelheim. The couple was "deported," the Nazi euphemism for removal of Jews from Germany, to Theresienstadt concentration camp, located in the present-day Czech Republic. They died there. Berta on Feb. 16, 1942, Josef on Aug. 7, 1942.
One stone, one life.
Each is a brass plaque measuring about 4 by 4 inches and hand-engraved by artist Gunter Demnig with the name and a few terse details of someone lost to the Holocaust. Each stumble stone is set permanently into the sidewalk outside the place where the individual lived, laughed, and loved -- usually a house or apartment building and sometimes a shop or office.
Demnig, 59, has hammered more than 10,000 plaques into the sidewalks of 202 German cities and towns. The artist and two associates, Uta Franke and Michael Friedrich, have been at it for a decade. Each stone represents archival research by families or Jewish groups as well as the painstaking work of carving of the malleable yellow metal.
One person, who lived, and then died at the hands of a madman.
A few stumble stones have been wrenched from the ground by irate neighbors or neo-Nazis. Others have been defaced with swastikas. There are still a few places in Germany where ultra-right sentiment burns fiercely enough among locals that Demnig can go about his labor only with a police escort.
The more things change, the more they remain the same.
Posted by LindaSoG at January 18, 2007 07:18 AM
Comments
Makes one wonder why so many of our Jewish population are so loyal to America's National Socialist Party - The Democrats. Maybe this explains the Democrats readiness to accept the Moslems into the Party to balance their presence, diversity?. As a child I saw some of the Jewish immigrants from the death camp prisons, heard their stories but was too young to understand, we had two young men live with us for a while until they got settled, I've never forgotten that image. Denying the halocaust or trusting the Communists is a grave mistake, never underestimate man's inhumanity to man. Look to Islam for evidence.
Posted by: Jack at January 18, 2007 02:52 PM