{"id":77606,"date":"2026-05-08T06:11:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T06:11:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/77606\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T06:11:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T06:11:12","slug":"a-quiet-memorial-on-berlin-sidewalks-german-artist-lays-stolpersteine-to-honour-holocaust-victims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/77606\/","title":{"rendered":"A quiet memorial on Berlin sidewalks: German artist lays ‘Stolpersteine’ to honour Holocaust victims"},"content":{"rendered":"

Berlin, Germany
AP<\/a><\/p>\n

Artist Gunter Demnig carefully placed a palm-sized Holocaust memorial brass plaque into the sidewalk on a busy street corner of Berlin. It said: \u201cJohanna Berger, born in 1893, lived here; deported on Nov 17, 1941, murdered on Nov. 25, 1941.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Demnig had swiped the sand off Berger\u2019s memorial stone and those for her husband and two sons, a dozen relatives drew closer around the four plaques, which are called Stolpersteine, or \u201cstumbling blocks\u201d, in German. They put down white roses and recited the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, while traffic roared by on a rainy spring day.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Artist Gunter Demnig places a palm-sized brass Holocaust plaques called \u201cStolpersteine\u201d, or \u201cStumbling Blocks\u201d with the names of victims of the Nazi regime in front of their former home at a street in Berlin, Germany, on Wednesday, 6th May, 2026. PICTURE: AP Photo\/Markus Schreiber<\/p>\n

Demnig installed the first plaque in the German capital three decades ago. By now, one can find more than 11,000 of his memorial stones all over the city. But Demnig\u2019s decentralised Holocaust memorial goes much further than that \u2013 the artist and his teams of supporters have laid 126,000 stones in Germany and 31 other countries across Europe. The first stone was installed in 1992 in the western German city of Cologne.<\/p>\n

In a unique way, the shiny brass squares that are embedded in the pavement make passersby stop and interrupt their daily lives for a moment as they bend down to read the names of those who perished. Small children can often be seen as they examine the Stolpersteine closely and demand answers from their parents.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy basic idea behind this was that wherever in Europe the German Wehrmacht, the SS, the Gestapo, and their local collaborators committed murders or carried out deportations, symbolic stones should be placed there,\u201d the 78-year-old German artist said in an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The closest thing to a gravestone
Jewish family members oftentimes will travel from all over the world to attend the stonelaying ceremonies, because many of the victims were gassed in the Nazis\u2019 concentration camps and these memorial stones are the closest thing to a grave or a burial.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Stolpersteine are some kind of substitute for the missing gravestones,\u201d Michael Tischler said after Wednesday\u2019s ceremony. The 72-year-old Berliner is a grandnephew of Berger who perished in the Holocaust like several other members of Tischler\u2019s family.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this brings the family history to a certain conclusion, or at least a provisional one,\u201d Tischler said.<\/p>\n

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The memorial stones don\u2019t only bring solace to the families of the victims, but they have also created some kind of grassroots movement that brings together neighbourhood initiatives, schools or religious communities to research the history of their city.<\/p>\n

Researching Berlin\u2019s Nazi past
Together, old and young browse through archives and check timeworn resident lists to find out if any Jews or others who were persecuted during the Third Reich \u2013 such as communists, gays or Roma \u2013 used to live in the streets or even homes where they live today.<\/p>\n

Once they can confirm a victim\u2019s former place of residence, they arrange for a stonelaying ceremony and make sure the brass plaque is polished periodically, so it won\u2019t lose its shine.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Relatives pose for a photograph holding a palm-sized brass Holocaust plaque in German reading \u201cJohanna Berger, born in 1893, lived here; deported on 17th November, 1941, murdered on 25th November, 1941 in Kowno\/Kaunas Fort IX\u201d by artist Gunter Demnig prior to the placing of the so called \u201cStolperstein\u201d or \u201cStumbling Blocks\u201d in front of her former home in Berlin, Germany, on Wednesday, 6th May, 2026. PICTURE: AP Photo\/Markus Schreiber<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, several 10th graders from the Friedrich-Bergius-Schule attended another Berlin stonelaying ceremony on Stierstrasse, where many Jews used to live. Demnig\u2019s three new stones for the Krein family \u2013 Michael, his wife Maria and their daughter Dalila \u2013 brought the number of Stolpersteine to 62 on this street.<\/p>\n

While Maria and Dalila managed to escape to the US and British-controlled Palestinian territory, respectively, Michael, a musician, died in Berlin in 1940 as a forced labourer under the Nazis.<\/p>\n

High school student Sibilla Ehrlich, 16, watched as a group of violinists played solemn melodies and some elderly neighbours talked about the lives of the three Jews under Nazi dictatorship.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is just so horrible, all this the hatred of others,\u201d she said. \u201cI keep thinking: what if this had been my family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before the Holocaust, Berlin had the biggest Jewish community in Germany. In 1933, the year the Nazis came to power, around 160,500 Jews lived in Berlin. By the time World War II ended and Nazi Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, their numbers had diminished to about 7,000 through emigration and extermination.<\/p>\n

All in all, around six million European Jews and others were killed in the Holocaust.<\/p>\n

As Germany commemorates the\u00a0Allied liberation\u00a0from\u00a0the Nazis\u00a081 years ago on Friday, many people in Germany fear that the lessons of the Holocaust may be forgotten as\u00a0the far right is quickly gaining influence\u00a0in Germany again.<\/p>\n

Tischler, too, worries about his country\u2019s future in times of\u00a0rising antisemitism, but he says the memorial stones offer a glimpse of hope.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope that these Stolpersteine will still give some people pause for thought,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Berlin, Germany AP Artist Gunter Demnig carefully placed a palm-sized Holocaust memorial brass plaque into the sidewalk on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[112,41527,190,40999,3740,41528,41001,41376],"class_list":{"0":"post-77606","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-berlin","8":"tag-berlin","9":"tag-friedrich-bergius-schule","10":"tag-germany","11":"tag-gunter-demnig","12":"tag-holocaust","13":"tag-holocaust-victims","14":"tag-johanna-berger","15":"tag-stolpersteine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116537477459046888","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}