This week, the artist Gunter is embarrassed Demnig stumbling blocks in some districts of Berlin. Over 70,000 of these stones are a reminder to the people who were persecuted by the Nazis and murdered.
The first stumbling block is a plaque that is Gunter Demnig, they moved on 16. In December 1992, in Cologne, Germany. In front of the Historic town hall, the artist had a first with a brass plate marked and inscribed stone in the paving. The date was deliberately chosen: it is 50 years previously, the chief of the SS Heinrich Himmler had ordered the Deportation of “Gypsies” in the concentration camp of Auschwitz. On the stone the first lines of the decree read, in the hollow body of the Text as a whole for the persecution of the minority of the Sinti and Roma.
Demnig, who wants to participate in the discussion on the right of the Yugoslavs who had fled the Roma, developed in the following years, the project of the stumbling blocks. Three years later, at the 4. In January 1995, moved to the artist without the permission of the authorities, the first stones in Cologne in may 1996, a further 51 stones – also illegal – in Berlin-Kreuzberg.
In Salzburg, it was at 19. July 1997, two stones, with official approval, in Germany, first in Cologne in the year 2000 to the extent that the authorities support the project. The stumbling blocks develop in nearly 20 years, the world’s largest decentralized memorial for the victims of national socialism.
“A person is only forgotten when his Name is forgotten”
On the concrete blocks with a brass plaque and an edge length of ten centimeters, Name, address, and dates of birth and death and the fate of each victim since. The stones are embedded in the rule in the walkway in front of the last freely chosen place of residence of victims of Nazi persecution.
The stumbling blocks to the life and work of the now-71-year-old artist Gunter are Demnig
The aim of the project: The NS-Victims who have been degraded in the concentration camps to numbers, their names, to return and bring you back to the places of your life. “A person is only forgotten when his Name is forgotten” – quoted by Gunter Demnig in the Jewish Talmud. The Bending of the passers-by to read the texts on the stumbling blocks, should also be a symbolic homage to the Victims.
Memory of all victims of national socialism
The stumbling blocks are not only reminiscent of Jews, Sinti and Roma, but also people from the political or religiously motivated resistance, homosexuals, Jehovah’s witnesses, victims of the euthanasia killings, and people were persecuted as a supposedly “anti-social”.
Contrary to the General assumption of the stumbling blocks, we are reminded not only of the Murdered, but to all the victims of national socialism. So to those who were murdered in Auschwitz and other Camps, but also to those who survived the camps or who escaped, because you had fled to Palestine, in the United States or other countries.
Stolpersteine in Berlin, Buenos Aires and Strasbourg
Today, there are alone in the German capital of 7000 stones, and over 70,000 in 24 countries in Europe. In 2017, a transfer took place for the first Time outside of Europe. At the entrance of the Pestalozzi school in Buenos Aires, a trip threshold has been relocated. The 1934 founded a German school abroad was considered to be a refuge for the Persecuted of the Nazi regime.
Tripping threshold outside of Europe, the Pestalozzi school in Buenos Aires
As the first large town in France and moved to Strasbourg in the last week, 20 stumbling blocks to commemorate the victims of the Nazis killed in the Holocaust. Until the fall of the relocation of a further 30 stones is planned.
Sponsorship for stumbling blocks will cost 120 Euro
The stumbling blocks remain in all of the years, a grass root project, to the relatives of Holocaust Victims, Volunteers, students and school children around the world are involved. The latter research, for example, the biographies of the Nazis persecuted people.
Initially, manufactures Demnig itself, since 2005, the Berlin sculptor Michael Friedrichs-friedländer every stumbling block in his Studio by Hand. This is to illustrate the bearings of the contrast to the anonymization and the mass murder of people in concentration. The financing of the stumbling blocks by private donations, for 120 euros, anybody can sponsor the production and laying of a stumbling one.
The Stolpersteine project also has critics
However, not all of them are with the concept of the stumbling blocks agree. For Charlotte Knobloch, former President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, it is “unbearable”, to read the names of murdered Jews on the panels, which are embedded in the ground, on which with feet, “” be entered. Its successor, Dieter Graumann, and the current Central Council President Josef Schuster, however, support the project.
The first stumbling block, demnig’s to the memory of the deported Sinti and Roma in front of the Cologne town hall is no longer the Original one: in 2010, he was broken by Unknown and stolen. Gunter moved Demnig him three years later, on 21. March 2013, new.