Through travel we can have so many different learning experiences. We learn about history, geography, culture, food, nature, wildlife, music etc. Most of these experiences are wonderful and create lifelong memories we cherish but some are more challenging and today I wanted to relate the challenging.
While out and about in search of a geocache, more about that in a later blog, I came across a unique memorial called Stolpersteine (see the picture below). Stolpersteine translated as Stumbling Stones is a project initiated in 1992 by a German artist called Günter Demnig.
A Stolpersteine is a small concrete cube with a brass plate, individually engraved with the name and details of an individual who fell victim to the Nazi regime, most of whom were deported to extermination camps, where they were murdered. These small, relatively inconspicuous plaques inlaid into the pavement, are a stark and poignant reminder that behind the unimaginably large numbers of people caught up in these atrocities, there are individual stories of tragedy and loss. And once you have encountered one of these memorials and understand its significance you begin to see them everywhere.
These stones are part of the worlds largest decentralised memorial with over 75,000 of these stones laid in countries across Europe, including Germany, Austria, Italy, The Netherlands, Belgium, Hungary etc.
The picture below is of the two stones I first came across. They commemorate a Jewish brother and sister Rudolf and Mathilde Justitz who ran a jewellery shop in the city and lived at 104 Reinsburgstraße, Stuttgart. They were deported to Riga, Latvia in 1941 and were murdered there on March 26th, 1942 aged 65 and 60 respectively. You can read more about their family history via this link (German): Mathilde und Rudolf Justitz There are also Stolpersteine laid in nearby Degerloch, where their brother Otto and his family lived.
You can read some additional information about the Stolpersteine project via the following link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolperstein
Catherine,
I too had never heard of these stumbling stones and am in awe of the power of this idea. Perhaps if we planted more of these reminders of the suffering of our brothers and sisters throughout our daily lives and had the courage to enter into them, we could diminish the amount of ongoing suffering that is inflicted on both a personal and communal level. In Matthew 21:44, Jesus says, “He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed.” Those who were memorialized in these stones were crushed. Thanks for the reminder that each day I must gain more courage to take time for the grief, suffering and brokenness around me. May it trip me up, and break my heart to pieces so that I can become less, and a healing presence can take my place instead.
Thanks Tim for sharing your wonderfully deep insights.
Thanks so much for posting this Catherine. I had never heard of these stones before. It was sad to read about how they had worked so hard to create a life for themselves in the jewelry shop, only to have everything taken away from them. In the English translation they referred to the stones as “stumbling blocks”. It made me wonder if that is where the phrase comes from. I was also intrigued by the idea of a decentralized memorial as a way of making an impact that is broad in reach but also personal as a simple yet powerful means of remembrance. Very powerful.
Thanks Robert. I have read in other articles that Stolpersteine does play on the English metaphor ‘stumbling blocks’. I find the local and personal so much more impactful than the remote and anonymous.
So poignant. It’d make you stop and think for sure.
Yes. In the neighborhood where I stay in Berlin, outside as many as every third doorway along Soorstrasse just blocks from Theodore Heuss paltz U-bahn stop, there is one to 5 of thes blocks in the sidewalk. Whole families – generations of families even. A stark reminder, in a durable medium designed to LAST, of where we’ve been as a civilization, and what happened. As you said, it feels very personal when you see their house, their door, and a mere meter or two away, the brass block with their details – name, age, dates…. sometimes I view the blocks as the persons legacy, ever warning to the future.