German Artist Installs Over 126000 Holocaust Memorial Stones Across Europe

Artist Gunter Demnig carefully placed small brass plaques into the sidewalk on a busy street corner in Berlin. The plaques list the names and fates of individuals who lived at that address before being deported and murdered during the Holocaust. After cleaning the stones, relatives placed white roses and recited the Jewish prayer for the dead while traffic passed on a rainy spring day.

Demnig installed the first plaque in Berlin three decades ago. More than 11000 of the memorial stones, known as Stolpersteine or stumbling blocks, are now located across the city. The artist and his teams have placed a total of 126000 stones in Germany and 31 other countries across Europe.

The first stone was installed in 1992 in the western German city of Cologne. The brass squares embedded in pavement prompt passersby to stop and read the inscriptions. Small children often examine the stones and ask their parents for explanations. "My 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," the 78-year-old German artist said in an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Jewish family members frequently travel from other countries to attend the stone-laying ceremonies. For many families the plaques serve as the closest substitute for a grave since victims were often killed in concentration camps. "The Stolpersteine are some kind of substitute for the missing gravestones," a relative said after a recent ceremony.

The relative added that the project brings family history to a certain conclusion or at least a provisional one.

The memorial stones have prompted neighborhood initiatives, schools and religious communities to research local history. Participants examine archives and old resident lists to identify individuals persecuted during the Nazi era including Jews, communists, gays and Roma who once lived in their streets or homes.

Once a victim's former residence is confirmed, groups organize a stone-laying ceremony and commit to polishing the brass plaque regularly. On one recent day several 10th graders from a local school attended a ceremony on a Berlin street where many Jewish residents once lived.

The addition of three new stones on that street brought the total there to 62. A 16-year-old student who watched the ceremony, which included violin music and neighbors recounting events from the Nazi period, said it was horrible and caused her to reflect on what might have happened to her own family.

Before the Holocaust Berlin had the largest Jewish community in Germany. In 1933 around 160500 Jews lived in the city. By the end of World War II in 1945 that number had fallen to about 7000 through emigration and extermination. In total around 6 million European Jews and others were killed in the Holocaust.

As Germany marks the 81st anniversary of its liberation from Nazi rule on May 8 some residents express concern that the lessons of that period could be forgotten amid rising far-right influence and antisemitism. A relative who attended the recent ceremony said the memorial stones offer a glimpse of hope.

The relative added the hope that the Stolpersteine will still give some people pause for thought.