Stolpersteine

A what ......?

A 'stolperstein' is the German word for a 'stumble stone'.  The artist Gunter Demnig has given this word a new meaning, that of a small, cobblestone-sized memorial for a single victim of Nazism.  These memorials commemorate individuals - both those who died and survivors - who were consigned by the nazis to prisons, euthanasia facilities, sterilization clinics, concentration camps and extermination camps.

Demnig manufactures a concrete cube of 10 cm (4 inches), which he covers with a sheet of brass. Then he stamps the details of the individual on it: the name, year of birth and the fate, as well as the dates of deportation and death, if known. The stolperstein is then laid flush with the pavement or the cobblestones in the sidewalk in front of the last residence of the victim.  In French, they're called 'des pavés commémoratifs'.  And so a stroll down an ordinary city street is suddenly transformed into a walk across the stage of history.

There are thousands of them in continental Europe and there are two sets in Brussels: not many, since we know that about 26,000 Jews were exported to concentration and death camps.  So I went looking for them and found them.  As I walked through the two different neighbourhoods, I tried to imagine what it must have been like there during the German occupation in WW II, the stigma of being Jewish and the terror of the doorbell ringing...