Stumbling over the past

Stolpersteine in der Torstrasse

Here lived and worked Georg Gross

Born 1888

Humiliated/Stripped of rights 

Escaped to death 

March 3, 1944 

These stolpersteine (stumbling blocks) can be found in front of buildings all across Europe. The purpose behind the stolpersteine, created and installed by artist Gunter Demnig, is to commemorate victims of the Holocaust. There is no huge sign telling you to look down to see these -- you just simply have to stumble upon them while walking down the streets. 

When I first found these, a big rush of emotions came over me. I glanced up at the building and was catapulted into the past. What kind of tragedies did they witness while living here? What happened to them? Where did they try and escape to? I had so many questions left unanswered, and I was consumed by feelings of sadness and anger. 

Memorials and museums can be very abstract and impersonal, but this week I literally stumbled over the past into a subtle reminder of the horrors that happened here some 75 to 80 years ago. It made me think of the 6,000,000 victims as individuals. I could imagine what their daily lives were like walking down this street with family and friends, the same street I was walking down, before their lives were taken so horrifically.

In this sense, I feel as if this memorial is the most powerful I have seen in these five short days that I have been in Berlin. Yes, it is true that the Holocaust was the mass murder of 15 to 20 million people in total, but rather than lump those murdered into a mass of people, let's remember to think of them as individuals. Individuals who had daily routines like you and I. Individuals who liked to take a stroll to a cafe and sip a cup of coffee like I did yesterday. And then one day, all of those rights that we all had in common were taken from them and their lives ended in a gruesome and tragic way. 

To commemorate the victims as individuals sends out a really powerful message. And because they are located on the streets in front of where the victims lived and worked, they are more touching and even eerie.