It's an awesome idea, because it brings the painful past right into our daily lives. You're forced to serendipituously "stumble" across them every now and then.
The stories on them, told in a brief phrase, are mostly heartbreaking, sometimes uplifting, always relevant. "Executed for making fun of the Führer", "Deported and gassed for hiding Jewish neighbors", "Survived concentration camp but parents, siblings and relatives did not make it out alive".
The idea to put a bit more info about the person was brilliant, even a single sentence makes you relate more. There is a similar project in Russia called The Last Address [1], I see these a lot (but probably not enough) in the Saint-Petersburg historical center, and although being a similar age and area of expertise to lots of victims helps, even a brief summary of their "wrongdoings" would go a long way enriching the perspective on our history, especially given current political climate here. "A 30 years old engineer lived here" doesn't ring as close as "a 30 years old engineer who lived here was murdered by the state for a crime of opposing the oppressive regime".
Here in Liesing, Austria, I walked past a stolperstein this morning, which sits at the entrance to a local Billa (supermarket), which is a new construction on a site where I suppose the victim of Nazi aggression lived before being taken to a concentration camp to perish.
Although I see these stones all over Vienna, and find myself in contemplation every single time I see them elsewhere around Europe, it is even more jarring to see them in a seemingly random outer suburb/town of the region at the footstep of a local grocery store, and is a severely jarring reminder of the atrocities that occurred in this land, not so long ago.
I wish Australia, my native land, would have the courage to do something similar to highlight the atrocities we committed there, on the original peoples. Alas, Australian war hubris is too heavy to pierce that veil ..
> It's an awesome idea, because it brings the painful past right into our daily lives. You're forced to serendipituously "stumble" across them every now and then.
I very much believe that this is the intention, but does it actually though? Oppressive country frequently brings up the past as a safe way to legitimize the present. Russia seems to have had an increase in this in recent years as it now started a war in Europe. Most of the western world seems to not have learned much at all from the second world war and are yet again running black sites, funneling money to regimes and fighting wars to defend some of them.
Unfortunately I think part of the popularity of these stone today is that they are no longer provocative. Their existence doesn't seem to have the effect of for example highlighting still exiting companies participation in the holocaust, current day trade policies or crimes against humanity. Putting one of these outside a company, judge or commander involved in past or present atrocities would probably result in it quickly being removed and you potentially landing in jail.
But I guess that even if few learns the bigger lesson they might still be a net positive.
We have these around where I live. The thing that struck me most is just the sheer number of them. Of course you get taught in history class the death tolls, but seeing it out in the real world hits differently. More are still getting added every year as well. It's sobering.
I couldn't agree more. Maybe it makes the grim lessons stay with us a little bit longer - something that I am seriously concerned about given Putin's replay of these events (and also living in Poland).
Yeah, in my city I also stumble across these stones. One day, on my way of getting groceries, I was quite frankly shocked by the frequency of the stolpersteine.
I am thankful that these exists and getting reminded now and then is, at least for me, really important and outline in some kind of tiny fraction, how many families suffered the same fate.
Impressive to see how many Stolpersteine are out there. I never saw/recognized one on my own even though I walk around a lot in areas with a high density of them.
There are many such memorial plaques on the pavements of Vienna. They are almost part of the landscape, easy to walk by without noticing, yet every so often, when one stops rushing and reads a few of these (it was often whole families being deported, not just individuals), it hits again. And it is important that it never stops hitting and reminding us of this horror and of the need of avoiding repeating it.
Great to see recognition for this on HN! My mother set up a group buy here in the neighborhood to place four of these Stolpersteine, and arranged everything needed to make it happen.
It's weird that the article explicitly mentiones various groups that were killed/deported to German concentration camps across Europe and commemorated by the stones, but does not mention the second largest one - Poles. German historical policy tends to not include Poles as victims the 1939-1945 Germany, but in spite of that, there are multiple stones commemorating them in today's Berlin.
I'll preface this by stating that this is probably not a popular opinion.
Notwithstanding the ideals behind the Stolpersteine, they are not exclusively a positive influence. The problem lies in one of the defining characteristics of this project: the stones are placed in front of the houses where the Jewish victims who got deported and executed lived.
This means that if you happen to live in a house tenanted by these unfortuna victims in the past (or even in a new house built where their house was), you can end up with a whole bunch of names permanently staring at you whenever you leave the house. Some, perhaps most, people can ignore that, but for some this constant reminder of pointless death and hardship is quite a burden and can significantly affect their quality of life — should they feel guilty for living? If you speak up about this, you are branded a clueless NIMBY resident or even an anti-Semite (there have been a few of such cases in the Netherlands).
Normally, memorials and remembrances are limited in their influence on people's daily life. Memorials are not just placed haphazardly, but with proper consideration of the needs and wants of those who life in the area, as well as the victims and their descendants. A respectful, serene corner of a public park for example. Events where the victims of past conflicts are remembered are limited in time: you can participate or ignore it, and then move on with your life. Stolpersteine however, just get put there in the pavement whether you like it or not.
Should people be confronted with the horrors of past conflicts? Absolutely — during education and in locations where this is to be expected and one can open up to consider the actions and consequences of the past — but not everywhere, not constantly, and not exclusively (there are, after all, quite a few horrific things in our recent past, certainly not limited to the fate of deported Jews in the Second World War). Unavoidable, the dead commemorated by Stolpersteine stake out quite a claim on the land of the living. I do find that Stolpersteine presume too much upon the public space to the point of becoming tasteless and an affront.
> I do find that Stolpersteine presume too much upon the public space to the point of becoming tasteless and an affront.
Oh please, they are 10x10 cm (or even smaller), how can they take up "too much public space"?
In my street in Berlin there are Stolpersteine almost in front of every house. They are a memorial just as much as they have become integral part of the "environment". In my daily life I don't pay much attention anymore, but sometimes they still make me stop and think, and I guess this was exactly the intent.
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagage_(Leiden)
A monument in multiple pieces remembering deportation. Most of them are placed in residential areas, in full view of the people who live there.
I have three stones in front of my house. I clean them once a year. They do not bother me.
Personally, I don't quite "get" why other Germans seem to personally suffer under the weight of the county's history. I was born in the 1980s, it is obvious that I am not "guilty", but I have no problem feeling responsible to keep the memory alive.
In fact, any reasonable observer will notice that admitting guilt, in the hardest possible terms, has been exceptionally good strategy for the country. Except for the British, and some, but few, Israeli jews, people tend to be impressed with the postwar behavior of the country. Any remnants of fear proved useful to "force" Germany into the Euro and get it of military engagements, although the latter has somewhat stopped.
So whenever I see Turkey, or Hungary, or, to some degree, Austria, trying to deny their respective genocides and/or participation in the Holocaust, it just feels exceptionally stupid! Everybody knows of the Turkish genocide against the Armenians. Denying it is silly and just keeps it alive. Build monuments honoring those you have harmed and the world will love you for it.
(if, that is, you also stop harming more people! wtf is wrong with you? It's not like land is worth anything, these days, or you-know-who would obviously not need more of it).
I was living in Budapest in a house marked with one of the plaques, and I never had a similar thought. What's the mental process that makes you uneasy with them?
Very interesting, but puzzling comment. It reality makes me understand how reality can be perceived in wildly different ways. Thank you for it.
I live in such a house. All houses in my street have them. Some have one or two, others have 10+. When we moved here I attended a ceremony across the street when they were putting new ones. During special events throughout the year people are cleaning them, put candles and flowers to remember. It think it is an excellent way to remember and understand our past.
I live in one of these houses and don't mind. Most of the time, you don't even think about it. In the few moments you do, it's just a reminder of what can go wrong.
I assume what you’re feeling is true but it’s a pretty unusual read on the memorial and I’m sure you’re right it is not a popular way to look at it. I suspect that’s why some people jump to assuming there’s some kind of secret agenda - actual anti-Semites use those sorts of arguments as well because they know they can’t say what they really think, and they are surely more common than people who feel guilty about living when forced to see memorials.
I gew up close to Nuremberg and like to take a walk to visit the dead whenever I'm there, as well as check out various Nazi grounds which ...are just part of our history. My family is also of polish origin (I was born and raised in Germany) and I've spent time in Cracow and Munich,so I make points of visiting the memorials whenever I visit friends there.
My perspective is: this isn't only for the dead, it's also for the living. This can happen again if we do not make a culture of remembering, and of not shying away from the uneasiness. It should make us feel uneasy that our neighbours, our family, ourselves might have participated in the holocaust, or fallen victim to them - that everyone involved was normal people. Having some parts of the land of the living dedicated to this when not even a century has passed is a small price to pay.
And as far as prices to pay go, Stolpersteine are literally the least possible intrusion. There would be a similar stone in the same place, the Stolperstein is simply made of a different material and burns the reminder into the city so that holocaust deniers and their ilk have a harder time. And like the name implies, the point is to not have a sanitized, dead, tucked away safely memorial "respectfully" shoved into some corner of a park - where it can be safely ignored.
"Never again" is not an empty slogan, or something that will happen automatically (as we can see with genocides and ethnic cleansings around the world continuing since then) it's something that we all have to work towards. The Stolpersteine are part of the Erinnerungskultur and in my opinion, some of the best parts.
Here's my two cent counter-argument. Captialism is the biggest ruthless killing machine, whatever form it takes: nazism (Hitler was put to power by German industry/bourgeoisie), fascism (Mussolini advocated for State/Capital unification under "corporatism"), State capitalism (USSR was not very different from a people's perspective, with salaried work and gulags and political police), or ordinary liberalism (French republic orchestrated the colonization and slavery of many folks, even long after slavery was formally abolished, under the form of wage slavery).
Yet there's little memory of those massacres and injustices, except for casualties of war who get the whole triumphant nationalist ceremonies to spit on them. Maybe a plaque for the dead workers who built a mountain road/rail, or for the victims of the Commune of Paris/Lyon/wherever. It's very discreet, when it exists at all, when it doesn't fall into the narrative of the State.
I don't know about younger folks, but when i was in school we got told so little about the history and reasons for these people to have died, when talking about it at all (good luck finding a history teacher spending more than 1 hour on the Paris Commune or the Algerian independence War). And we got told exactly zero about the living popular history of our own neighborhood and how people defied those injustices.
Whenever i find a plaque, memorial, carving or whatever remembering the past (and its mistakes) i try to take some time to investigate it, and i often learn something interesting. So much happened right around us, yet we are told/taught so little, and in the cities urban renovation driven by gentrifiers makes sure this history stays hidden and that only advertisement and store fronts remain.
Is that really the environment we want: an efficient, emotionless and pastless business machine? I personally don't want that. I wouldn't go so far as to call you a NIMBY resident, but i certainly encourage you to think or read about popular history, gentrification, and what it means when the latter tries to erase the former.
As a side note, i don't know about the netherlands, but here in France it's common for neonazis to deface the memorials honoring the (jewish or not, but the jewish in particular) victims of nazism. I agree with you it's bothersome in some sense that jewish victims are honored more than other categories of nazism victims (tsigans, cripples, homosexuals, etc), but if the alternative is to make the neonazis who'd like to rewrite history happy, i'm very happy with the current state of things.
Many central european cities are full of these Stolpersteine and it is sometimes quite interesting where people lived that have been taken away — and what took their place decades later.
Typically people who live there, children from nearby schools or community projects look to keep them clean and polished, although depending on how remote that area is you might also "stolper" over some that haven't got the treatment for a while.
I think there is a real benefit to these small, decentralized "micromonuments", as they remind you of actual history in the many places where it happened. The genocidal horror of the nazis did not happen in some megalomaniac central spot after all, it was in every neighbourhood.
Every day, they post pictures of a handful people who were detained (and almost always died) in the concentration camp, and seeing those in my feed is the virtual equivalent of Stolpersteine.
It's also sobering to think that, at the pace at which they post, it would take thousands of years to commemorate all the victims.
Having spent most of my adult life in Germany, I’ve seen hundreds of them, and I try to take a moment to think of the people they name.
And then reflect that Germans don’t have some special intrinsic evil that made them capable of doing this 80 years ago - every country is some hard times and a demagogue away from it.
I remember looking at a group of four a while ago and noticed the next day that someone had polished the copper and put flowers around it. Very touching.
"Unlike many other German cities, the city council of Munich in 2004 rejected the installation of Stolpersteine on public property, following objections raised by Munich's Jewish community... She objected to the idea that the names of murdered Jews be inserted in the pavement, where people might accidentally step on them.
In other cities, permission for the project was preceded by long, sometimes emotional discussions. In Krefeld, the vice-chairman of the Jewish community, Michael Gilad, said that Demnig's memorials reminded him of how the Nazis had used Jewish gravestones as slabs for sidewalks.
Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) has expressed reservations towards to project, noting that the form of the memorial, particularly its location on regular sidewalks, which are regularly stomped over by passersby, is not respectful. Another criticism from IPN has concerned inadequate level of detail provided on Stolpersteine, such as lack of context clarifying that most of the perpetrators of the Holocaust were Germans, and not Poles. IPN officials have repeatedly suggested that instead of Stolpersteine, the more respectful, informative and traditional form of remembrance that the IPN is willing to support."
Slightly related: Communists cut Jewish gravestones to cobbles and used it to pave Prague historic center. The stones were discovered during a revamp of the pavement and are now returned to Jewish cemetery.
So there was a borderline-neonazi comment i wanted to reply to, but it got flagged in the meantime. It argued that there was an international jewish-communist conspiracy in pre-WWII Germany, and that WWII served to establish the UN as a means to demolish national sovereignty, and that Israel is an ethnonationalist State. In case this person is still around reading, or someone else believes such things, here was my answer i couldn't post under the now-deleted comment:
Wow, i was not expecting to find a neonazi comment here on HN. To be clear, i agree with your criticism of Israel as ethnonationalist and despite immense propaganda efforts it's becoming harder and harder for Israel proponents to pretend otherwise. (And for the record, a lot of Israelis also make that point and struggle every day against their whole racist/colonial machine)
However, the threat of "jewish communism" (judeo-bolshevism as they called it back then) is a spectre invented by nazis and fueled by more ancient conspiracy theories such as the protocol of the elders of zion (spread by Russian political police in early 20th century). Just like today, at least here in France, the neo-nazis and other fascists and warning of the threat of "islamo-leftism", and inventing debilitating theories about "reverse racism" and "reverse colonization" and "white genocide".
As for "world government" and the destruction of national sovereignty, two things:
1. International agreements such as the UN have on the contrary formalized the concept of national sovereignty and non-intervention
2. Of course those principles are never respected and the big empires will do whatever is in their interests: this was already the case long before the UN with the League of Nations, and even long before that, such as when the Berlin conference (19th century) formally divided Africa into territories to be ruled by the colonial empires. The reason there are straight borders on African maps is because some european aristocrats who knew nothing about these territories sat around a table with a ruler and traced lines.
To be clear, your thoughts are not illegal, but they are very wrong. I encourage you to get a better understanding of history from different sources, and maybe realize that Israel is not much more than any other colonial empire of today. In fact, many of their repression/counter-insurgency techniques are straight out of French doctrine established during the Algerian war of independence. So why are some people desperately focusing on Israel as the driving force of evil around the world? From some arab/muslim community, i understand they can relate to the victims of Israeli colonialism... but from white westerners (no idea if that's your case), it certainly plays into the old antisemite trope of an imaginary international jewish alliance trying to control the planet.
As a German I think it's weird the article starts with "A Stolperstein is..." and then directly refers to the art project of Gunter Demning.
That's not what "a" Stolperstein is. It's a common phrase in German about a stone that makes you stumble on an otherwise even/walkable road/pathway. It's also used in the metaphorical sense, if something makes you stumble/fall on your metaphorical way of life.
No German would think of the word Stolperstein and the art project as synonyms. In fact I hadn't heard about it until today. The German wikipedia introduction is clearer on that and starts with "The Stolpersteine are a project of artist Gunter Demning" and I think the English wikipedia should be adjusted accordingly.
One popular solution for that is having a {{See Wiktionary}} tag on the top of the article that adds the text 'For a definition of the term "Stolperstein", see the Wiktionary entry Stolperstein.'
I think the second paragraph should just be the first. (Or perhaps somehow keeping the pronunciation guide etc. in the first for prominence, since that's the usual Wikipedia style.)
[+] [-] uniqueuid|3 years ago|reply
The stories on them, told in a brief phrase, are mostly heartbreaking, sometimes uplifting, always relevant. "Executed for making fun of the Führer", "Deported and gassed for hiding Jewish neighbors", "Survived concentration camp but parents, siblings and relatives did not make it out alive".
[+] [-] Klaster_1|3 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Address
[+] [-] boffinAudio|3 years ago|reply
Although I see these stones all over Vienna, and find myself in contemplation every single time I see them elsewhere around Europe, it is even more jarring to see them in a seemingly random outer suburb/town of the region at the footstep of a local grocery store, and is a severely jarring reminder of the atrocities that occurred in this land, not so long ago.
I wish Australia, my native land, would have the courage to do something similar to highlight the atrocities we committed there, on the original peoples. Alas, Australian war hubris is too heavy to pierce that veil ..
[+] [-] hnhg|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jemen|3 years ago|reply
I very much believe that this is the intention, but does it actually though? Oppressive country frequently brings up the past as a safe way to legitimize the present. Russia seems to have had an increase in this in recent years as it now started a war in Europe. Most of the western world seems to not have learned much at all from the second world war and are yet again running black sites, funneling money to regimes and fighting wars to defend some of them.
Unfortunately I think part of the popularity of these stone today is that they are no longer provocative. Their existence doesn't seem to have the effect of for example highlighting still exiting companies participation in the holocaust, current day trade policies or crimes against humanity. Putting one of these outside a company, judge or commander involved in past or present atrocities would probably result in it quickly being removed and you potentially landing in jail.
But I guess that even if few learns the bigger lesson they might still be a net positive.
[+] [-] Doxin|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] praptak|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lyian|3 years ago|reply
I am thankful that these exists and getting reminded now and then is, at least for me, really important and outline in some kind of tiny fraction, how many families suffered the same fate.
[+] [-] Bellamy|3 years ago|reply
So you are saying we should be reminded and think about the horrors of Nazi's every day and everywhere?
[+] [-] guerda|3 years ago|reply
And the German public TV station created an app with additional information on Stolpersteine: https://stolpersteine.wdr.de/web/en/
[+] [-] M4tze|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tepix|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VSerge|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timvisee|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gpjanik|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] riccardomc|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Freak_NL|3 years ago|reply
Notwithstanding the ideals behind the Stolpersteine, they are not exclusively a positive influence. The problem lies in one of the defining characteristics of this project: the stones are placed in front of the houses where the Jewish victims who got deported and executed lived.
This means that if you happen to live in a house tenanted by these unfortuna victims in the past (or even in a new house built where their house was), you can end up with a whole bunch of names permanently staring at you whenever you leave the house. Some, perhaps most, people can ignore that, but for some this constant reminder of pointless death and hardship is quite a burden and can significantly affect their quality of life — should they feel guilty for living? If you speak up about this, you are branded a clueless NIMBY resident or even an anti-Semite (there have been a few of such cases in the Netherlands).
Normally, memorials and remembrances are limited in their influence on people's daily life. Memorials are not just placed haphazardly, but with proper consideration of the needs and wants of those who life in the area, as well as the victims and their descendants. A respectful, serene corner of a public park for example. Events where the victims of past conflicts are remembered are limited in time: you can participate or ignore it, and then move on with your life. Stolpersteine however, just get put there in the pavement whether you like it or not.
Should people be confronted with the horrors of past conflicts? Absolutely — during education and in locations where this is to be expected and one can open up to consider the actions and consequences of the past — but not everywhere, not constantly, and not exclusively (there are, after all, quite a few horrific things in our recent past, certainly not limited to the fate of deported Jews in the Second World War). Unavoidable, the dead commemorated by Stolpersteine stake out quite a claim on the land of the living. I do find that Stolpersteine presume too much upon the public space to the point of becoming tasteless and an affront.
[+] [-] flohofwoe|3 years ago|reply
Oh please, they are 10x10 cm (or even smaller), how can they take up "too much public space"?
In my street in Berlin there are Stolpersteine almost in front of every house. They are a memorial just as much as they have become integral part of the "environment". In my daily life I don't pay much attention anymore, but sometimes they still make me stop and think, and I guess this was exactly the intent.
[+] [-] jeroen|3 years ago|reply
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_verwoeste_stad A statue remembering the bombing of Rotterdam, in a busy place in the centre of Rotterdam.
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagage_(Leiden) A monument in multiple pieces remembering deportation. Most of them are placed in residential areas, in full view of the people who live there.
[+] [-] IfOnlyYouKnew|3 years ago|reply
Personally, I don't quite "get" why other Germans seem to personally suffer under the weight of the county's history. I was born in the 1980s, it is obvious that I am not "guilty", but I have no problem feeling responsible to keep the memory alive.
In fact, any reasonable observer will notice that admitting guilt, in the hardest possible terms, has been exceptionally good strategy for the country. Except for the British, and some, but few, Israeli jews, people tend to be impressed with the postwar behavior of the country. Any remnants of fear proved useful to "force" Germany into the Euro and get it of military engagements, although the latter has somewhat stopped.
So whenever I see Turkey, or Hungary, or, to some degree, Austria, trying to deny their respective genocides and/or participation in the Holocaust, it just feels exceptionally stupid! Everybody knows of the Turkish genocide against the Armenians. Denying it is silly and just keeps it alive. Build monuments honoring those you have harmed and the world will love you for it.
(if, that is, you also stop harming more people! wtf is wrong with you? It's not like land is worth anything, these days, or you-know-who would obviously not need more of it).
[+] [-] kome|3 years ago|reply
Very interesting, but puzzling comment. It reality makes me understand how reality can be perceived in wildly different ways. Thank you for it.
[+] [-] robert_foss|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fs111|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] currycurry16|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] synu|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] igorkraw|3 years ago|reply
My perspective is: this isn't only for the dead, it's also for the living. This can happen again if we do not make a culture of remembering, and of not shying away from the uneasiness. It should make us feel uneasy that our neighbours, our family, ourselves might have participated in the holocaust, or fallen victim to them - that everyone involved was normal people. Having some parts of the land of the living dedicated to this when not even a century has passed is a small price to pay.
And as far as prices to pay go, Stolpersteine are literally the least possible intrusion. There would be a similar stone in the same place, the Stolperstein is simply made of a different material and burns the reminder into the city so that holocaust deniers and their ilk have a harder time. And like the name implies, the point is to not have a sanitized, dead, tucked away safely memorial "respectfully" shoved into some corner of a park - where it can be safely ignored.
"Never again" is not an empty slogan, or something that will happen automatically (as we can see with genocides and ethnic cleansings around the world continuing since then) it's something that we all have to work towards. The Stolpersteine are part of the Erinnerungskultur and in my opinion, some of the best parts.
[+] [-] bgandrew|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] southerntofu|3 years ago|reply
Yet there's little memory of those massacres and injustices, except for casualties of war who get the whole triumphant nationalist ceremonies to spit on them. Maybe a plaque for the dead workers who built a mountain road/rail, or for the victims of the Commune of Paris/Lyon/wherever. It's very discreet, when it exists at all, when it doesn't fall into the narrative of the State.
I don't know about younger folks, but when i was in school we got told so little about the history and reasons for these people to have died, when talking about it at all (good luck finding a history teacher spending more than 1 hour on the Paris Commune or the Algerian independence War). And we got told exactly zero about the living popular history of our own neighborhood and how people defied those injustices.
Whenever i find a plaque, memorial, carving or whatever remembering the past (and its mistakes) i try to take some time to investigate it, and i often learn something interesting. So much happened right around us, yet we are told/taught so little, and in the cities urban renovation driven by gentrifiers makes sure this history stays hidden and that only advertisement and store fronts remain.
Is that really the environment we want: an efficient, emotionless and pastless business machine? I personally don't want that. I wouldn't go so far as to call you a NIMBY resident, but i certainly encourage you to think or read about popular history, gentrification, and what it means when the latter tries to erase the former.
As a side note, i don't know about the netherlands, but here in France it's common for neonazis to deface the memorials honoring the (jewish or not, but the jewish in particular) victims of nazism. I agree with you it's bothersome in some sense that jewish victims are honored more than other categories of nazism victims (tsigans, cripples, homosexuals, etc), but if the alternative is to make the neonazis who'd like to rewrite history happy, i'm very happy with the current state of things.
[+] [-] ad_hominem|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmcollins|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] atoav|3 years ago|reply
Typically people who live there, children from nearby schools or community projects look to keep them clean and polished, although depending on how remote that area is you might also "stolper" over some that haven't got the treatment for a while.
I think there is a real benefit to these small, decentralized "micromonuments", as they remind you of actual history in the many places where it happened. The genocidal horror of the nazis did not happen in some megalomaniac central spot after all, it was in every neighbourhood.
[+] [-] KingOfCoders|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] isolli|3 years ago|reply
Every day, they post pictures of a handful people who were detained (and almost always died) in the concentration camp, and seeing those in my feed is the virtual equivalent of Stolpersteine.
It's also sobering to think that, at the pace at which they post, it would take thousands of years to commemorate all the victims.
[+] [-] MandieD|3 years ago|reply
And then reflect that Germans don’t have some special intrinsic evil that made them capable of doing this 80 years ago - every country is some hard times and a demagogue away from it.
[+] [-] mikewarot|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] MikeDelta|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] puskavi|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shark1|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dandare|3 years ago|reply
https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-46845131
[+] [-] southerntofu|3 years ago|reply
Wow, i was not expecting to find a neonazi comment here on HN. To be clear, i agree with your criticism of Israel as ethnonationalist and despite immense propaganda efforts it's becoming harder and harder for Israel proponents to pretend otherwise. (And for the record, a lot of Israelis also make that point and struggle every day against their whole racist/colonial machine)
However, the threat of "jewish communism" (judeo-bolshevism as they called it back then) is a spectre invented by nazis and fueled by more ancient conspiracy theories such as the protocol of the elders of zion (spread by Russian political police in early 20th century). Just like today, at least here in France, the neo-nazis and other fascists and warning of the threat of "islamo-leftism", and inventing debilitating theories about "reverse racism" and "reverse colonization" and "white genocide".
As for "world government" and the destruction of national sovereignty, two things:
1. International agreements such as the UN have on the contrary formalized the concept of national sovereignty and non-intervention
2. Of course those principles are never respected and the big empires will do whatever is in their interests: this was already the case long before the UN with the League of Nations, and even long before that, such as when the Berlin conference (19th century) formally divided Africa into territories to be ruled by the colonial empires. The reason there are straight borders on African maps is because some european aristocrats who knew nothing about these territories sat around a table with a ruler and traced lines.
To be clear, your thoughts are not illegal, but they are very wrong. I encourage you to get a better understanding of history from different sources, and maybe realize that Israel is not much more than any other colonial empire of today. In fact, many of their repression/counter-insurgency techniques are straight out of French doctrine established during the Algerian war of independence. So why are some people desperately focusing on Israel as the driving force of evil around the world? From some arab/muslim community, i understand they can relate to the victims of Israeli colonialism... but from white westerners (no idea if that's your case), it certainly plays into the old antisemite trope of an imaginary international jewish alliance trying to control the planet.
[+] [-] ascar|3 years ago|reply
That's not what "a" Stolperstein is. It's a common phrase in German about a stone that makes you stumble on an otherwise even/walkable road/pathway. It's also used in the metaphorical sense, if something makes you stumble/fall on your metaphorical way of life.
No German would think of the word Stolperstein and the art project as synonyms. In fact I hadn't heard about it until today. The German wikipedia introduction is clearer on that and starts with "The Stolpersteine are a project of artist Gunter Demning" and I think the English wikipedia should be adjusted accordingly.
[+] [-] ratww|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OJFord|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dtnewman|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] voz_|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smcl|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blueflow|3 years ago|reply
People will genocide their enemies and be like, "Thank god we aren't like the Nazis", or worse, "Trust us the guy we just killed was a Nazi".
None of this helps with moral reasoning.
[+] [-] bowsamic|3 years ago|reply