Setting the memory of Holocaust victims in stone

[Forkboy]

In the pavements of Berlin, there's brass. Here and there, small cobbles of it. They're a little worn - like the lovely door-handles in our home - but by wind and weather rather than hands.

And instead of flowers, each is engraved with a person's name, date of birth and their death.

The word, "ermordet" - murdered - is almost always there. Or sometimes, "flucht in dem tod" - "killed whilst trying to escape". Or "greitod" - "Suicide".

These brass cobbles are "stolpersteine" - "stumbling blocks" - hand-made by a sculptor Gunter Demnig, who, for the past 14 years, has worked with his hammer, chisel and drill to set his commissioned blocks outside front doors throughout continental Europe.

They mark the last home addresses of thousands of the millions murdered by the Nazis.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8711939.stm

An excellent and moving piece.

[Beringia]

1. Good story

I believe those Jews who were murdered would like the brass squares with their names, to remember them.

[MisterP]

2. memorials with names show, literally and in front of viewers, just how many died in this war or that

I walked by the Vietnam Memorial and read it just as night was falling, with nobody around: 58K names are a lot of lives

one for the Vietnamese victims and NLF soldiers would be ~50 times bigger; one for WWII civilian victims would be a 16-mile wall or a Gaza-scale pyramid covered entirely in names, dwarfing the individual humans walking near or through it

a monument of names concretizes the dead and just how many there are, even if not everyone is included or symbolized by blank space

[emilyg]

3. Thank you.

:hug:

[Forkboy]

4. You're welcome.

:hug:

[Odin2005]

5. That is very cool!

[LeftishBrit]

6. Recommended.