Monday, Dec 01, 2003
Remembering the faceless
By Kirsten Grieshaber
Gunter Demnig's memorials in the German cities are meant to recall the individual fates of the anonymous victims of the Holocaust.
KNEELING ON the sidewalk in front of a red brick building in a working-class neighbourhood of Hamburg, Gunter Demnig was hammering three brass plaques into the ground, each the size of a child's hand. ``Leopold Schwarzschild, year of birth 1924, deported in 1941 to Riga, ???,'' one plaque read, the question marks indicating the unknown circumstances of the young man's end.
All three plaques were inscribed with the names and key dates of the Schwarzschild family members who once lived in this building and were later deported and apparently killed by the Nazis. In the last three years, Mr. Demnig, a 56-year-old sculptor from Cologne, has installed more than 3,200 plaques in more than 20 cities in Germany. He calls the memorials stolpersteine - ``stumbling blocks''- and his intention is to recall the individual fates of the anonymous victims of the Holocaust.
``It goes beyond our comprehension to understand the killing of six million Jews,'' Mr. Demnig said. ``But if you read the name of one person, calculate his age, look at his old home and wonder behind which window he used to live, then the horror has a face to it.'' The artist pointed out that his memorial also honoured other victims of the Nazis, like Gypsies, homosexuals and resistance fighters.
Mr. Demnig has been expressing his political and ethical beliefs through his art for more than three decades. He studied design and sculpture at the art academies of Berlin and Kassel in the 1970s and 1980s and has long been involved in the art scene of Cologne. The idea for the stolpersteine emerged when he was commemorating the deportation of 1,000 Gypsies from Cologne by painting a white line through the city, showing where decades earlier they had been chased through the streets to the train station.
``An old lady stopped by and scolded my work, insisting there had never been any Gypsies in Cologne,'' Mr. Demnig said. Shocked by her denial, he investigated the city's history, finding plenty of proof that in the 1930s, thousands of Gypsies and Jews had lived next door to Germans there. Mr. Demnig then designed the first 200 plaques, but only in 2000, after lengthy legal quarrels with the city council, was he given permission to fit them into the sidewalks of Cologne.
Even though Mr. Demnig had planned the stumbling blocks as a one-time art installation, the memorial soon turned into the biggest project of his career. Schools and individuals from all over Germany have been contacting him. They researched local archives to find out about Holocaust victims who once lived on their streets and in their homes and raised money for the installation of the plaques. Costing 95 euros each (about $113), plaques can be ``adopted'' from Mr. Demnig by individuals or groups. He said the money he receives for the stolpersteine was his only source of income.
The number of stumbling blocks in Germany is growing - there are 1,300 plaques in Cologne, 655 in Hamburg and about 400 in Berlin. To meet the demand, Mr. Demnig needed support from volunteers in different cities. In Hamburg, Peter Hess, an art collector, coordinates most of the historical research. Mr. Hess relies mainly on the deportation lists of the Gestapo.
``It is sad,'' he said, ``but of course the Gestapo kept a perfect record of where the people they had decided to kill were living.''
``There can never be a real compensation for what has happened - adopting a plaque is only a symbol of reconciliation,'' Mr. Hess said, adding that he hoped that one day the stolpersteine would become the biggest ``decentralised'' memorial in Europe. So far, two plaques have been installed in Austria and next year several more are to follow in Paris.
Interest has also been expressed by Amsterdam; Antwerp, Belgium; and Thessaloniki, Greece.
Not everyone is so receptive to the project, however. A few plaques in Berlin and Cologne have been vandalised, and people have repeatedly tried to prevent installations in front of their homes. But as long as the city council has given permission, the opponents cannot stop Mr. Demnig's work, since legally sidewalks are considered public space.
For Shlomo Schwarzschild, the three plaques for his family are much more than just a memorial. They symbolise the graves they never had. Schwarzschild came from Haifa, Israel, to witness the creation of the memorial for his brother, Leopold, and his parents. Schwarzschild, who was born in Hamburg in 1925, pointed to the apartment on the left side of the entrance door and said: ``This is where I used to live as a child. I can still remember my mom peeking out of this window, calling me in for dinner.''
Schwarzschild was 14 when he escaped from Hamburg en route to Palestine. He left behind his parents and Leopold, who chose to stay in Germany, where the Schwarzschild family had lived for many generations. Schwarzschild, now 78, does not know when or how his family died. - New York Times News Service
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