How one German artist's remembrance stones turn Berlin sidewalks into Holocaust memorials

BERLIN (AP) — Artist Gunter Demnig carefully placed a palm-sized Holocaust memorial brass plaque into the sidewalk on a busy street corner of Berlin. It said: “Johanna Berger, born in 1893, lived here; deported on Nov. 17, 1941, murdered on Nov. 25, 1941.”

After Demnig had swiped the sand off Berger's memorial stone and those for her husband and two sons, a dozen relatives drew closer around the four plaques, which are called Stolpersteine, or “stumbling blocks,” in German. They put down white roses and recited the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, while traffic roared by on a rainy spring day.

Demnig installed the first plaque in the German capital three decades ago. By now, one can find more than 11,000 of his memorial stones all over the city. But Demnig's decentralized Holocaust memorial goes much further than that — the artist and his teams of supporters have laid 126,000 stones in Germany and 31 other countries across Europe.

In a unique way, the shiny brass squares that are embedded in the pavement, make passersby stop and interrupt their daily lives for a moment as they bend down to read the names of those who perished. Small children can often be seen as they examine the Stolpersteine closely and demand answers from their parents.

“My basic idea behind this was that wherever in Europe the German Wehrmacht, the SS, the Gestapo, and their local collaborators committed murders or carried out deportations, symbolic stones should be placed there," the 78-year-old German artist said in an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The closest thing to a gravestone

Jewish family members oftentimes will travel from all over the world to attend the stonelaying ceremonies, because many of the victims were gassed in the Nazis' concentration camps and these memorial stones are the closest thing to a grave or a burial.

“The Stolpersteine are some kind of substitute for the missing gravestones,” Michael Tischler said after Wednesday's ceremony. The 72-year-old Berliner is a grandnephew of Berger who perished in the Holocaust like several other members of Tischler's family.

“I think this brings the family history to a certain conclusion, or at least a provisional one," Tischler said.

The memorial stones don't only bring solace to the families of the victims, but they have also created some kind of grassroots movement that brings together neighborhood initiatives, schools or religious communities to research the history of their city.

Researching Berlin's Nazi past

Together, old and young browse through archives and check timeworn resident lists to find out if any Jews or others who were persecuted during the Third Reich — such as communists, gays or Roma — used to live in the streets or even homes where they live today.

Once they can confirm a victim's former place of residence, they arrange for a stonelaying ceremony and make sure the brass plaque is polished periodically, so it won't lose its shine.

On Wednesday, several 10th graders from the Friedrich-Bergius-Schule attended another Berlin stonelaying ceremony on Stierstraße, where many Jews used to live. Demnig's three new stones for the Krein family — Michael, his wife Maria and their daughter Dalila — brought the number of Stolpersteine to 62 on this street.

While Maria and Dalila managed to escape to the U.S. and British-controlled Palestinian territory, respectively, Michael, a musician, died in Berlin in 1940 as a forced laborer under the Nazis.

High school student Sibilla Ehrlich, 16, watched as a group of violinists played solemn melodies and some elderly neighbors talked about the lives of the three Jews under Nazi dictatorship.

“It is just so horrible, all this the hatred of others," she said. “I keep thinking: what if this had been my family."

Before the Holocaust, Berlin had the biggest Jewish community in Germany. In 1933, the year the Nazis came to power, around 160,500 Jews lived in Berlin. By the end of World War II in 1945, their numbers had diminished to about 7,000 through emigration and extermination.

All in all, around 6 million European Jews and others were killed in the Holocaust.

As Germany commemorates the Allied liberation from the Nazis 81 years ago on May 8, many people in Germany fear that the lessons of the Holocaust may be forgotten as the far right is quickly gaining influence in Germany again.

Tischler, too, worries about his country's future in times of rising antisemitism, but he says the memorial stones offer a glimpse of hope.

“I hope that these Stolpersteine will still give some people pause for thought,” he said.