09.15.24: Stumbling stones

I usually select a photo to feature each week based on composition or color or a number of other criteria that make a photograph stand out.

This photo is a significant departure from those selection standards. It was selected because of its historic significance and the tragic story that one German artist has made his personal mission to memorialize.

These brass plaques surrounded by cobblestones are Stolpersteine, or stumbling stones, I found in a sidewalk along Rosenthaler Strasse in Berlin, Germany, during a walking tour. Our guide pointed them out and provided a brief explanation of their meaning.

I was intrigued and a bit embarrassed because I had never heard of the Stolpersteine project. But I wasn’t alone. No one else in our group of mostly American visitors to Germany knew of Stolpersteine. So I went online, did some research and was awed by the scope and significance of the project by German artist Gunter Demnig.

Stolpersteine are brass-covered stones, less than four-inches square, commemorating victims — mostly Jewish — of Nazi extermination or persecution. The Stolpersteine project was initiated in 1992 by Demnig. More than 75,000 stones have been placed throughout Europe, most often installed in front of the last home which the victim had chosen freely but sometimes are in front of their place of work. 

Each stone is engraved with the victim’s name, date of birth, date they were taken by the Nazis and date and place of death, most often a concentration camp. Almost every stone starts with “heir wohnte” (here lived) to trigger a memory of the people who once lived there. They are called Stolpersteine, or stumbling stones, because of the tendency for people to stumble across them.

Demnig, the artist, quotes the Talmud saying that “a person is only forgotten when his or her name is forgotten.” It’s his mission to ensure none of the victims are forgotten.

I did some additional online research on the Schneebaum family commemorated at this spot on Berlin’s Rosenthaler Strasse and was linked to a “Stolpersteine in Berlin” website. I found information on the site (which I translated from German) that humanizes the family:

“Hermann Schneebaum was born on June 21, 1906 in Berlin. His wife Jenny, née Brandorowitsch, who came from Rostock, gave birth to their daughter Thea in 1931; ten years later their son Victor was born. Only one Hermann Schneebaum is recorded in the Berlin address books from 1935 to 1939: He was a bookbinder, lived at Usedomer Str. 35 in Wedding in 1935, and in the following years at Elsässer Str. 20 in Mitte (today: Torstrasse). The family probably lived as a subtenant afterwards; her last address is Rosenthaler Str. 40-41. On Jan. 29, 1943, the Schneebaum couple and their two children were deported to Auschwitz. The whole family was murdered there. At that time, Thea was not even 12 years old and their son Victor was less than two years old.”