STUMBLING STONES OF HARSH HISTORY

Last night I learned about Stumbling Stones, or Stolpersteine.

They are memorial bricks laid for Holocaust victims at the last place they voluntarily lived before being deported for execution.

Our friends told the story of the journey to their family’s former home in Germany, once known as East Prussia.

They found the Stolpersteines outside the house of their grandparents last address.

It’s a stomach churning story told by millions, or not told; one that hits hard when you hear it from across the table.

From Reddit:

 

Basically, if you can provide evidence that a jewish family lived there that was sent to a concentration camp, they will put the stones in the ground. It shows which camp they were sent to and when.

It was a pushback against all the deniers who were trying to indicate that the Holocaust never happened.

They literally show the individual people who were removed from that location all over Germany. 

 

As a British person, the atrocities always felt so far away and so far back in history. Then I came to Germany and it’s strange to see that it happened HERE.

Not just in the camps, but in every town, a family was taken away.

Some whole streets or neighbourhoods were taken away.

 

For Future Historians

When family members die, we mourn.

Baby boomers have been to more funerals and memorials than they ever expected with grandparents, parents, aunts, and uncles.

And friends and children.

Some of us sentimental types pull out the pictures we remember them by.

From WWII Germany it’s got to be hard with Uncle Nazi and Grandpa Nazi.

Probably worse when dad says, “He wasn’t a soldier, he was a policeman.”

And you find out what that meant.

 

Major Wilhelm Trapp, a 53-year-old career police officer who had come up through the ranks, headed the (police) battalion.

With choking voice and tears in his eyes, he visibly fought to control himself as he informed his men that they had received orders to perform a very unpleasant task. These orders were not to his liking either, but they came from above.

Trapp then explained to the men that the Jews in Jozefow would have to be rounded up, whereupon the young males were to be selected out for labor and the others shot.

. . . the service of these men in Poland did not transform them into bloodthirsty killers for the rest of their lives; once they had returned to civilian life in Hamburg, none exhibited any violent tendencies or inability to fit back into society.

Missing is the opinion of these men’s family, friends, and neighbors both during and after the war.

Was Hamburg proud of their service?

 

From hamburg.com:

 

Before WWII, Hamburg had one of the largest Jewish communities in Germany and a significant Roma population. 

Under the Nazi regime, many members of these communities, as well as homosexuals, disabled people and political dissidents, were prosecuted, deported and murdered.

Jewish life in Hamburg was erased almost entirely.

Today, the many commemorative cobblestones called Stolpersteine are reminders throughout the city of the many victims of Nazi oppression.

 

A Reminder Of How Things Work Out

After enough time had passed, a man named Elie Wiesel emerged as a Holocaust witness.

From pbs.com:

 

For decades, author, educator and humanitarian Elie Wiesel spoke against global injustice with his writing and activism during his venerable career.

Known for his groundbreaking memoir “Night,” which was based on his personal experiences as a Holocaust prisoner in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, Wiesel would go on to pen 57 books and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.

 

Others have come forward, like my friends across the table last night.

From chapman.edu:

 

Holocaust education at Chapman University has grown from a single course into a distinctive multi-faceted program.

The Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education is one of only a very few centers in the United States located in and supported by a private university.

 

Look again at the picture of two people in fading light. To you it’s two strangers.

To their families they are everything. Could be a daughter, a wife, a mother.

How would they fare if a van stopped and masked men gang-tackled them to the ground and took them away.

How would you fare now that struggling has produced gun shot deaths?

With your people getting jumped and beat up, detained and shipped, where would you start looking for them?

When would you stop?

Some people never stop.

 

PS: from reddit:

Philly DA vows to prosecute “wannabe Nazi” ICE agents who violate the law: “If we have to hunt you down, the way they hunted down Nazis for decades, we will find your identities. We will find you. We will achieve justice.”

 

PSS:

. . . this isn’t just a guy blustering: he’s announcing a coalition of local DAs around the country Ied by the DA of Minneapolis to start going after these MFers. Starting tomorrow.

 

He’d been a helper with a hand

for people on their way

Telling them they’ve been good men,

who’d done well in their day

Now he’s with them, hand in hand,

in the gutter where he bleeds

No one there to help him

in his time of need

Tell his mother and father

their boy did no wrong

And if he leaves here now

learn to sing his song

Sing in the mountains, sing in the valley,

sing it high, sing it low

Sing on the highway, sing it on your street,

remember his song when you go

You may be leaving before you plan,

he knew he’d be back when he left home

He’ll be gone forever

unless you keep singing his song

He’s a helper with a hand

for folks fading away,

who seek peace on their way down

Tell him why he had to die

on the streets of his own town