Deacon’s Corner

Last month, Denise and I were blessed to travel to Europe for a river cruise from Budapest, Hungary to Amsterdam, Netherlands. While we were expecting to see some beautiful cathedrals, quaint Bavarian towns, old castles dotting the riverbanks of the Rhine, and the windmills stacked along the canals in Holland, we were not expecting to get lessons on WWII history and the Holocaust. One of the towns we stopped at was Regensburg, Germany. We scheduled a walking tour of the town. Our guide was Sylvia, a Jewish lady from Regensburg. She provided the usual tour showing us the various sites of her town and explained their historical significance. After the tour was over, she asked the group if anyone would like to stay a little longer so she could tell us about a research project she was helping with regarding the Holocaust.  Of course, we stayed.

Sylvia took us to the entrance of a brick building and pointed to a small brass plaque embedded in the cobblestone sidewalk in front of the building. She explained that a German artist, Gunter Demnig, wanted to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust to make sure their names were never forgotten.  Thus contrasting the Nazi’s tactic of dehumanizing their victims by assigning them a number and tattooing it on their forearms. His vision was to research the names, addresses and eventual fate of every victim, and then place a Stolperstein (or “Stumbling Stone”) at the entrance of the homes of the victims.

The first of these Stumbling Stones was laid in Berlin in 1996. There are now more than 70,000 such memorial blocks laid in more than 1,200 cities and towns across Europe and Russia. Each commemorates a victim outside their last-known freely chosen residence or place of employment. The inscription on each stone begins “Here lived”, followed by the victim’s name, date of birth, and fate: internment, suicide, exile, or, in the vast majority of cases, deportation and murder. Together, the Stolpersteine now constitute the largest decentralized monument in the world.

Sylvia is just one of many researchers assisting with this amazing project. Since there were more than six million victims of the Holocaust, they still have a lot of work to do. Her presentation was truly a highlight of our trip and Denise and I made a point to look out for these tiny memorials in every place that we visited and then offer a prayer for each victim.

Deacon Mike