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<\/a><\/p>\nA Stolperstein commemorating Nazi victim Paul Gr\u00f6ger is embedded in the sidewalk in front of City Hall. (Robert Michael\/picture alliance via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
At issue is a motion \u2013 passed Sept. 25 by the city council of Heidenau in the former East Germany \u2013 to stop installation of such memorials in local sidewalks, calling them disrespectful, and to use the town\u2019s North Cemetery instead.<\/p>\n
Set into the ground, the small, engraved brass \u201cStolpersteine,\u201d or stumbling stones, are meant to make pedestrians stop and think about the fate of former residents. There are currently some 116,000 such stones laid in 1,860 municipalities across Europe, mostly in Germany, according to the project\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
A curious aspect of the Stolpersteine is that they are opposed by both Germany\u2019s right wing, which view them as detracting from national pride, and by a vocal minority of Jews who feel they don\u2019t do enough to uplift the memory of victims.<\/p>\n
The effort to block the memorial stones in Heidenau was sponsored jointly by the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. The town\u2019s current mayor, Conny Oertel, is independent. <\/p>\n
The city council\u2019s decision comes as the AfD gains support in German elections nationwide. The party\u2019s support for banning the project in Heidenau has sparked concern about potential moves to suppress official public commemoration of the Holocaust. <\/p>\n
The AfD is known for challenging Germany\u2019s culture of Holocaust remembrance in general. Bjoern Hoecke, who leads the party in the neighboring state of Thuringia, once even called Berlin\u2019s Holocaust memorial a \u201cmonument of shame\u201d that detracted from German pride. In protest, an artist collective built a replica of the memorial outside his home.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, some Jews, albeit a minority, object to the memorials because they say it\u2019s disrespectful to place them where they can be walked on and covered with leaves or trash. The stones have also been targets of vandelism, they note.<\/p>\n
But the Heidenau motion is not for the sake of victims; rather it\u2019s a \u201ctransparent maneuver by the extremists of the AfD\u201d to suppress Germany\u2019s remembrance culture, said Charlotte Knobloch, who has successfully opposed the placement of Stolpersteine in her home city of Munich, in the state of Bavaria.<\/p>\n
\u201cRemoving places of remembrance from the cityscape, as has now happened in Heidenau, is absolutely the wrong approach,\u201d said Knobloch, a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor, who heads the Jewish community of Munich and Upper Bavaria.<\/p>\n
In a statement issued to the press Friday, Knobloch added that she was \u201cappalled\u201d that the CDU \u201cwould lend itself to supporting\u201d the move. \u201cThe democratic center should and must find its way back to itself here and find a better solution.\u201d<\/p>\n
The joint opposition to the project by the AfD, the mainstream CDU and a local activist group creates a dilemma for Stolpersteine opponents like Knobloch who also abhor the AfD.<\/p>\n
Heidenau, in the state of Saxony, is not the first town to act against the project. The city of Munich in Bavaria voted as early as 2004 not to allow the installation of the stones in public spaces, siding with Knobloch. In the city of Pulheim, in North Rhine-Westphalia, the project was blocked in 2011, but eventually the municipality reversed course and allowed the first installations to take place in 2022.<\/p>\n