I received word from my cousin Nanette Mahler from her home in Brussels, Belgium that she has succeeded in her attempts to place seven Stolpersteine (Stumbling Stone) in front of our mischpocha, our family members’ final chosen residences before they were rounded up by Nazi soldiers in German occupied Antwerp, Belgium and taken to their deaths at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland.
Stolpersteine consist of uniform brass plates 10 square centimeters embedded directly into the sidewalk or the cobblestone in the street.
My family who were memorialized at Antoon Van Dyck straat 46 are Jacques Mahler (born 1882, died Auschwitz 1943), Anna Mahler-Margulies (born 1891, died Auschwitz 1943), Ella Helena Buschel-Mahler
(born 1908, died Auschwitz 1943), Liliane Paulette Buschel (born 1930, died Auschwitz 1943), and Armand Buschel (born 1934, died Auschwitz 1943).
And memorialized at Kipdorpvest 46 are Reizel Ryfka Margulies-Gross (born 1867, died Auschwitz 1942) and Jette Mahler-Poser (born 1858, died Auschwitz 1942.
Thankfully my cousins Georg, Selma, Charles, and Nanette Mahler were spared having Stolpersteines due to the tireless and selfless compassion of their Belgian neighbors and some members of the Belgian resistance movement, which sheltered my family at three farmhouses during the war.
Stolpersteine are the idea and creation of Cologne artist Gunter Demnig in 1992 who was inspired by the Talmud when he stated that “A person is only forgotten when his or her name is forgotten.”
By 2019, over 70,000 Stolpersteine, covering 1,200 cities and towns in 24 countries across Europe and Russia and representing 20 languages have been installed memorializing the victims of the Holocaust, including Jews, Roma, Sinti, people with disabilities, political dissidents, Afro-Germans, homosexuals, and so-called “asocials.”
The city of Munich, rather than placing Stolpersteine, has chosen instead to commemorate individuals murdered in the Holocaust with biographic plaques and photos on upright stainless-steel columns.
Current-day residents and local students work together to research Holocaust victims from a particular street of region of a town. They also raise the 120 Euros it costs to make and install each stone. They also attempt to locate living relatives to ask their permission and to invite them to the installation ceremony.
My relatives sent to me the texts read at and pictures of those attending my family’s installation ceremonies.
Today, Stolpersteine comprise the world’s largest decentralized Holocaust monument.
Though there are many forms of making reparations for past wrongs and tragedies, and Stolpersteine is but one incomplete and insufficient form itself, it does provide a way of honoring individuals by remembering their names and who they were.
Let us first define and deconstruct the term “reparations,” rep·a·ra·tion (repəˈrāSH(ə)n). We can find the trajectory of the word’s development in late Middle English coming from Old French derived from late Latin reparatio(n-), or reparare, “to make ready again.”
The root of the term “reparation” is “repair,” which implies that the concept or thing to “make ready again” initially came in good condition, that it was formerly intact. The noun “reparations” denotes making amends for wrongs or wounds inflicted by paying monetary or other kinds of offerings to injured or otherwise wronged parties.
Possibly we can extend Stolpersteine as partial reparations to those wrongly injured and killed in the United States: to the enslaved Africans who were violently stolen by slavers from their native lands in Africa, chained, and packed tightly onto wooden ships for a tormenting and dangerous ocean voyage to the “Americas,” then dumped like inanimate cargo (for those who survived the passage) and sold into slavery.
All rights were stripped from them as were their native languages, cultures, and spiritual traditions. Slavers separated family members from one another, and for the remainder of their lives enslaved Africans were forced into manual labor in extremely harsh conditions. The patriarchal Christian white supremacist establishment in most regions forbad them any kind of appropriate and adequate healthcare, housing, formalized education, or the possibility of attaining their freedom.
We can also extend Stolpersteine to all the black people who were murdered after the dehumanizing institution of slavery officially ended but continued in other forms during Jim Crow era and later under de facto forms of oppression.
We can place Stolpersteine in front of the residences of the black, brown, and indigenous people as well as people from other races who have been beaten, stabbed, shot, and killed as innocent victims of violence – from other residents and officials from law enforcement.
We can extend Stolpersteine to the memories of LGBTQ people, to minoritized religious groups like Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Wicca, and non-believers, to people with disabilities, to young people and to elders, to immigrants, to women and others who are to this day the targets of surveillance, violence, and murder based on their social identities.
Whether we are willing to admit it or not, the United States has not been a welcoming place for people who are in any way different from a mythical norm. Some groups, such as African Americans, deserve fuller and more complete forms of reparations.
Possibly by installing Stolpersteine or another form of remembrance of individuals, we can begin to heal from the senseless tragedies of patriarchal Christian white supremacy on which the United States was founded.
Stolpersteine further inscribe those we have lost to violence in the eternal book of life.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: Author (Stolperstein for family residents of Antoon Van Dyck straat 46; picture of Liliane Paulette Buschel & Armand Buschel wearing yellow Star of David in Antwerp ghetto.)