The Penn Stater Magazine

‘Stumbling Stones’

July 18, 2010 at 12:36 pm Tina Hay 1 comment

Yesterday as we were waiting to leave Würzburg and head off to the final phase of our trip, Sophie asked me if I had seen the “Stumbling Stones” in Würzburg. I had no idea what she was talking about, so we glanced at our watches—our bus was scheduled to leave in eight minutes—and made a quick dash down the block so she could show me.

Stumbling Stones, or Stolpersteine, are the work of an artist named Gunter Demnig, who was looking for a way to memorialize the victims of the Holocaust one by one. So, all throughout Europe, you see these four-inch squares in the sidewalk, typically in front of the last house where the person lived before he or she was deported and taken off to a concentration camp. Many of them say “Hier wohnte”—that is, “here lived”—and include whatever details are available about the person.

You can click on the photo above to see it larger. In the stone for Julius Susser in this photo, for example, you don’t need to know much German to figure out what “Deportiert 1942 / Auschwitz / Ermordet Okt 1944” means.

You can read more about Stolpersteine here.

Tina Hay, editor

NEXT: Penn State is Pretty Much Everywhere

Entry filed under: Alumni Association. Tags: Gunter Demnig, Holocaust, Stolpelsteine, Stumbling stones.