Memorial stones and stories: Stumble against Forgetting

The heavy rain cast can't stop Hartmut Schmidt. He parks his bike in front of the house Savigny road 76 in Frankfurt, puts himself in front of the open goal an

Memorial stones and stories: Stumble against Forgetting

The heavy rain cast can't stop Hartmut Schmidt. He parks his bike in front of the house Savigny road 76 in Frankfurt, puts himself in front of the open goal and looks to the ground. A construction worker, the renewed there in the driveway, looking up at him questioningly. "Is there a Problem?" No, Hartmut Schmidt only looks at the stumbling blocks that were left there for the family Landauer in the sidewalk. "Can you tell something about the story?" the construction worker asks. Schmidt nods, and the man stands beside him and listens.

Theresa White

editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

F. A. Z. Twitter

The 77-year-old Schmidt, the first Chairman of the Initiative Stolpersteine in Frankfurt. His club has already 1526 memorial stones in the town of embarrassed. They were embedded in the ground prior to the last voluntary place of residence of the people who had to flee from the Nazis who deported and murdered. Thus, as in the case of Landauer, to the left of 1942, your home is in Frankfurt and the Netherlands, the protection sought. During a RAID of 1943, they were arrested, two children could disappear. The Rest of the family has been to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp deported, the father, Karl Landauer died there.

In the West end, there are many stumbling blocks, because there are many people who were regarded as Jews by the Nazis lived up to the "Entjudung" in the thirties, the disenfranchised and persecuted. Schmidt knows them all, he is, since the Association was founded in 2007. Two weeks ago, the Initiative has, once again, 22 stones. In the station district, in Niederrad and again in the West end. In the mylius road Clara Dondorf got, for example, a memorial stone. She sang in the St. Cecilia Association, the laying of the stone, initiated, and nursed her father in her birth house until the power commander was forced to sell the house.

80 stones are currently ready

The woman managed to escape to Switzerland, where she died in 1970; she was so disappointed by the deprivation of rights that they never wanted to return to Frankfurt. Normally, many of the relatives or descendants of the victims come from, if a stone is laid. This time, however, it was due to arrive in the Corona-pandemic hardly anyone. "We have 80 stones are currently ready," says Schmidt. They are to be installed, if the contact and hygiene requirements allow it, to receive guests from all over the world.

Date Of Update: 10 July 2020, 12:19