When we started planning a Viking cruise that would originate in Amsterdam, my sister, Ellen, and I knew that we wanted to visit the famous Anne Frank House. It was a way to express our kavod (honor) to Holocaust victims and survivors, including my dear friend Eric Cahn, who died in 2022. Eric was a child survivor of the Holocaust, and his mother, Johanna, was murdered at Auschwitz. We co-wrote his memoir, Maybe Tomorrow, A Hidden Child of the Holocaust, in 1995.
The visit would also would allow me to pay tribute to the talented Judy Winnick, whose powerful one-woman show about Miep Gies (the woman who hid the Frank family) has moved me to tears.
When the evening of our visit arrived, we took an Uber and waited in a quiet, somber line to enter. First we attended an overview by a docent, who read excerpts from Anne’s diary. The memorabilia in the annex and museum made the family’s experiences chillingly real. What remained included the hinged bookcase that served as the entrance to the hidden rooms; Anne’s original diary with the red-checked cover and her handwritten notes; and pencil marks on the bedroom wall recording the heights of Anne and her sister, Margot, as they grew.
As expected, it was an emotional experience to see firsthand where the famous diary was written. Unexpected were the emotions evoked the next day and throughout our trip when I read the names of lesser-known Holocaust victims.
On a walking tour of Amsterdam the morning after our visit to the Frank House, we learned how tens of thousands of victims of the Holocaust are being honored. As we ambled down the cobblestone streets, our guide pointed out brass plates embedded in the sidewalks. We stopped to read them. Each plaque honors one person and begins with “Here lived,” followed by the Holocaust victim’s name, date of birth and fate, including final destination.
I was surprised that I had never before heard of the “stolpersteines,” or stumbling stones, that we first saw that morning in Amsterdam and then throughout the Netherlands and Belgium. The brass plaques set in concrete are placed outside the last known home of the person being honored and pay tribute not only to the Jewish victims of the Nazi reign but also the Roma, homosexuals, dissidents and the disabled. We stopped at each one we saw, silently honoring the memory of each individual who perished.
I since have learned that there are now more than 100,000 such memorial blocks in over 1,200 cities across Europe and Russia. Together, these blocks are said to be the largest decentralized monument in the world. The project was conceived by artist Gunter Demnig in Cologne in 1992, and the first stone was installed in Berlin in 1996. Demnig, now 77 years old, continues to personally oversee the installation of most of the stones.
The project is not without controversy. Some care more about property values than honor, as our guide in the Dutch town of Maastricht reported. She noted that some homeowners resist the installation of the stones because it might discourage potential buyers and devalue their homes. And in Munich, the stolpersteines were banned by the city council in 2004, a decision that was upheld in 2015 despite a petition signed by 100,000 people. The rationale was that the stones are disrespectful because they get dirty and are walked on. Instead Munich is installing plaques on columns or on the sides of buildings.
Michale Friedrichs-Friedlander, the craftsman who currently hand carves each plaque, thinks the criticism is undeserved. In an article in The Guardian (Feb. 18, 2019), he is quoted as saying, “I can’t think of a better form of remembrance. If you want to read the stone, you must bow before the victim.”
Demnig cites the Talmud as his inspiration, saying, “A person is only forgotten when his or her name is forgotten.” According to his website, he doesn’t recall how he came up with the name “stolpersteine,” and now he often quotes a schoolchild who said, “You don’t trip on a stolpersteine, you stumble with your head and your heart.”
Many years ago, after spending the better part of a day in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., I bought a small, speckled, polished rock engraved with “remember.” Every time I see it on my bureau, I think about Johanna Cahn and the millions of others who were murdered by the Nazis. Now I also have the photo of the stolpersteines as a reminder that expressing kavod includes acknowledging that each victim had a name, a story and a home.
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