Let Social Media Inspire You #2
Here lived…..
November 9, 1938 was called Krystall Nacht, yesterday 77 years ago, where Jews were brutally murdered, their shops and synagogues plundered and burnt down as a reaction to a young Polish Jew who revenged his parents’ bad treatment, as expelled from Germany, without a hope to survive. Seventeen year old Herschel Grynszpan killed a German diplomat in Paris. That gave the Nazi party an excuse for starting the riots in Germany against anything Jewish.
The Krystall Nacht was the first huge Pogrom in Germany. The Nazi party tried to hide that they were the architects of the horrors, but thankfully everything hidden comes up to the open. They used Herschel Grynszpan’s crime as a spark to ignite the terror against the German Jews.
The artist Gunther Demnig born 1949 in Berlin has spent already many years creating stumbling stones at the last chosen address of victims for Nazism in Germany and German occupied countries. He includes the mentally ill, the gypsies and other groups together with the Jews in his “Stolper Steine”.
Stolpersteine_Osnabrück,_Kollegienwall,_2008
Unfortunately the celebration of the horrible event has lately been used by other groups so that Krystall Nacht memorials in Sweden is without the participating of Jews. They are simply not invited.
Categories: Historical issues, Writing101
From one Heart to Another 
I went to a stolperstein ‘laying’ two weeks back. A wonderful way to remember… The artist himself does the paving.
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I am so glad you saw him doing this wonderful work. My husband are always searching for the stones when we are at places where they can be
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By the way @mogromo please tell me if I got something wrong in this story. You know a lot more I am sure than I do
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I can only add that there are a lot of volunteers working alongside the artist, who do the research necessary to find out the story behind the addresses
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Thank you and I linked to his home page. But reading about the Krystall Nacht gave me the impression that a lot of things are still not known
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It took some time, but the first stones are being set in Luxembourg. 🙂
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Thank you for telling me that. We don’t have them in Denmark yet. Some of our Jews drowned on their way to Sweden, some were caught and sent to Theresienstadt, some died there or on the transport. But most of our Jewish population survived
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Luxembourg is about to shed a new light on the part that Luxembourg’s public service played in the deportation of the Jews after the German invasion in 1940. When the Jewish refugees started to flow into the country in the 30s, Luxembourg authorities drafted lists in order to relocate them all over the country. What was meant as a bureaucratic solution to a humanitarian issue revealed itself as the prelude to the deportation. When the Germans asked for list of Jews in Luxembourg, Luxembourg authorities just handed over their lists. No questions asked. Sad.
Until now the official narrative was that Luxembourg was invaded and that Luxembourg people were either passive, trying to survive the war and the German occupation, or active in the Résistance. The fact that Luxembourg authorities cooperated with the occupying power has not been known until very recently. Which explains, why we only now start to investigate what happened to the Jews since the 30s. But not every mayor wants to commemorate the deportation of former citizens and is inclined to pose “Stolpersteine” in his jurisdiction. More work to do…
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Our government completely bowed down to the Germans before and during the war. Only due to the young freedoms fighters during and mostly late in the ear we were somehow recognised by the western allies. Those politicians were never put to trial after the war, only the ordinary people who helped the Nazis and some of those were executed
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THOSE WHO FORGET THE PAST ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT. THANK GOD FOR PEOPLE LIKE YOU AND GUNTHER DEMNIG.
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Thank you for that encouraging remark. In many ways truth and lies have been switched around
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