Leipzig – Dresden-Berlin

Walking in the streets of these German cities you can find small memorial for murdered people during the Nazi dictatorship in 1933-1945. You can find them in many cites and not only in Germany. I would like to show you what we found during our days in these three cities.

Gunter Demning is a German artist has created these small but strong brass square plates put on at cubit of granite. Since 1996 he has placed 60.000 engraved stones in 610 places in Germany and 1800 other places in Europe. Gunter heard from the Jewish Talmud saying that a person is only forgotten, if his name is forgotten. That gave him the idea to engrave each stone with the name, address and birth date and date of deportation and murder. Jews, Sintis or Romanies, homosexuals, mentally ill, mentally handicapped and Jehovah Witnesses were all regarded as sub-human and not worthy to live.  All critics of the Nazi system were of course  persecuted as well.

Leipzig

Two siblings died 22 and 19 years old. The street was close to our hotel

Gr. Fleischergasse 14 B, Leipzig, Gerhard and Frieda Deussing lived here. Murdered in 1944 and 1943 in Auschwitz and Ravensbruck

Dresden

The Frauen Church rebuilt from the rumbles in 2005

A memorial for the murdered Jews in Dresden

The bridge August bridge in central Dresden

A view from the river Elb towards Frauen church

Stumble stones for a large family. All family names and street names can be found in Wikipedia 

The family Schneck. The two youngest are girls murdered five and three years old in Auschwitz with their mother thirty five years old

Berlin

Renovated buildings from the former East Berlin

The concert and opera house in the former old East Berlin

Columns from the Old National Gallery at Museum’ Island Shrapnel damages from WWII

The French Cathedral built for the Huguenot fugitives 1705

When I was young in 1974 I once travelled from Warsaw to East Berlin. These columns with scars from the war reminds me so of that trip. I had some hours alone in East Berlin. It seemed deserted and I saw very few people on my way to the big Pergamon Museum. I didn’t see the Wall but I felt the being in a locked up city. Later I took the train home to Denmark my nation of freedom. I sensed the difference intensely.  The officials at the train from Warsaw to East Berlin were very rude when they were questioning the Polish people on their way to work maybe. It was a release to come home.

Small glimpses from the Berlin Wall and from both the former East and West Berlin

(1609-1669) Rembrandt’s Jesus at Gemälde Gallerei in the former West Berlin

The Berlin Philharmonic Concert Hall in the old West Germany

The small part of the Berlin wall

The stones shows where the Berlin Wall used to be

Rembrandt Self-Portrait from “Gemälde Gallerie”

Close to our hotel in the former West Berlin we found many Stumble Stones (Stolper Steine). We only saw one other person stop to look at some  of the stones.

A couple who were both doctors. We found the stones at the entrance of an apartment store

Two couples and two other people have lived in the same house murdered different places

Dr. Georg Lewinsohn

Found close to The Berliner Philharmonic and the Cultural Center in the former West Berlin

Locust lights from Berlin

“This Is Your Life”

I came across a lovely  Hollywood TV transmission from the early 1950s about the life of a Holocaust survivor from Czechoslovakia to show that somehow somebody survived. It touched me to see how young and beautiful this survivor was.