Neo-Nazis Behind Attack on ‘Stumbling Blocks’ Site
Out of ?Step?: German artist Gunter Demnig works on his ?Stumbling Blocks? Holocaust memorial. Vandals damaged the installation on the anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogrom. Image by getty images
Neo-Nazis are behind the destruction of 11 “stumbling block” Holocaust memorials, say police in the German city of Greifswald.
The vandalism in the eastern Germany city was discovered Nov. 9, the 74th anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogrom against Jews.
According to the Die Welt newspaper, the brass plaques, which bear the names of murdered Jews and are placed outside their former homes as memorials, were pried loose.
Knut Abramowski, president of the Police Headquarters of Neubrandenburg, reportedly has offered a reward of more than $3,000 for information leading to the arrest of those responsible for the vandalism, which he called a “malicious act.”
A state police investigation is under way, according to Spiegel Online.
Police suspect there may be a connection between the crime and a gathering of some 100 neo-Nazis in the neighboring city of Wolgast, Spiegel reported. Wolgast Mayor Artur Koenig of the Christian Democratic Party said that “people who still refuse to believe that our Jewish citizens were exterminated in the Nazi era will not gain the upper hand.”
German artist Gunter Demnig originated the idea for theStolpersteine, or “stumbling blocks,” project in the mid-1990s after hearing an elderly woman deny that there had been any Holocaust victims in her town.
Since 2003, more than 30,000 such brass memorials have been installed across Germany and in other European countries. In 2005, Demnig won an Obermayer German Jewish History Award, which honors non-Jewish Germans who contributed toward recording or preserving the Jewish history of their communities.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
