Brussels’ City Museum has put five “stolpersteine” on display in tribute to the memory of those killed in World War II. The stones carry the name of a resistance fighter or other victim of the Nazis and are usually placed on pavements.
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Brussels museum exhibits ‘stumbling stones’ to commemorate victims of Nazis
Sally Tipper
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Stolpersteine – stumbling stones – are 10cm high and 10cm wide. A copper plate is embedded in the stone, showing the name, date of birth, deportation date, and place and date of death of the commemorated person.
Invented by a Berlin artist, Gunter Demnig, they are placed among paving stones at locations where victims of World War II lived. They figuratively make passers-by stumble: they see the memorial and stop to reflect on what happened there. They have been placed in other cities and towns around Belgium and in many other countries.
Now, five of the 180 stones in Brussels will be displayed in the city museum instead of the pavement.
The city recently bought a stone from the Association for Remembering the Shoah, a non-profit organisation that keeps the memory of the Holocaust alive. The association decided to donate a further two stones, as did artist Demnig himself.
One of the stones refers to Herschel Grynszpan, the 17-year-old who shot Nazi Ernst vom Rath dead in Paris on 7 November 1938. That evening, German Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels broadcast a hate message on the radio in response. It was the start of the large-scale attack on the Jewish population that would go down in the history books as Kristallnacht.
The stones of Eugène and Léonie Toussaint-Bellon are also on display at the museum. They were two resistance fighters from Brussels. Alongside them are the stones of Berek and Pesa Swiatlowski, two Brussels Jews who were deported from the Dossin barracks to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942.