On Friday, the Association for the Remembrance of the Shoah, the AMS, is laying four new stumbling stones or ‘Stolpersteine’ in the Brussels borough of Anderlecht. The stones come in memory of the Jewish families who were deported from there during the war. Usually this laying of the stones happens in the presence of schoolchildren, but two Anderlecht schools have refused to attend the commemoration. ‘It is the first time this has happened. The principals and teachers are afraid of the consequences’ says an AMS spokeswoman.
Stumbling stones are gold-coloured street stones bearing the names of Jewish victims of the Nazis, as well as their deportation date and place and date of their death. In Brussels, the first stones were laid in Anderlecht in 2009.
On Friday, four new stones will be added in the Anderlecht neighbourhood of Kuregem, a particularly diverse area. Three are being placed in Brogniezstraat, where the Tancman family lived until three family members were rounded up by the Nazis in 1942. They died later that year in the Auschwitz concentration camp. On the Georges Moreaustraat, a stumbling stone for Eva Fichtenholc is being laid. She too was deported in 1942 and died in Auschwitz that same year.
Every time stumbling stones are placed on the streets of Brussels, at places where Jewish victims lived, AMS invites neighbourhood schools to attend the commemoration.
From the municipal administration, the AMS’s Bella Swiatlowski received the names of two nearby schools, Carrefour primary school and the Institut Communal Marius Renard. ‘I approached both principals. The first one did listen to me, but I was told that she could not oblige her pupils to attend and that she did not want to bring ‘the war’ here. I did not understand what she was talking about, but asked no further questions,’ Bella Swiatlowski says.
From the headmistress of the second school, Bella Swiatlowski immediately got a ‘no’ as an answer, with a similar explanation. ‘The headmistress said she could not oblige her teachers to impart information about the Shoah. The parents would not agree to that,’ Bella Swiatlowski says. ‘I explained that I didn't want to come and say anything about the current Israel-Palestine conflict, but I did want to tell them about the Shoah, the deportation of Jews and the stumbling-stones.’
In the meantime, French-speaking education minister Valérie Glatigny (liberal/MR), herself a Brussels native, has been informed of the refusal. She has written to both principals. ‘In those letters, we remind both principals that it is essential to remind children of the Shoah and that this is part of the schools‘ missions,’ Ms Glatigny's spokeswoman says.