Stendahl on Germany’s Stumbling Stones
by: Dave Belden on November 11th, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Renate Stendhal has written a fascinating and moving article in Scene4 magazine this month about the Stumbling Stones — cobblestone memorials — that Germans have individually payed to have installed outside the homes from which people were taken by the Nazis. On a trip to Hamburg, looking for the house where she once lived, she found one of these stones. It read:
Here lived Olga Misch, born Heller. Year of birth 1880. Deported in 1942. Theresienstadt. Murdered on 7/8/ 1942.
Stendhal opens by referring to Kim Chernin’s new book, from which we have published a long excerpt in the current Tikkun.
“Everywhere a Guest, Nowhere At Home: A New Vision of Israel and Palestine,” is the title of a new book about the very human capacity not to see what is in front of one’s eyes. The author, Kim Chernin, patiently, relentlessly, pursues the process of fighting her own blindness. What is it in us, she asks, that sticks to denial, rearranges the painful image, fiercely holds on to amnesia when the knowledge is already there? In her book the invisible knowledge comes into view like the snaps of a camera. She arrives at the unthinkable thought: could it be that the same paradoxical not-seeing, not-knowing has taken hold in Israel that we remember only too well from Germany, where every good citizen swore not to have known what was happening right in front of their eyes?
Sometimes, seeing happens by chance. You stumble right into it. A book falls open in your hands, you overhear a conversation, you find yourself outside your comfort zone and suddenly freeze: for one moment your eyes are open.
It happened to me last month on a trip to Germany, the home country where I never feel “at home”.
Read the whole piece here.
What a beatuiful and thoughtful article! Thanks for sharing it, Dave.
The whole article was beautiful and heartfelt with sadness over the tragedy and its continuing pain for both sides, Germans and the victims of the holocaust. marcia
Superb piece. These cobblestones do not trip us. They lift us up! Alvin
This article is really good and touching and I share Renate’s views on the difficulty of reconciliation efforts in Germany. When Ombuds Woman in a little town Huerth near Cologne, I joined the local historian to try to convince the City Council to get those cobble stones on the streets of that city. After all there had been a Synagogue to be remembered and a plate was placed at the house built later on that spot. But the cobble stones were refused with the argument that dogs could shit on it. I started laughing so loudly and couldn’t stop, maybe it was hysterical as the argument was. I had to leave the council meeting. Well, the discussion after that really started in the press because the laughter was insulting…. well, anyway, those cobble stones never were placed in front of those houses which had had different people in there before they have been deported.
However, I have the feeling about being in Germany too, that Renate describes. But having visited the USA just lately, I do not feel really safe after having been through all those security checks and the treatment….. and I was only a visitor/tourist not an immigrant and I certainly not illegal….