Few other events in all of human history rival the degree and sheer scale of the callous disregard for the value of human life seen in the Holocaust. Of all the abhorrent undertakings of the Nazi regime during their twelve-year reign, the industrialized extermination of the European Jews was their token act of evil. Six million Jews were killed, amounting to two thirds of the total Jewish population in Europe. Nothing can be done to reverse the events of the past, but what we can do, and indeed must do, is hold a light to these events with the hope of learning from the past and preventing such events from transpiring in the future. Much of the world has seemingly embraced this responsibility and today there exist countless memorials, museums, and exhibitions commemorating the victims of the Holocaust. One such memorial is known as the “Stolperstein” or stumbling stone project. Originally initiated in 1992 by German artist Gunter Demnig, the project aims to immortalize individuals victimized in the Holocaust at their last know residence by adding small, brass-furnished cobblestones engraved with the names of the victims to the sidewalks outside their former residency. As of early 2017, roughly 56,000 stolpersteine have been laid in twenty-two different European countries making it the largest decentralized memorial in the world.
Ever since Demnig’s idea of the stolpersteine was first presented, there has been fierce debate over their installation. There are numerous cities, some even so large as Munich, that have banned the stones entirely. Many people share feelings of indignation over the idea that a monument for something so significant could so easily be overlooked and obliviously stepped on. However, the majority of European cities and their inhabitants have embraced the idea and enacted measures to ensure the stones are well maintained. I believe, the significance of the stones is not in what they are, but what they are not. At a glance, they provide us with names and nothing more, and in this absence of any other humanizing information we are left staring into a void. A void of life experiences left by the murder of six million innocent people. Some who had witnessed the passing of many decades, others, the passing of mere days, yet all still with something worth living for. To me, that knowledge in and of itself is something worth stumbling on.