[HN Gopher] Stolperstein
___________________________________________________________________
Stolperstein
Author : dschuessler
Score : 429 points
Date : 2022-06-18 14:45 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| [deleted]
| Freak_NL wrote:
| I'll preface this by stating that this is probably not a popular
| opinion.
|
| Notwithstanding the ideals behind the Stolpersteine, they are not
| exclusively a positive influence. The problem lies in one of the
| defining characteristics of this project: the stones are placed
| in front of the houses where the Jewish victims who got deported
| and executed lived.
|
| This means that if you happen to live in a house tenanted by
| these unfortuna victims in the past (or even in a new house built
| where their house was), you can end up with a whole bunch of
| names permanently staring at you whenever you leave the house.
| Some, perhaps most, people can ignore that, but for some this
| constant reminder of pointless death and hardship is quite a
| burden and can significantly affect their quality of life --
| should they feel guilty for living? If you speak up about this,
| you are branded a clueless NIMBY resident or even an anti-Semite
| (there have been a few of such cases in the Netherlands).
|
| Normally, memorials and remembrances are limited in their
| influence on people's daily life. Memorials are not just placed
| haphazardly, but with proper consideration of the needs and wants
| of those who life in the area, as well as the victims and their
| descendants. A respectful, serene corner of a public park for
| example. Events where the victims of past conflicts are
| remembered are limited in time: you can participate or ignore it,
| and then move on with your life. Stolpersteine however, just get
| put there in the pavement whether you like it or not.
|
| Should people be confronted with the horrors of past conflicts?
| Absolutely -- during education and in locations where this is to
| be expected and one can open up to consider the actions and
| consequences of the past -- but not everywhere, not constantly,
| and not exclusively (there are, after all, quite a few horrific
| things in our recent past, certainly not limited to the fate of
| deported Jews in the Second World War). Unavoidable, the dead
| commemorated by Stolpersteine stake out quite a claim on the land
| of the living. I do find that Stolpersteine presume too much upon
| the public space to the point of becoming tasteless and an
| affront.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| > I do find that Stolpersteine presume too much upon the public
| space to the point of becoming tasteless and an affront.
|
| Oh please, they are 10x10 cm (or even smaller), how can they
| take up "too much public space"?
|
| In my street in Berlin there are Stolpersteine almost in front
| of every house. They are a memorial just as much as they have
| become integral part of the "environment". In my daily life I
| don't pay much attention anymore, but sometimes they still make
| me stop and think, and I guess this was exactly the intent.
| bgandrew wrote:
| wow. It's just a 10 cm by 10 cm plate, how can it bother
| anybody? I guess modern generation just can't stand monuments.
| pmcollins wrote:
| poor you. such a hardship. perhaps your historic plight should
| be memorialized.
| robert_foss wrote:
| I'm not sure why being reminded of the horrors of the past
| would make you feel guilty.
| hans1729 wrote:
| "Why does confrontation with horror make you feel uneasy?"
|
| ...
| tokai wrote:
| guilty != uneasy
|
| Don't argue like that. It is very disingenuous.
| synu wrote:
| As a meta comment, this sort of verbal judo to put words
| in peoples mouths is really becoming common. Whenever I
| see a comment start with something like "It sounds like
| you are saying" I know I'm in for a wild ride.
| kome wrote:
| ok, but so what? sometimes memory has to be painful, it
| means it feels real, alive. public spaces are naturally a
| container of public memory, traumas, joy etc.
|
| it makes me feel connected with the history of the place, i
| don't see it as an "affront". And affront to whom??
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Survivors guilt can be severely debilitating for some people.
|
| I can also see folks who are severely depressed, bipolar, or
| other conditions that involve irrationally strong responses
| to negative stimulus would be impacted by a constant reminder
| of horror.
|
| I think I agree with the author here - I don't know I would
| appreciate my home being marked as the site of an atrocity.
| Our homes are for the living and the future. It's good to be
| aware, and I'm not diminishing the tragedy or the need to
| keep the memory of it alive to prevent it happening again and
| to remember the victims. But it feels an awful lot like
| turning your community into a cemetery, instead of having a
| cemetery for your community.
| nlitened wrote:
| Read enough twitter threads, and you find people for whom
| eating morning cereal can be severely debilitating.
|
| In my opinion, people are able to learn to deal with
| uncomfortable things in their lives.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| There have been a few cases in the media; though not
| necessarily focused on feelings of guilt. One couple in
| Amsterdam1 lost their child and suffered a strong emotional
| response whenever people outside would gawk at their house
| with a solemn look after encountering the Stolperstein placed
| in the pavement there (they were branded neo-Nazis on social
| media for daring to speak out).
|
| 1: https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/echtpaar-
| staakt...
| amelius wrote:
| You are living in a home that would otherwise perhaps still
| be occupied by the people (or their families) that were taken
| away.
| wongarsu wrote:
| The average German moves house 6 times in their life.
| Unless it's a rural village it's very unlikely they would
| still live there. And now, 77 years after the war, most of
| them would have died of old age.
|
| Of course guilt doesn't have to be rational.
| dislikedtom wrote:
| this guilt aspect is quite weird for me. Surely we younglings
| that have NOTHING to do with this, won't have to feel guilty.
| kome wrote:
| I was living in Budapest in a house marked with one of the
| plaques, and I never had a similar thought. What's the mental
| process that makes you uneasy with them?
|
| Very interesting, but puzzling comment. It reality makes me
| understand how reality can be perceived in wildly different
| ways. Thank you for it.
| synu wrote:
| I assume what you're feeling is true but it's a pretty unusual
| read on the memorial and I'm sure you're right it is not a
| popular way to look at it. I suspect that's why some people
| jump to assuming there's some kind of secret agenda - actual
| anti-Semites use those sorts of arguments as well because they
| know they can't say what they really think, and they are surely
| more common than people who feel guilty about living when
| forced to see memorials.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| I have three stones in front of my house. I clean them once a
| year. They do not bother me.
|
| Personally, I don't quite "get" why other Germans seem to
| personally suffer under the weight of the county's history. I
| was born in the 1980s, it is obvious that I am not "guilty",
| but I have no problem feeling responsible to keep the memory
| alive.
|
| In fact, any reasonable observer will notice that admitting
| guilt, in the hardest possible terms, has been exceptionally
| good strategy for the country. Except for the British, and
| some, but few, Israeli jews, people tend to be impressed with
| the postwar behavior of the country. Any remnants of fear
| proved useful to "force" Germany into the Euro and get it of
| military engagements, although the latter has somewhat stopped.
|
| So whenever I see Turkey, or Hungary, or, to some degree,
| Austria, trying to deny their respective genocides and/or
| participation in the Holocaust, it just feels exceptionally
| stupid! Everybody knows of the Turkish genocide against the
| Armenians. Denying it is silly and just keeps it alive. Build
| monuments honoring those you have harmed and the world will
| love you for it.
|
| (if, that is, you also stop harming more people! wtf is wrong
| with you? It's not like land is worth anything, these days, or
| you-know-who would obviously not need _more_ of it).
| currycurry16 wrote:
| I live in one of these houses and don't mind. Most of the time,
| you don't even think about it. In the few moments you do, it's
| just a reminder of what can go wrong.
| jeroen wrote:
| It's not uncommon to have memorials in places where they are
| very much present in every day life, e.g.:
|
| https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_verwoeste_stad A statue
| remembering the bombing of Rotterdam, in a busy place in the
| centre of Rotterdam.
|
| https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagage_(Leiden) A monument in
| multiple pieces remembering deportation. Most of them are
| placed in residential areas, in full view of the people who
| live there.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Those are a lot more abstract though, placed in much more
| considerate locations (I have lived in Leiden myself), and
| not nearly as numerous. You can tell that a lot of thought
| went into the planning and realization of these.
|
| Having an actual name on it makes it a lot more personal
| (which is the intent after all), and having hundreds of them
| all over historic areas of any given town makes it a barrage
| rather than a subtle reminder.
| OJFord wrote:
| Typically not sad things (they celebrate someone who
| achieved something(s) great) but in the UK one might live
| somewhere decorated by (literally on the exterior wall) a
| 'blue plaque'.
|
| I realise that's not quite the same, but a similar reminder
| of someone you don't necessarily want to be reminded of
| (albeit for probably completely different reasons) who
| 'lived here'.
| igorkraw wrote:
| I gew up close to Nuremberg and like to take a walk to visit
| the dead whenever I'm there, as well as check out various Nazi
| grounds which ...are just part of our history. My family is
| also of polish origin (I was born and raised in Germany) and
| I've spent time in Cracow and Munich,so I make points of
| visiting the memorials whenever I visit friends there.
|
| My perspective is: this isn't only for the dead, it's also for
| the living. This can happen again if we do not make a culture
| of remembering, and of _not_ shying away from the uneasiness.
| It _should_ make us feel uneasy that our neighbours, our
| family, ourselves might have participated in the holocaust, or
| fallen victim to them - that everyone involved was normal
| people. Having some parts of the land of the living dedicated
| to this _when not even a century has passed_ is a small price
| to pay.
|
| And as far as prices to pay go, Stolpersteine are literally the
| least possible intrusion. There would be a similar stone in the
| same place, the Stolperstein is simply made of a different
| material and burns the reminder into the city so that holocaust
| deniers and their ilk have a harder time. And like the name
| implies, the _point_ is to not have a sanitized, dead, tucked
| away safely memorial "respectfully" shoved into some corner of
| a park - where it can be safely ignored.
|
| "Never again" is not an empty slogan, or something that will
| happen automatically (as we can see with genocides and ethnic
| cleansings around the world continuing since then) it's
| something that we all have to work towards. The Stolpersteine
| are part of the Erinnerungskultur and in my opinion, some of
| the best parts.
| fs111 wrote:
| I live in such a house. All houses in my street have them. Some
| have one or two, others have 10+. When we moved here I attended
| a ceremony across the street when they were putting new ones.
| During special events throughout the year people are cleaning
| them, put candles and flowers to remember. It think it is an
| excellent way to remember and understand our past.
| ad_hominem wrote:
| > If you speak up about this, you are branded a clueless NIMBY
| resident or even an anti-Semite (there have been a few of such
| cases in the Netherlands).
|
| Working as intended then. The stones are victors' propaganda
| meant to terminate any critical thinking related to the
| mythology of WWII necessary to reshape the occident into what
| we have today.
|
| Nevermind the very real threat of international Jewish
| communism in the maelstrom of Weimar Germany. Do not question
| the destruction of national sovereignty post-Nuremberg to form
| "international law" (i.e. world gov't). And don't even think of
| criticizing anything at all to do with the ethnonationalist
| Jewish state of Israel and the endless aid and support the west
| gives them. These are borderline illegal thoughts in Europe.
| igorkraw wrote:
| Working as intended indeed,as they draw out anti-semitic
| comments even if you just discuss them, allowing us to debunk
| it https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-
| behavior/c... and be appropriately distrustful afterwards
|
| (for context once flagged, the comment I responded to was
| spreading a variant of the Elders of Zion "jews try to
| control us via world government" conspiracy myth)
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for using HN primarily
| (exclusively, in the last year) for ideological battle. You
| can't do that here, and race and religious flamewars are
| particularly unwelcome.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| southerntofu wrote:
| Here's my two cent counter-argument. Captialism is the biggest
| ruthless killing machine, whatever form it takes: nazism
| (Hitler was put to power by German industry/bourgeoisie),
| fascism (Mussolini advocated for State/Capital unification
| under "corporatism"), State capitalism (USSR was not _very_
| different from a people 's perspective, with salaried work and
| gulags and political police), or ordinary liberalism (French
| republic orchestrated the colonization and slavery of many
| folks, even long after slavery was formally abolished, under
| the form of wage slavery).
|
| Yet there's little memory of those massacres and injustices,
| except for casualties of war who get the whole triumphant
| nationalist ceremonies to spit on them. Maybe a plaque for the
| dead workers who built a mountain road/rail, or for the victims
| of the Commune of Paris/Lyon/wherever. It's very discreet, when
| it exists at all, when it doesn't fall into the narrative of
| the State.
|
| I don't know about younger folks, but when i was in school we
| got told so little about the history and reasons for these
| people to have died, when talking about it at all (good luck
| finding a history teacher spending more than 1 hour on the
| Paris Commune or the Algerian independence War). And we got
| told exactly zero about the _living popular history_ of our own
| neighborhood and how people defied those injustices.
|
| Whenever i find a plaque, memorial, carving or whatever
| remembering the past (and its mistakes) i try to take some time
| to investigate it, and i often learn something interesting. So
| much happened right around us, yet we are told/taught so
| little, and in the cities urban renovation driven by
| gentrifiers makes sure this history stays hidden and that only
| advertisement and store fronts remain.
|
| Is that really the environment we want: an efficient,
| emotionless and pastless business machine? I personally don't
| want that. I wouldn't go so far as to call you a NIMBY
| resident, but i certainly encourage you to think or read about
| popular history, gentrification, and what it means when the
| latter tries to erase the former.
|
| As a side note, i don't know about the netherlands, but here in
| France it's common for neonazis to deface the memorials
| honoring the (jewish or not, but the jewish in particular)
| victims of nazism. I agree with you it's bothersome in some
| sense that jewish victims are honored _more_ than other
| categories of nazism victims (tsigans, cripples, homosexuals,
| etc), but if the alternative is to make the neonazis who 'd
| like to rewrite history happy, i'm very happy with the current
| state of things.
| refurb wrote:
| Wait, you're lumping the USSR into "crimes of capitalism".
| alexklarjr wrote:
| Well, they are really similar, at some angle. As in
| capitalism, you promised freedoms, wealth and appreciation
| for you work hard enough. As in capitalism, all your work
| in going to entitled few, wars and keeping you enslaved.
| Also both are fiction and never existed.
| freemint wrote:
| Please clarify what you mean by capitalism. I have a hard
| time following that part of your statement.
| guerda wrote:
| There's also a OpenStreetMap based map on top of that:
| https://stolpersteinmap.de/
|
| And the German public TV station created an app with additional
| information on Stolpersteine:
| https://stolpersteine.wdr.de/web/en/
| M4tze wrote:
| Impressive to see how many Stolpersteine are out there. I never
| saw/recognized one on my own even though I walk around a lot in
| areas with a high density of them.
| sdoering wrote:
| I didn't know of them until after I had moved to Hamburg,
| where there are quite a few. My SO showed them to me and told
| me the background.
|
| I was flabbergasted. Being very interested in history, having
| studied history at university and never before having heard
| of them was quite frankly disconcerting for me back then.
|
| Since I nearly always stumble (as intended) as it is a visual
| pattern I now instantly recognize.
| matsemann wrote:
| I think it's almost like Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon. When I
| randomly recognized the first one, I suddenly realized there
| were many more I would pass everyday but had never noticed.
| Tepix wrote:
| The map is missing some even though they are listed on
| Wikipedia...
| MandieD wrote:
| Having spent most of my adult life in Germany, I've seen hundreds
| of them, and I try to take a moment to think of the people they
| name.
|
| And then reflect that Germans don't have some special intrinsic
| evil that made them capable of doing this 80 years ago - every
| country is some hard times and a demagogue away from it.
| atoav wrote:
| Many central european cities are full of these Stolpersteine and
| it is sometimes quite interesting where people lived that have
| been taken away -- and what took their place decades later.
|
| Typically people who live there, children from nearby schools or
| community projects look to keep them clean and polished, although
| depending on how remote that area is you might also "stolper"
| over some that haven't got the treatment for a while.
|
| I think there is a real benefit to these small, decentralized
| "micromonuments", as they remind you of actual history in the
| many places where it happened. The genocidal horror of the nazis
| did not happen in some megalomaniac central spot after all, it
| was in every neighbourhood.
| jd115 wrote:
| voz_ wrote:
| Russian atrocities in Ukraine are horrific, but they are
| certainly not even close to the cold extermination machine and
| bureaucracy employed by nazis against Jews, Poles, Homosexuals,
| etc.
| trhway wrote:
| >close to the cold extermination machine and bureaucracy
| employed by nazis against Jews, Poles, Homosexuals, etc.
|
| I don't understand where do you see any difference. Russia
| methodically conducts genocide and ethnic cleansing of
| Ukrainians that Putin announced in his original war speech.
| Russia has unleashed total terror on Ukrainians on occupied
| territories - anybody showing any Ukrainian ethnical or
| political allegiance or having even just former association
| with Ukrainian armed forces or government is
| arrested/kidnapped (and some of them are already known to
| have been tortured, killed while for many nothing is known)
| by the Russian SS force "Russian Guard". And for bureaucracy
| - the "Russian Guard" has been disappearing a lot of those
| people according to the already prepared lists. And that
| given that 12 million of Ukrainians have already been forced
| to run away by the bombings and the threat of occupation to
| Europe and West Ukraine (including many LGBT people who
| didn't risk to get the Russian, in particular Chechen - as
| there is large Chechen mercenary force fighting on the
| Russian side - treatment).
|
| And i don't see any difference here from the German Nazi
| actions on the occupied USSR territories back then. And
| Russia doesn't do such things in Ukraine today for the first
| time - just look up for example USSR in Poland in 1939.
| jd115 wrote:
| waffleiron wrote:
| > Will be very hard to walk in russia.
|
| That's not how these work, they are places at the home where
| the victim lived. Second, you are starting a flame war and
| being very off-topic.
| jd115 wrote:
| They work how we want them to work. And nothing could be more
| on-topic than this right now. What the fuck is the point of
| remembering and saying "never again" if not to stop what is
| happening right now in front of our eyes?
|
| Second, there can be no flame wars about this. Everyone
| agrees on the above.
| trhway wrote:
| For many victims we'd not even know - for example about 50000
| civilians have been killed by Russian forces in Mariupol and
| many bodies are inside the ruined buildings which Russia is
| just demolishing right now without taking the bodies out.
|
| A lot of people on occupied territories - government/municipal
| officials, former military, journalists, activists, etc. - have
| already been kidnapped by the Russian SS force ("Russian
| Guard") and nobody knows and may never know the fate of the
| many of them.
|
| About million of people have been moved into Russia - they are
| moved through "filtration camps" where those who deemed
| "nationalist" (anti-Russian posts in FB/Twitter for example or
| having family members who have fought on Ukrainian side) are
| filtered out and again fate unknown. The fate of the rest is
| officially some resettlement in Russia though there is no way
| to account for all of them.
|
| Also a note about the Putin regime actions to erase the memory
| of the millions of victims of another mass killing - during
| recent years Russia de-facto outlawed (assigned impossible to
| exist with status of "foreign agent" which led to the
| organization closing) to the "Memorial" organization the main
| work of which was maintaining the public memory of the victims
| of the Stalin repressions.
| gpjanik wrote:
| It's weird that the article explicitly mentiones various groups
| that were killed/deported to German concentration camps across
| Europe and commemorated by the stones, but does not mention the
| second largest one - Poles. German historical policy tends to not
| include Poles as victims the 1939-1945 Germany, but in spite of
| that, there are multiple stones commemorating them in today's
| Berlin.
| kybernetyk wrote:
| Germany has a very interesting views on poles. While Germans
| living in Poland are officially recognized as a minority with
| all the rights (German schools, street names) the German
| government to this day refuses to recognize poles living in
| Germany as a minority.
| gpjanik wrote:
| Poles living in Germany are usually working migrants, not a
| minority that has lived there since centuries (like Germans
| in Poland). It's hard to compare those situations.
| keiferski wrote:
| No, you are not correct. Poles have been in Germany for
| centuries.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poles_in_Germany
| waffleiron wrote:
| From the wikipage:
|
| >The position of the German government is that after the
| German territorial losses after World War II, the current
| Polish minority has no century-old roots in the remaining
| German territory, because Germany lost all the
| territories where people of German and Polish ethnicity
| overlapped. Since they are therefore only recent
| immigrants, they do not fulfill the requirements of a
| national minority according to the Framework Convention
| for the Protection of National Minorities and the Treaty
| of Good Neighbourship. Being German citizens, they still
| retain all civil and political rights every German
| citizen possesses, and therefore can voice their will in
| the political system.[10]
| keiferski wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruhrpolen
| gpjanik wrote:
| I think the original point is that Poles or Germans of
| Polish descent who survived the war have been forcefully
| Germanized - as in, refused the right to organize Polish
| schools etc. not in the modern days, but in the post war
| era (45-89).
|
| There is a big group of these people (e.g. in Ruhr area)
| but it's really hard for me to tell (and I'm a Polish
| migrant living in Germany myself) if that was the case,
| or it was the idea that Poles/Germans of Polish descent
| after the war were afraid of ethnical Germans and as a
| result, repressed the manifest of national
| identity/ethnicity. It definitely was (and still is) the
| case for Jewish survivors of the 1939-1945 regime, but
| the anti-Jewish and anti-Polish sentiments didn't end
| from day to day and it's extremely hard to narrow down
| what was the cause of it.
| gpjanik wrote:
| The people who have been living there pre-WW2 were
| deported or killed. The Poles, other than very very few,
| who live there now are not descendants of the "original"
| Polish minority in Germany.
| keiferski wrote:
| Incorrect.
|
| > It is estimated that in modern times, some 150,000
| inhabitants of the Ruhr Area (out of roughly five
| million) are of Polish descent.
| legulere wrote:
| Those lost their polish identity though.
| sealeck wrote:
| The German government in general doesn't collect data on the
| composition of ethnic groups in Germany.
| brodo wrote:
| That is because large parts of what is now Poland used to be
| Germany and not the other way around. Germany did not accept
| losing the 'German east' until reunification. It took Helmut
| Kohl threatening to resign for the CDU accepting Poland in
| its current borders.
| perlgeek wrote:
| It's the wiki, just add them to the article! Yes, these biases
| exist, help work against them by editing those pages that can
| easily be edited.
|
| Edit: I just tried, that article is locked. Could add it to the
| Talk page.
| [deleted]
| wrthfl wrote:
| I looked into the german version, expecting it to mention it
| more, but Poland is just mentioned once in a side sentence. It
| kinda saddens me.
| Semaphor wrote:
| That's because the German version doesn't list groups at all.
| It just talks about "victims of the NS regime" in the
| general.
| tokai wrote:
| Apparently putting down the stones in Poland is met with
| resistance. If poles want to commemorate killed poles with
| these stones they will have to take the initiative.
| durnygbur wrote:
| It's their way of commemorating their victims and somehow in
| the process the second largest group slipped through. I don't
| want their way of commemorating their victims in my home
| Poland.
| Nitramp wrote:
| I think the only way we can move forward in Europe is to
| commemorate this past together, accept responsibility, and
| build a future where that cannot happen again. I think that
| has worked quite well so far (war between the European
| countries is unimaginable).
|
| Think about where we would be if we hadn't gone down this
| path. We can all help move things forward if we meet each
| other with an open mind, and steer clear of the resentment
| and national chauvinism of the past.
| kybernetyk wrote:
| zaat wrote:
| The German government had reiterate the German
| responsibility continuously, in words, diplomatic action
| and payments for the surviving victims. The Polish
| government however has decided lately on line of denying
| their share in the war crimes, effort that includes anti-
| historic legislation.
| Vespasian wrote:
| That wasn't what I was (and still is) taught in school in
| Germany.
|
| The blame was always squarely put on Germany. It was
| always stressed that most of the German population had
| more than an inkling of what was going on and many
| agreed.
|
| The first time I heard the term "polish extermination
| camps" was a few years ago when the Polish Government
| outlawed it.
|
| So I'm really at a loss here.
| jebronie wrote:
| Nobody in germany generally calls them "polish death
| camps" and nobody thinks poles are in any way to blame.
| Even if you called them polish deaths camps, people would
| assume you mean the Nazi concentration camps on occupied
| polish land.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| For such claims you really need to provide solid sources.
| I have never encountered this sort of "blame shifting"
| (schooled in East Germany in the 80's, but I also never
| heard that from the "other side").
|
| The only sort of blame shifting related to Poland that I
| encountered in East German propaganda was that the Katyn
| massacre was blamed on Nazi Germany, not on the Soviet
| Union.
|
| Of course there are extremely far right organizations in
| Germany which to this day try to deflect the blame, but
| they are a minority and don't influence the public
| discourse (unless you live in their bubble of fake news
| and propaganda of course).
|
| But in general I don't see why nationality matters much
| in this case. When talking about persecuted Jews,
| communists, homosexuals (or any other group persecuted by
| the nazis) _of course_ this also includes Polish Jews,
| communists and homosexuals.
| brodo wrote:
| Where did you get that idea? I'd say if you'd claim
| something like that in public in Germany, you can kiss
| your career goodbye.
| Lichtverschwend wrote:
| Which German government do you mean ? There were 2 at
| that time.
| fs111 wrote:
| This is absolute nonsense. We are all very much aware
| that it was us, the Germans, who did this.
| Vespasian wrote:
| As the GP said there are several stones commemorating
| polish victims in Berlin and other places.
|
| In this case the stones mark the places where the victims
| lived.
|
| I assume most Polish victims did not live in the territory
| of present day Germany.
|
| From personal experience I recall some with "eastern" names
| in a town that used to have a notable polish minority but I
| couldn't say for sure.
|
| Btw Can you recommend places to visit to learn more about
| their stories and history (besides the former sites of the
| concentration camps)?
| gpjanik wrote:
| The Poles I'm refering to were killed in Germany and the
| stones commemorating them exist. My comment is saying that
| the article is not mentioning them.
|
| There are stones like this in Poland commemorating Jews, e.g.
| former German city of Breslau, nowadays Wroclaw. I believe
| the resistance came from the fact that Poles were not
| organizers of those killings/deportations and it was expected
| to be misunderstood by people unfamiliar with history (e.g.
| stone commemorating murdered Jews in a city that was formerly
| German but nowadays Polish, or Jews murdered in Poland by
| Germans).
|
| Important to mention: there were killings (not supported by
| the state) of Jews and systemic antisemitism (clearly
| supported by the state) in Poland conducted and organized by
| Polish people before and during the war (this was, though,
| not supported by the state at that time), but incomparable in
| scale.
| waffleiron wrote:
| > My comment is saying that the article is not mentioning
| them.
|
| If you care about this, the "article" is wikipedia, and in
| the time you wrote this posts you could have added it
| already.
|
| edit: I was quick to comment, the article is protected. So
| unless you already have an active Wikipedia account, you'd
| have to request an edit on the talk page.
| gpjanik wrote:
| You're generally right, I can take on it and I will - but
| before I do it, I wanted to point out that as a consensus
| of work of many people, it ended up in mentioning petty
| criminals, but not tens of thousands of people who were
| expelled, prosecuted, killed, etc. because of their
| nationality.
|
| It's hard to tell if this is some anti-Polish
| resentiments of one or many of the authors, or just
| extremely low level of historical knowledge, but
| something tells me it's the first.
| kybernetyk wrote:
| In Germany there has been a lot of resistance too. Including
| court cases etc.
| sdoering wrote:
| But against the stones in general, not specifically against
| stones for Poles. I followed the discussion and also in
| other cities Stolpersteine for Poles have been initiated,
| albeit slowly.
| gpjanik wrote:
| Considering it's 2022, it clearly shows that the
| sentiment has been against it.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| Polish Jews were targeted as Jews, but non-Jewish Poles were
| not targeted in the same way (i.e., the Germans were brutal
| occupiers, but Catholic Poles were not targeted for
| extermination).
|
| However, there is a modern historical myth in Poland about
| extermination camps targeting non-Jewish Poles. For many years,
| there was a Wikipedia article about a fictional extermination
| camp for Poles. That theory is now discussed in a subsection of
| this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_concentratio
| n_camp#Disc....
|
| The idea behind these theories is to draw an equivalence
| between what the Germans did to Catholics and Jews in occupied
| Poland, something that is popular among modern Polish
| nationalists.
| patrec wrote:
| > Polish Jews were targeted as Jews, but non-Jewish Poles
| were not targeted in the same way (i.e., the Germans were
| brutal occupiers, but Catholic Poles were not targeted for
| extermination).
|
| What are you talking about? The Nazis absolutely intended to
| exterminate Catholic Poles (and other Slavs). Murdering Jews
| was higher priority, but had the Nazis won there wouldn't be
| too many Slavs around in Eastern Europe today.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost
|
| And despite losing the war the Germans together with their
| erstwhile allies, the Soviets, still managed to exterminate a
| huge fraction of the Polish elite in a targeted fashion.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tannenberg
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| > What are you talking about?
|
| The fact that the Nazis attempted to exterminate the Jews
| in Poland, and almost succeeded. They killed 90% of the
| Jewish population.
|
| There were horrific plans for most of the Slavic population
| of Eastern Europe for after the war (Generalplan Ost, which
| you've linked to), but they were never put into operation.
| Catholic Poles were not subject to anything near the level
| of persecution as Jewish Poles.
|
| > together with their erstwhile allies, the Soviets
|
| The Germans and Soviets weren't "erstwhile allies." The
| Soviets were defined as enemy #1 by the Nazis. The Soviets
| were aware of this, and tried to organize an anti-German
| military alliance with France and to save Czechoslovakia.
| France refused, and Poland, which itself wanted to get a
| piece of Czechoslovakia, refused to allow Soviet troops to
| transit its territory into Czechoslovakia. After Britain
| and France sold out Czechoslovakia, the Soviets decided to
| make a dirty deal with the Germans, in order to delay the
| German attack for as long as possible. Not a shining
| moment, but calling the Soviets "erstwhile allies" of the
| Germans is a gross distortion of history, particularly
| given that it's the Soviets who made the largest
| contribution to the defeat of the Nazis.
| gpjanik wrote:
| It's true that there's a nationalist movement exploiting that
| notion, and especially after the war, there's been a lot of
| mangling with numbers of victims (plenty of the so-called
| Polish historians, especially the ones tied to the Soviet-
| installed government, tried to elevate the number).
|
| On the part that non-Jewish Poles were not targetted - while
| I think we agree the fictious concentration camp is part of
| what I mentioned above, hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish
| Poles from both modern day Poland and modern day Germany have
| been victims of organized killings (take note, I don't
| necessarily mean concentration camps and holocaust as
| commonly understood). I can agree that catholic Poles were
| not targeted in the same way - there were numerous
| differences - nevertheless, the goal of Germany was to
| eradicate Poland as a country and Poles as a nation through
| either killings (which materialized in war casualties and
| through mass extermination), or germanization.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| The Germans did terrible things in Poland and had even more
| terrifying plans for Poland after the war, but there was no
| Holocaust against non-Jewish Poles. The way that Jewish and
| non-Jewish Poles were treated was worlds apart. About 90%
| of Polish Jews were killed (a majority of all Polish deaths
| during the war, despite making up only 15% of the pre-war
| population).
|
| Edit: The people trying to draw an equivalence between what
| happened to Jewish and non-Jewish Poles are largely aligned
| with right-wing, strongly Catholic Polish nationalists, and
| are not in and way fond of the Soviet era. This is mostly a
| post-Soviet phenomenon.
| gpjanik wrote:
| I think we directionally agree; about the post-Soviet
| phenomenon - I know for fact that this phenomenon started
| immediately after the war and was part of consolidating
| power by the Soviets. The communist Poland was, in a
| weird way, quite nationalistic. But you are right that
| this phenomenon has its reneissance, or even reinforced
| version now as we're speaking.
|
| I don't fully understand what specifically do you mean by
| saying that there was no holocaust to non-Jewish Poles,
| but thousands of them died in concentration camps all
| around territories occupied by Germans and often shared
| identical fate to those who were of Jewish origin.
|
| If I understood you correctly, you use term "holocaust"
| to describe mass extermination of Jews and Jews only, and
| as long as you acknowledge there's been other mass
| killings during the war, I'm completely fine with that.
|
| e: it's not how I was taught history at school - e.g.
| teachers would include non-Jewish Poles, Russians,
| Hungarians, Romas, Sinti, and other nationalities that
| were sent to death camps too - I think by holocaust they
| basically meant death camps (regardless on who was killed
| in there) rather than the bigger scheme of killing all
| the Jews.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| > I don't fully understand what specifically do you mean
| by saying that there was no holocaust to non-Jewish Poles
|
| There was no systematic extermination of Catholic Poles.
| To be a Jew in occupied Europe was to be hunted. 90% of
| Jews in Poland were killed. You basically had to have a
| miracle to survive. There's very little in modern history
| like this.
| jsrjenkins wrote:
| The whole notion of equivalency of evil is actually
| pernicious, as it is more of a contest of victimhood: "they
| did worse to us, so we are better". Arguing about numbers
| abstracts from the reality that even one person being killed
| for such an inhuman regime is already too many.
|
| I think it would be sufficient to condemn the evil that was
| committed rather than make a certain group better because
| "They suffered more". So many suffered from that evil regime
| that we don't need a contest to see who is better. The
| Catholic clergy were in fact terribly persecuted in German
| and Poland by the Nazi regime, hundreds of priests being
| killed in Dachau alone. This doesn't take away the horrors
| that others suffered nor allow us to somehow abstract from
| them just because "our tribe suffered more".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_concentration_camp
| rob74 wrote:
| I wouldn't say that "historical policy" doesn't include Poles,
| but yes, the popular view of the Holocaust is dominated by the
| organized extermination of the Jews (and some other groups) in
| the concentration camps. Non-Jewish Poles were also Nazi
| victims, but according to
| https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/polish-
| vic..., they were mostly murdered during the invasion of Poland
| or immediately after, so it's much more difficult to estimate
| the total number of victims. Also, according to
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_victims, Soviet
| civilians and POWs are the second and third largest groups (not
| that it matters much, especially since Poland is a much smaller
| country).
| Someone wrote:
| As far as I can tell, it doesn't mention nationalities at all.
| For example, it doesn't mention Germans, either.
|
| If so, why would it have to mention Poles?
| gpjanik wrote:
| It does mention Jews, Sinti and Romas. It doesn't mention
| Germans because it was Germans who were the perpetrators and
| were not targetted based on their ethnicity. Meanwhile being
| Polish (it's an ethnic group, not a nationality - nationality
| was obviously German in this context) was, same as for the
| aforementioned ethnicities, a condition that could get
| someone killed.
| 9dev wrote:
| Well, but Germans were most definitely targeted: The
| disabled, for example, the homosexuals, the homeless, the
| mentally sick, the vocal critics... This is not to say
| Germans were not the perpetrators, but that they weren't
| targeted is factually wrong.
|
| Edit: I'm sorry, I just read your comment again, and
| realised I misunderstood. I still feel those marginalised
| groups get overlooked often; the Nazis didn't specifically
| select for Germans, but for ,,pure" aryans, which excluded
| lots of different groups.
| edanm wrote:
| I don't know if this was added because of this comment, but the
| list does include poles:
|
| > The majority of Stolpersteine commemorate Jewish victims of
| the Holocaust. Others have been placed for Sinti and Romani
| people (then also called "gypsies"), Poles, homosexuals, [...]
|
| Edit: It looks like the word Poles _was_ added today, so I
| assume it 's because of this comment (otherwise that's a pretty
| wild coincidence.)
| timvisee wrote:
| Great to see recognition for this on HN! My mother set up a group
| buy here in the neighborhood to place four of these
| Stolpersteine, and arranged everything needed to make it happen.
| riccardomc wrote:
| They are everywhere in Amsterdam. Here's a map on the non-profit
| website that takes care of them: https://stichting-
| stolpersteine.nl/where-are-stolpersteine/?...
| MikeDelta wrote:
| I remember looking at a group of four a while ago and noticed the
| next day that someone had polished the copper and put flowers
| around it. Very touching.
| sprash wrote:
| [deleted]
| mikewarot wrote:
| There are so many places here in the USA we could do something
| similar to this, but it would be politicized to death in
| microseconds.
| southerntofu wrote:
| So there was a borderline-neonazi comment i wanted to reply to,
| but it got flagged in the meantime. It argued that there was an
| international jewish-communist conspiracy in pre-WWII Germany,
| and that WWII served to establish the UN as a means to demolish
| national sovereignty, and that Israel is an ethnonationalist
| State. In case this person is still around reading, or someone
| else believes such things, here was my answer i couldn't post
| under the now-deleted comment:
|
| Wow, i was not expecting to find a neonazi comment here on HN. To
| be clear, i agree with your criticism of Israel as
| ethnonationalist and despite immense propaganda efforts it's
| becoming harder and harder for Israel proponents to pretend
| otherwise. (And for the record, _a lot_ of Israelis also make
| that point and struggle every day against their whole racist
| /colonial machine)
|
| However, the threat of "jewish communism" (judeo-bolshevism as
| they called it back then) is a spectre invented by nazis and
| fueled by more ancient conspiracy theories such as the protocol
| of the elders of zion (spread by Russian political police in
| early 20th century). Just like today, at least here in France,
| the neo-nazis and other fascists and warning of the threat of
| "islamo-leftism", and inventing debilitating theories about
| "reverse racism" and "reverse colonization" and "white genocide".
|
| As for "world government" and the destruction of national
| sovereignty, two things:
|
| 1. International agreements such as the UN have on the contrary
| formalized the concept of national sovereignty and non-
| intervention
|
| 2. Of course those principles are never respected and the big
| empires will do whatever is in their interests: this was already
| the case long before the UN with the League of Nations, and even
| long before that, such as when the Berlin conference (19th
| century) formally divided Africa into territories to be ruled by
| the colonial empires. The reason there are straight borders on
| African maps is because some european aristocrats who knew
| nothing about these territories sat around a table with a ruler
| and traced lines.
|
| To be clear, your thoughts are not illegal, but they are very
| wrong. I encourage you to get a better understanding of history
| from different sources, and maybe realize that Israel is not much
| more than any other colonial empire of today. In fact, many of
| their repression/counter-insurgency techniques are straight out
| of French doctrine established during the Algerian war of
| independence. So why are some people desperately focusing on
| Israel as the driving force of evil around the world? From some
| arab/muslim community, i understand they can relate to the
| victims of Israeli colonialism... but from white westerners (no
| idea if that's your case), it certainly plays into the old
| antisemite trope of an imaginary international jewish alliance
| trying to control the planet.
| isolli wrote:
| Related, I recommend following the account of the Auschwitz
| memorial: https://twitter.com/AuschwitzMuseum
|
| Every day, they post pictures of a handful people who were
| detained (and almost always died) in the concentration camp, and
| seeing those in my feed is the virtual equivalent of
| Stolpersteine.
|
| It's also sobering to think that, at the pace at which they post,
| it would take thousands of years to commemorate all the victims.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| suction wrote:
| They are called "tripping cobbles", but they are actually flush
| with the rest of the cobbles - everything else would be a huge
| hazard for people not watching where they walk.
|
| So I don't think the "grave insult" applies here, or else why
| would the Stolpersteine have been inserted into the middle of
| the boardwalk of streets with lots of pedestrian traffic? If
| you're in a hurry and don't look down, you will not even know
| they are there. And if you read the artistic statement, that's
| exactly what they are meant to be - a part of daily life, not a
| sculpture to stand in front of and study.
|
| Of course, if someone wanted to insult the dead, they could
| make a show of repeatedly stepping on them. I don't think it
| would provoke much of a reaction other than people thinking
| "what a pitiful loser".
| sdoering wrote:
| Wow. Taking a fringe opinion even within the
| German/international Jewish community and posting as if this
| was the majority opinion is interesting at least.
|
| Please don't make it into a flame war. Because I strongly
| believe this is a topic that needs to be discussed. Esp. given
| the background in Germany with gravestones as plaster.
|
| But also it needs to be acknowledged that the project does
| absolutely not intend a "mit Fussen treten" ("to trample upon")
| mentality towards history, memory or Jews.
|
| It is totally valid and important to discuss if the benefits
| outweigh the feeling of some that it might enable people to
| "trample upon the Jewish names". I personally tend to lean
| towards the benefits. But I can totally understand people on
| the other side of the fence.
|
| Implying that this is a majority opinion on the other hand is
| imho definitely not the right way to go about it.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| In the spirit of beneficial discussion: Nowhere I implied
| that that was a majority opinion with Jews. It was - however
| - a popular opinion of influential members of Jewish
| organisations within Munich, back when the ban was originally
| enacted.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| From my experience best cleaned with Elsterglanz Messing.
| VSerge wrote:
| There are many such memorial plaques on the pavements of Vienna.
| They are almost part of the landscape, easy to walk by without
| noticing, yet every so often, when one stops rushing and reads a
| few of these (it was often whole families being deported, not
| just individuals), it hits again. And it is important that it
| never stops hitting and reminding us of this horror and of the
| need of avoiding repeating it.
| curiousgal wrote:
| > _the need of avoiding repeating it_
|
| Which is why I think this is pointless. We didn't learn
| anything. People are still being prosecuted all throughout the
| world. I won't give examples because I don't mean to start a
| flamewar but yeah, humanity sucks.
| shakezula wrote:
| It's absolutely not pointless. We learned, but learning is
| not a destination, it's a journey that sometimes has
| backtracks and delays.
|
| The fact that you think it's pointless shows that you
| yourself have some learning to do.
| puskavi wrote:
| Priviledged victims. I dont think any other ethnic cleansing can
| ever come close to this amount of "remembering"
| rainworld wrote:
| kappuchino wrote:
| Question: Would you be so kind an elaborate what you mean by
| your comment regarding the Stolpersteine that his thread is
| about? I personally find your comment ambigous at best and
| berating at worst. But what do I know.
| ascar wrote:
| As a German I think it's weird the article starts with "A
| Stolperstein is..." and then directly refers to the art project
| of Gunter Demning.
|
| That's not what "a" Stolperstein is. It's a common phrase in
| German about a stone that makes you stumble on an otherwise
| even/walkable road/pathway. It's also used in the metaphorical
| sense, if something makes you stumble/fall on your metaphorical
| way of life.
|
| No German would think of the word Stolperstein and the art
| project as synonyms. In fact I hadn't heard about it until today.
| The German wikipedia introduction is clearer on that and starts
| with "The Stolpersteine are a project of artist Gunter Demning"
| and I think the English wikipedia should be adjusted accordingly.
| dtnewman wrote:
| Fair criticism. You should edit it!
| OJFord wrote:
| I think the second paragraph should just be the first. (Or
| perhaps somehow keeping the pronunciation guide etc. in the
| first for prominence, since that's the usual Wikipedia style.)
| [deleted]
| ratww wrote:
| One popular solution for that is having a _{{See Wiktionary}}_
| tag on the top of the article that adds the text _' For a
| definition of the term "Stolperstein", see the Wiktionary entry
| Stolperstein.'_
| voz_ wrote:
| Insanely important, especially with the renewed rise of
| antisemitism - sad to see this downvoted.
| smcl wrote:
| It's top of the HN front page, it's not getting downvoted. In
| fact you can't downvote a submission.
| ad_hominem wrote:
| blueflow wrote:
| Nobody is like, "Oh no! This baddie i just killed could be a
| Stolperstein in the future". Remembrance is one thing, self-
| reflection is another.
|
| People will genocide their enemies and be like, "Thank god we
| aren't like the Nazis", or worse, "Trust us the guy we just
| killed was a Nazi".
|
| None of this helps with moral reasoning.
| bowsamic wrote:
| It hasn't even been 100 years and already it is relatively easy
| to find people who are genuinely and openly sympathetic to the
| Nazis
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Even people who continue to stand by their racist statement
| that there are "very fine people on both sides", and continue
| to have the fanatical support of the majority of the
| Republican party.
| suction wrote:
| And ironically this is becoming more common in those
| countries who pride themselves of eradicating Naziism in WW2.
| baybal2 wrote:
| xyzal wrote:
| rob74 wrote:
| Good question, but what does that have to do with the topic
| at hand (the Holocaust and commemorating its victims), except
| maybe whataboutism?
| bushbaba wrote:
| You're deviating from the thread topic and encouraging a
| flame war. Suggest everyone leave this be and focus on the
| article itself.
| nix23 wrote:
| No why? Most non-orthodox-jews and some orthodox-jews despise
| what Israel is doing.
| voz_ wrote:
| petesergeant wrote:
| It depends on what you say, according to the IHRA:
|
| "Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination,
| e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is
| a racist endeavor"
|
| and
|
| "Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that
| of the Nazis"
|
| are both examples of anti-semitism according to this
| definition
| cs137 wrote:
| No. In fact, most Jews I know are intensely critical of
| Israel's policies and recent actions.
|
| Unfortunately, there is a degree to which antisemitism is
| disguised behind disproportionate criticism of Israel and the
| Israeli people, and it's impossible to know, at an individual
| level, why people hold their opinions.
|
| Does Israel's government do awful things for questionable
| reasons (like most, if not all, national governments)? Yes.
| Is Israel the worst government in the Middle East? Far from
| it. To be honest, it's probably the least repressive, racist,
| or otherwise obnoxious government in the region (that's not
| setting a high bar). Israeli Arabs (especially women) have
| more freedoms in Israel than they would in any of the
| neighboring countries. Should Israel do better? Of course.
| It's absurd, though, that there's such a strong interest in
| BDS while the continuing consumption of Saudi oil goes
| unquestioned by most.
|
| Also: why is it that the behavior of Israel's government
| comes up in a discussion about memorializing people who were
| murdered _before the state of Israel even existed?_ I have
| Irish (American) ancestry, but no one has ever asked me to
| answer for the Irish government (or connected me to it in any
| way, seeing as my Irish ancestors came over in the early 19th
| century). It 's deeply weird that some people are so quick to
| connect anything having to do with Jews or Judaism with the
| conduct of one government in particular, which is thousands
| of miles away from where many Jews live.
| edanm wrote:
| Agree with most of your post, but did want to point out one
| thing:
|
| >[...] most Jews I know are intensely critical of Israel's
| policies and recent actions.
|
| While that certainly might be true wherever you live, note
| that the majority of the world's Jewish population lives in
| Israel, and at least some fairly large portion of that
| population does support Israel's policies and recent
| actions. (I assume we're talking about the same things
| here, i.e. actions with regards to Palestinians, as opposed
| to all the other stuff happening in the country.)
| cs137 wrote:
| The plurality of the Jewish population is believed to be
| in the US (there are some issues around estimation)
| although it's close.
|
| As for Israelis and support for their government, that
| is... complicated. Unfortunately, if the Israeli state
| didn't exist, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of
| Jewish people in the region would likely be murdered by
| people from neighboring countries. This isn't because
| Arabs are "innately" warlike or antisemitic (I don't
| think that's true) but because the states in the region
| are deeply corrupt, failing states that will (as Russia
| has done) create an external enemy and launch a war to
| distract their own people from domestic issues.
|
| The Israeli state is deeply problematic, corrupted by
| capitalism and some amount of racism (as almost all
| Western states are). It also has a job that is tough as
| hell: protecting a vulnerable minority group from
| millions who would murder them. The middle-of-the-road
| Israeli understands the need to protect themselves, but
| isn't a huge fan of the settlements (if he thinks about
| them at all) and certainly would love to see peace in the
| region.
| heartbeats wrote:
| > if the Israeli state didn't exist, hundreds of
| thousands, if not millions, of Jewish people in the
| region would likely be murdered by people from
| neighboring countries. This isn't because Arabs are
| "innately" warlike or antisemitic (I don't think that's
| true) but because the states in the region are deeply
| corrupt
|
| Are you sure? I mean, it's a well-established principle
| of international relations that the people of a country
| get to decide what happens to it - this is why the
| Germans were expelled from Europe after the war.
|
| My understanding is that the Israelis had to remove some
| people to make way for their state - doesn't this apply
| to the Palestinians too, if they want their land back? Or
| am I missing something, did they leave voluntarily
| because of dissatisfaction with the government etc?
|
| Genuine question, just asking.
| edanm wrote:
| > My understanding is that the Israelis had to remove
| some people to make way for their state - doesn't this
| apply to the Palestinians too, if they want their land
| back? Or am I missing something, did they leave
| voluntarily because of dissatisfaction with the
| government etc?
|
| Your understanding isn't exactly in line with the
| history, at least from my Jewish-Israeli perspective. In
| general, It's a complicated question, over which literal
| wars have been fought.
|
| I'll try to give a version of events as I understand
| them. This came out fairly long, sorry.
|
| There were Jews living in Israel originally, who were
| displaced and moved to other countries about 2000 years
| ago. There was a Jewish presence in that land from then
| on, but it was relatively small, though Jews worldwide
| theoretically yearned to return to Israel.
|
| Beginning in the 1800s and up to the founding of Israel,
| there was a large movement of Jews to return back to
| their original land, and Jews started migrating into
| Palestine. This was afaik completely legal - the land was
| first ruled by the Ottomans, then the British, and the
| Jews who moved there bought the land and developed it (it
| was not a very developed land before then). The British
| at some point promised the Jews that they would give them
| that land to build a country on, kind of - it was a vague
| promise. Then the British decided to hand the land over
| to the UN.
|
| After the Holocaust, there was a lot of pressure for the
| Jews to get their own country. The UN came up with a plan
| to divide Israel up into two countries, one part for the
| Arabs (Palestinians) and one part for the Jews, with
| Jerusalem split. The Jews accepted this - the
| Palestinians rejected it. Then, various Arab countries
| launched a war on the newly-formed Israel, which had to
| defend itself.
|
| Most of the Arab population fled from Israel - I think it
| was partly because leaders of the various Arab countries
| told them to flee the fighting and let them conquer
| Israel back, and partly because of fear and of actual
| Israeli actions against them. How much each part of this
| is part of the reason the Arabs fled is kind of
| contested, I believe.
|
| Israel (somewhat surprisingly) managed to win the war,
| and ended up with most of the land that was promised to
| both sides, which it kept. The Arabs that had remained in
| Israel instead of fleeing became Israeli citizens. The
| Arabs that fled became refugees of various countries.
| This was the situation until about the 1960s.
|
| In 1960, there was another war between the Arab countries
| and Israel (Israelis generally consider this a war
| _against_ Israel, cause Israel realized it would be
| attacked imminently and struck first. I think this is
| disputed though.) As part of that war, Israel managed to
| capture territories from other countries, including what
| is today the land of Palestine (the Gaza strip and the
| West Bank.) This land had all those refugees still living
| on it from the war in 1948. This is today 's Palestinian
| population.
|
| Israel gave back part of the land it captured (The
| Sinai), as part of a peace agreement with Egypt. The
| Palestinian population continues to live on in the lands
| Israel captured. Since they were never granted
| citizenship in any country (not the original countries
| that owned the territories, and not Israel,) they are
| still refugees.
|
| That is kind of where the situation is today.
| heartbeats wrote:
| Ah, thanks for the explanation. But isn't this _more or
| less_ what I describe still, other than people leaving on
| their own rather than being forced out?
|
| Like, without going into too tricky political
| discussions, it seems like being physically present on
| the land gives you some form of title to it. And if the
| Palestinians/Arabs hadn't left, it would be much more
| difficult to run the Israeli state. They would have the
| right to vote, and so they might've voted e.g. against
| the Hebrew language or for autonomy.
|
| Likewise, if Israel ended up collapsing somehow and
| Palestine taking over, then they would presumably realize
| that, well, the sooner these people are not here anymore,
| the less of a claim to an Israeli state can there
| possibly be.
|
| If so, I don't see what it has to do with corruption,
| because it's just a basic fact of countries - one guy has
| to win and the other one thus loses, and it's a zero-sum
| game.
|
| The way I see it, even if all of these countries were run
| like Switzerland, everyone involved would still quickly
| understand it's very definitively in their material
| interests to manage the other guys as quick as possible.
|
| What's the way out of this conundrum?
| edanm wrote:
| > But isn't this more or less what I describe still,
| other than people leaving on their own rather than being
| forced out?
|
| There's a pretty big difference between people being
| forced out of their home, and people rejecting a plan
| _given by the UN_ , then starting a war instead. It's not
| exactly the same people, which makes this somewhat
| complicated, but some portion of the Arab-Israeli
| population left at the urging of those countries on the
| promise that they would wage war and give them _all_ the
| land instead of just part of it.
|
| > Like, without going into too tricky political
| discussions, it seems like being physically present on
| the land gives you some form of title to it.
|
| Again, some (most? all?) of the land that the Jews
| settled in between the late 1800s and modern Israel, was
| purchased or given legally. _That_ gives you title to it,
| at least in the modern world.
|
| > And if the Palestinians/Arabs hadn't left, it would be
| much more difficult to run the Israeli state.
|
| Arabs make up 20% of the citizenship of Israel today. And
| yes, this is "problematic".
|
| There's a large question about what sovereignity means in
| this kind of context. Does it make sense to have a
| "Jewish" state? How can that be democratic? You can't
| restrict existing citizens, even if they are non-Jewish,
| but then how do you maintain it as a homeland for Jews?
| These are tough questions that I don't think anyone can
| really answer.
|
| > If so, I don't see what it has to do with corruption,
| because it's just a basic fact of countries - one guy has
| to win and the other one thus loses, and it's a zero-sum
| game.
|
| Many things in life are not zero-sum. But yes, if two
| different ethnic groups want the same piece of land, and
| feel they are entitled to it, one of them is going to
| "lose" in that sense.
|
| > What's the way out of this conundrum?
|
| There isn't really a good way out, not without the
| Palestinians making in their eyes major concessions.
| (Though note that Israel has attempted to make plans that
| made major concessions from their pov, and the
| Palestinians rejected all these offers.)
|
| The only solution I personally think makes any sense is a
| two-state solution, whereby the Palestinians get their
| own state on the existing land, plus possibly some part
| of Jerusalem (though this is a political non-starter
| today in Israel.)
|
| But I don't really see this happening. Palestinians don't
| love this deal (for obvious reasons.) Israel, on the
| other hand, is the stronger party which means it probably
| benefits from the existing status-quo, so has no reason
| to rock the boat right now. And for leaders on both
| sides, it's possibly better to keep the fighting going.
|
| So really, I don't see anyone with any big incentive to
| change any of the current situation.
| edanm wrote:
| > The plurality of the Jewish population is believed to
| be in the US (there are some issues around estimation)
| although it's close.
|
| It's definitely close, but Wiki still gives it to Israel
| right now (at least here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J
| ewish_population_by_country#D...)
|
| > Unfortunately, if the Israeli state didn't exist,
| hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Jewish people
| in the region would likely be murdered by people from
| neighboring countries. This isn't because Arabs are
| "innately" warlike or antisemitic (I don't think that's
| true) but because the states in the region are deeply
| corrupt, failing states [...]
|
| I tend to agree that that is what would happen, but I
| think the neighboring countries have at least a
| _somewhat_ legitimate beef with Israel and its actions.
| It 's largely promoted by leadership for reasons like you
| stated, but it is still true that lots of Arab (and
| Muslim) people think that Israel did something wrong. I
| mostly don't agree with their POV, but it has a
| legitimate basis. (And my disagreement is at least partly
| by saying "yeah, almost every country has a...
| problematic history, you can't just forever be at war
| with it for that".)
|
| > The Israeli state is deeply problematic, corrupted by
| capitalism and some amount of racism (as almost all
| Western states are). It also has a job that is tough as
| hell: protecting a vulnerable minority group from
| millions who would murder them. The middle-of-the-road
| Israeli understands the need to protect themselves, but
| isn't a huge fan of the settlements (if he thinks about
| them at all) and certainly would love to see peace in the
| region.
|
| I wish that were true about the median (Jewish) Israeli.
| I don't know if that's right. For sure it's less a topic
| of conversation inside Israel than it is outside of it,
| so I agree with the idea that most Israelis don't think
| about it _too_ much.
| asib wrote:
| Total aside, but I've not seen this use of the word
| "plurality" before - I'm reading it here as a synonym for
| "majority", which might be wrong of me! Is it colloquial
| to a certain group of English language speakers?
| heartbeats wrote:
| Plurality means the largest but non-majority group.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| It's an awesome idea, because it brings the painful past right
| into our daily lives. You're forced to serendipituously "stumble"
| across them every now and then.
|
| The stories on them, told in a brief phrase, are mostly
| heartbreaking, sometimes uplifting, always relevant. "Executed
| for making fun of the Fuhrer", "Deported and gassed for hiding
| Jewish neighbors", "Survived concentration camp but parents,
| siblings and relatives did not make it out alive".
| jemen wrote:
| > It's an awesome idea, because it brings the painful past
| right into our daily lives. You're forced to serendipituously
| "stumble" across them every now and then.
|
| I very much believe that this is the intention, but does it
| actually though? Oppressive country frequently brings up the
| past as a safe way to legitimize the present. Russia seems to
| have had an increase in this in recent years as it now started
| a war in Europe. Most of the western world seems to not have
| learned much at all from the second world war and are yet again
| running black sites, funneling money to regimes and fighting
| wars to defend some of them.
|
| Unfortunately I think part of the popularity of these stone
| today is that they are no longer provocative. Their existence
| doesn't seem to have the effect of for example highlighting
| still exiting companies participation in the holocaust, current
| day trade policies or crimes against humanity. Putting one of
| these outside a company, judge or commander involved in past or
| present atrocities would probably result in it quickly being
| removed and you potentially landing in jail.
|
| But I guess that even if few learns the bigger lesson they
| might still be a net positive.
| CaptArmchair wrote:
| Remembrance and memorials alone don't stop atrocities from
| happening again. There's a difference between reminded of the
| past, and actively engaging with the past in the present
| moment.
|
| It's important to give countenance to the fact that
| democracy, human rights, the rule of law,... in and of itself
| aren't measures against populism and authoritarianism. By and
| large, the success of the latter is tied into resentment over
| key social and economic factors which determine the strength
| of social cohesion and a sense of equity.
|
| If a state doesn't invest in the common interests of its
| citizenry, over time that will create breeding grounds for
| people to become resentful, distrustful, tribal, isolated,...
| The identity politics of populists and authoritarians by and
| large revolve "we against them" narratives. These are
| incredibly easy to understand and provide a new framework of
| meaning and values to disenfranchised people. Minorities
| become prime targets because they are visibly different and
| therefor easy to pick out and used as scapegoats. That's what
| fractures an erstwhile democratic, cohesive society.
|
| In Germany, the NSDAP only became successful after 1932, when
| the effects of the Depression came into full swing in an
| already unstable political climate of the Weimar Republic.
|
| You're right, though, that in a way, the remembrance of the
| Holocaust doesn't resolve in a clear, consistent moral
| framework of principles. Just think about how restitution of
| property and real estate is still a hotly debated topic
| today. The crux is that questions regarding historic
| responsibility and guilt and how to approach them are always
| framed into a backdrop of present day economical and
| political concerns and interests. And that's just collective
| behavior that can be changed with an easy silver bullet fix.
|
| > Unfortunately I think part of the popularity of these stone
| today is that they are no longer provocative.
|
| I highly doubt that. On an individual level, humans are very
| much capable of feeling empathy and compassion. For instance,
| the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial received a record 2.3 million
| visitors in 2019. The unspeakable atrocities that happened
| there still resonate to this very day. If not for countless
| children and grand-children still deal with a lost connection
| to their own shared past through the loss of their family in
| the camps; and the stories that are still begin shared
| publicly of that great sorrow.
|
| The thing that should worry us is people either not even
| noticing the stones and their significance in the first
| place, or forgetting their significance the minute they've
| passed and falling back into biased thinking regarding
| present day state of the world.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| Putin is not the only person who was successful with this
| strategy. Usually it goes like this: an enemy attacks us, we
| defend ourselves, this unites us, and that unity is then
| abused in the future to legitimize authoritarian rule or even
| - as in the case of Putin's invasion of Ukraine - a full-
| scale war.
|
| It makes no difference if a person was killed for ridiculing
| Fuhrer, hiding Jews or refusing to serve vodka[0]. Death is
| death and I hope one day humanity understands no war makes
| sense and we stop this insanity, working together to make
| everybody's lives better, not just one nation we happen to be
| associated with.
|
| [0] https://uarefugees.news/hot-news/in-bucha-the-invaders-
| shot-...
| photochemsyn wrote:
| It's important to note that elements in Ukraine since 2014
| pushed a series of oppressive legal restrictions on the
| Russian-speaking segment of the population that were designed
| to push that entire group into second-class citizen status.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-parliament-
| langua...
|
| > (2019) "The law, which obliges all citizens to know the
| Ukrainian language and makes it a mandatory requirement for
| civil servants, soldiers, doctors, and teachers, was
| championed by outgoing President Petro Poroshenko."
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/21/ukraine-
| bans-s...
|
| > (2015) "Dunja Mijatovic, the representative for the
| Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe on
| freedom of the media, said the "broadly and vaguely defined
| language" in the anti-communist law "could easily lead to
| suppression of political, provocative and critical speech,
| especially in the media". The US Holocaust Memorial Museum
| also condemned the independence-fighter legislation."
|
| Imagine, for comparison, if a right-wing government in
| Washington tried to make all Spanish-speaking U.S. citizens
| second-class citizens, while incorporating the KKK into the
| military forces of the United States, as Ukraine did with the
| Nazi revivalist group Azov Battalion? These are the kind of
| actions that led to the rise of Russian separatist movements
| in eastern Ukraine and Crimea, and which Putin ultimately
| used as part of his political justification for the invasion
| of Ukraine.
|
| The situation is now so completely embittered that it's hard
| to see a resolution where the Russian-speaking population in
| eastern Ukraine and Crimea would ever agree to exist under
| the control of a western Ukrainian government.
| trhway wrote:
| >Nazi revivalist group Azov Battalion
|
| Russian propaganda loves pointing to the same few cases of
| Nazism in Ukraine. Ok, lets see that Russian propaganda
| misses at home - that for example is the Roskosmos CEO
| Rogozin, one of the most prominent voices around Putin and
| the Putin's favorite giving a Nazi salute and the end of
| his Nazi speech at the Russian Nazi march in Moscow. The
| specific phrase they all give Nazi salute to is "Glory to
| Russia!".
|
| https://youtu.be/xkXVVcPWSU8?t=87
|
| And for that antique Nazist paraphernalia that some Azov
| members supposedly had... Well, this is the Main Cathedral
| of Russian forces built in 2020 where they store various
| Hitler's "relics" (yep, exactly that term - "relikviya" -
| was used here by the Russian top military leadership!)
| including his uniform, medals, etc. and where walls and
| floor is made out of German's tank metal - basically they
| made a Hitler shrine (and can make a good money organizing
| pilgrimage here for the neo-Nazis across the world :).
|
| https://images.theconversation.com/files/449001/original/fi
| l...
|
| Anyway, Russia is a full blown nazist state today like
| Germany was in 1939 and whatever Russia says, in particular
| about nazims, is worthless at best, and usually is just
| outright propaganda lie.
|
| >the Russian-speaking population in eastern Ukraine and
| Crimea would ever agree
|
| Definitely nobody is asking that population today. The
| Russian puppet regimes on those territories are terrorist
| states just like ISIS - the only difference is that ISIS
| preferred public beheadings while in those Donbass
| "republics" they kidnap and torture with fate of many
| unknown, though few mutilated bodies found so far of such
| disappeared people suggest that there is no good fate to
| expect.
|
| >It's important to note that elements in Ukraine si nce
| 2014 pushed a series of oppressive legal restrictions on
| the Russian-speaking segment of the population that were
| designed to push that entire group into second-class
| citizen state.
|
| That wasn't push against Russian speaking population. That
| was push against various symbols of the totalitarian regime
| of USSR. In particular removing names from public places of
| the USSR leaders who ordered/led mass killings of millions
| of people, ie. Lenin, Stalin, and their close associates in
| that, etc.
|
| The requirement for Ukrainian usage in Ukraine is the same
| for Russian-speaking as for say Hungarian- or Romanian-
| speaking minorities.
| trasz wrote:
| It's important to note that the comment above is just
| propaganda. Read the linked articles, they aren't even
| close to the ideas presented above - but links to RT and
| Sputnik would look suspicious, and nobody clicks those
| links anyway.
| kwatsonafter wrote:
| Thank you for your incredibly constructive comment.
| boffinAudio wrote:
| Here in Liesing, Austria, I walked past a stolperstein this
| morning, which sits at the entrance to a local Billa
| (supermarket), which is a new construction on a site where I
| suppose the victim of Nazi aggression lived before being taken
| to a concentration camp to perish.
|
| Although I see these stones all over Vienna, and find myself in
| contemplation every single time I see them elsewhere around
| Europe, it is even more jarring to see them in a seemingly
| random outer suburb/town of the region at the footstep of a
| local grocery store, and is a severely jarring reminder of the
| atrocities that occurred in this land, not so long ago.
|
| I wish Australia, my native land, would have the courage to do
| something similar to highlight the atrocities we committed
| there, on the original peoples. Alas, Australian war hubris is
| too heavy to pierce that veil ..
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I sometimes wonder how difficult it is to strike the right
| balance.
|
| When I was in US high school, so much time was spent focusing
| on the atrocities of the US that many of my peers left with
| the impression that the US is a horrible country not worth
| fighting for.
|
| Interestingly, activating that feeling of nihilism is the
| goal of Russian propaganda in the US.
| trasz wrote:
| Well, US is probably the most aggressive country on this
| planet, but it's more than that: there's also its complete
| denial of any responsibility, from Hague Invasion Act to
| decorating people responsible for shooting down airliners
| and droning random kids.
| boffinAudio wrote:
| This really unfortunate state of affairs means that
| legitimate complaints against the USA can be brushed off as
| merely Russian agitprop, which simply enables further
| atrocities to be committed, unquestioned by the civilian
| populace who are the only ones with the real power to do
| anything about it.
|
| We must avoid the "blame Russia" response and be honest
| about our own states' vast and heinous crimes against
| humanity - lest, indeed, we become Russia.
| thematrixturtle wrote:
| What makes this possible in Europe is the Nazi mania for
| documentation. In Australia, as in the US, the killings
| happened over decades in a far more random/opportunistic way
| and records of how many died and where are extremely patchy,
| with few if any names recorded:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_of_Indigenou.
| ..
| smcl wrote:
| I have the same thing over the border in Brno, Czech
| Republic. Didn't really notice them for so long, until
| suddenly I stopped to read one and realised they're all over
| the place. I always stop to check them now.
|
| Additionally I have similar feelings about the atrocities
| committed by the UK. To me it feels so unambiguously right to
| officially acknowledge and apologise that our ancestors did
| pretty heinous shit (up to and including invading countries
| this century).
| barrysteve wrote:
| I don't know why you think it is unambiguosuly right to
| apologize for past crimes.
|
| My Finnish friend is super into history and he basically
| remembers the events of history by it's relative position
| in time to a European war. There were so many horrific
| wars.
|
| The stories of past highlight the worst parts of human
| nature, but many people got by in love without murdering
| the locals next door.
|
| We should turn away from evil and denouce it. The apology
| for it, suggests a naive belief one is separate from that
| human nature which drove the crimes.
|
| Maybe with more lead in air from leaded petrol, or more
| internet radicalization, or an end to our local
| agriculture, we might be the 1% that turns toward evil.
| Examining past crimes can lead to more crime, as we have
| seen with internet radicals lately and copycat people
| following news media stories.
|
| Studying that sh*t and mulling it over in apology for
| crimes one never did is dangerous, we should move towards
| loving the good things done, past and future.
| smcl wrote:
| I think there's very clearly a point beyond which any
| reasonable person agrees that what's done is done and it
| doesn't make sense to make apologies anymore. Like today
| in 2022 nobody but the most peculiar weirdo in Scotland
| holds a grudge against people with the surname "Campbell"
| because of the Glencoe Massacre[0] after more than 300
| years (though they do exist!).
|
| But for something like the Mau Mau massacre, for the Iraq
| War, for the Afghanistan War or for any number of
| atrocities in British India or anything like that - these
| were huge events whose effects can still be felt today. I
| don't think it is unreasonable to expect some sort of
| official apology from the state. Or failing that - simply
| _allowing_ a level of acknowledgement in our History
| curriculum that says "The British Empire was not good,
| and was in fact quite often bad for a very long period of
| time" might help. Because right now doing so is walking
| on very thin ice[1] and there are a lot of people walking
| around in the UK who think our imperial project was one
| which colonised and civilised, rather than brutalised it.
|
| [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Glencoe
|
| [1] - https://www.gov.uk/government/news/guidance-on-
| promoting-bri...
| noneeeed wrote:
| Likewise. I get very frustrated by all the people who will
| refuse to acknowledge that our ancestors did some atrocious
| things to people. People will just through some extrodinary
| hoops to rationalise why it either wasn't so terrible, or
| it was somehow justified in a way that other people's
| atrocities were not.
| smcl wrote:
| Sorry if it's not clear, I'm a UK national. And while
| it's true that we shouldn't really distinguish between
| atrocities (after all, they're _all_ bad), I think being
| from the UK you 're always going to feel a bit more
| connected to or somehow complicit in things that were
| done during the days of the British Empire even if you
| weren't yet born when they happened.
|
| Sort of a lingering, inherited shame. If that makes sense
| :)
| boffinAudio wrote:
| As an Australian, visiting Mauthausen - or indeed any of
| the preserved concentration camps of the past - was
| particularly humbling. It really highlighted to me that a
| society that gets honest with itself, improves - and
| those who don't, just continue to commit the same
| atrocities.
|
| We Australians don't have the courage that Austrians do,
| when it comes to acknowledging the criminal actions of
| our past society. Alas, the struggle for acknowledgement
| is real. A lot of it has to do with the fact that
| Australias concentration camps and genocide programs were
| performed in seriously remote locations, far far away
| from any civil population - so its a lot easier to hide.
|
| The camp at Mauthausen can be seen from the local
| countryside and is clearly maintained to be a visible
| reminder of extremist totalitarian/authoritarianism to
| the children who visit it, regularly, as part of their
| education. That courage is something for which the
| Austrian people should be proud.
| Bellamy wrote:
| > It's an awesome idea, because it brings the painful past
| right into our daily lives.
|
| So you are saying we should be reminded and think about the
| horrors of Nazi's every day and everywhere?
| Klaster_1 wrote:
| The idea to put a bit more info about the person was brilliant,
| even a single sentence makes you relate more. There is a
| similar project in Russia called The Last Address [1], I see
| these a lot (but probably not enough) in the Saint-Petersburg
| historical center, and although being a similar age and area of
| expertise to lots of victims helps, even a brief summary of
| their "wrongdoings" would go a long way enriching the
| perspective on our history, especially given current political
| climate here. "A 30 years old engineer lived here" doesn't ring
| as close as "a 30 years old engineer who lived here was
| murdered by the state for a crime of opposing the oppressive
| regime".
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Address
| tpoacher wrote:
| I always thought that a firstperson shooter game where
| whenever you killed a mook you'd get a quick flashback of
| that person's life would have been a super interesting
| concept. Especially if it was a Call of Duty like game,
| rather than a game where you could choose to avoid killing.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| This happens in Divinity 2 as an elf. If you eat the body
| of someone you flash back into their life.
| heartbeats wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/873/
| Klaster_1 wrote:
| Sniper Elite 5 has something like that: every enemy has a
| short biography visible when you aim at them. Didn't play
| the game, but like the gesture - people are people no
| matter what side you are on, doesn't matter who you
| dehumanize, it's wrong either way.
| spython wrote:
| I think with many victims we just don't know what exactly
| happened - some were opposing the regime, some told a
| political joke, some were falsely accused by their co-workers
| in order to get promoted to their position, some were falsely
| accused by their (innocent) friends who were tortured by
| NKVD, some had a wrong biography, and others had a wrong
| name. They all got Article 58.
| winReInstall wrote:
| A woman in my town was send into the "lighter" political
| version of the KZ, because she remarked upon recieving the
| "medal of motherhood" with a cynic "and were shall i pin
| that, to my bottom?"
|
| Totalitarian nightmares have no humor. If you think, your
| favourite thing in life shoul dbe spared jokes and jests,
| you are heading right towards that spot. Nothing should be
| sacrosanct to jokes.
|
| I raise my glass to those who walked into the fence, taking
| theire workforce awaz from the fuehrer and his germinions.
| refurb wrote:
| The film Shoah always struck me for similar reasons
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoah_(film)
|
| They did many of these interviews in the 70's so a little
| more than 30 years after the Holocaust.
|
| Seeing them interview some farmer who was 20 at the time and
| lived near the village of Auschwitz and remembers seeing the
| trains going in full of people and coming out empty really
| hits home as it all happened in the midst of people just
| living their lives.
| praptak wrote:
| I couldn't agree more. Maybe it makes the grim lessons stay
| with us a little bit longer - something that I am seriously
| concerned about given Putin's replay of these events (and also
| living in Poland).
| lyian wrote:
| Yeah, in my city I also stumble across these stones. One day,
| on my way of getting groceries, I was quite frankly shocked by
| the frequency of the stolpersteine.
|
| I am thankful that these exists and getting reminded now and
| then is, at least for me, really important and outline in some
| kind of tiny fraction, how many families suffered the same
| fate.
| hnhg wrote:
| I've seen some that just name a family or couple that were
| taken away one night and "murdered", which hit me the hardest,
| personally.
| dandare wrote:
| Slightly related: Communists cut Jewish gravestones to cobbles
| and used it to pave Prague historic center. The stones were
| discovered during a revamp of the pavement and are now returned
| to Jewish cemetery.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-46845131
| edpichler wrote:
| This made me think: "Unlike many other German
| cities, the city council of Munich in 2004 rejected the
| installation of Stolpersteine on public property, following
| objections raised by Munich's Jewish community... She objected to
| the idea that the names of murdered Jews be inserted in the
| pavement, where people might accidentally step on them.
| In other cities, permission for the project was preceded by long,
| sometimes emotional discussions. In Krefeld, the vice-chairman of
| the Jewish community, Michael Gilad, said that Demnig's memorials
| reminded him of how the Nazis had used Jewish gravestones as
| slabs for sidewalks. Polish Institute of National
| Remembrance (IPN) has expressed reservations towards to project,
| noting that the form of the memorial, particularly its location
| on regular sidewalks, which are regularly stomped over by
| passersby, is not respectful. Another criticism from IPN has
| concerned inadequate level of detail provided on Stolpersteine,
| such as lack of context clarifying that most of the perpetrators
| of the Holocaust were Germans, and not Poles. IPN officials have
| repeatedly suggested that instead of Stolpersteine, the more
| respectful, informative and traditional form of remembrance that
| the IPN is willing to support."
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Sidewalks are also very dirty (spit, dogs, trash, etc.) I think
| this would have been better by mounting them on the walls.
|
| Many cultures consider stepping on someone's name, burial, or
| memorial horribly disrespectful.
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