(Krista) As I walk through these beautiful streets of Hamburg I am at times brought to think of the past. Throughout the city there are Stolpersteine--Stumbling Blocks--which are small brass memorials to victims of the Holocaust. These 'stones' are in front of the homes where the victims had lived up until the time they were deported. They are chilling reminders of the reality of what happened here...but they often get me thinking...
Today the kids and I walked by these--a family of four, just like us--a mom and dad, brother and sister. They lived one block away from us, in the heart of our cute little town. At the time they were forced to leave, Isaac the father was 60, Emma the mother was 58, and Harriet and Herbert, their children, were in their twenties.
Here you can see the Stolpersteine in front of the very steps they used to enter their home.
This was their apartment building--maybe built around 1906, like ours. I wonder what apartment was theirs...and did they have a family business on the ground floor? Did the kids share a room?
Here is what the stones look like--I don't know why this picture is displaying itself sideways--sorry about that.
It says
Here lived
Emma Perlman
Maiden Name: Depken
Year Born 1883
Deported 1941
Minsk
Murdered
Emma--I love that name. She and her entire family were murdered. I looked up "Minsk" and found out it wasn't a concentration camp, but was a ghetto in Belarus (then in the Soviet Union) that is told to have been 'even worse' than one. Among the people of the ghetto were the "Hamburg Jews," so it makes sense that this was their destination.
When I see these stones I can't help but think. The Perlmans once walked the same streets I now walk. They most likely took their children to the same playgrounds. They could have had friends in our building. I wonder if they were a known and respected family here in Winterhude or if they more kept to themselves. I wonder if they were a loving family. I can't begin to imagine the horrors they went through. Did they die as a family, all at once? Or did they each suffer as they watched their loved ones murdered? Awful things to think about.
If you'd like to read a short article on the history of these stones--how they came about--just click on the link below. I think it's a very interesting article.
http://awchamburg.org/AWCH_GettingAround/AWCH_InterestingFacts/AWCH_Stolpersteine.html
Here lived
Emma Perlman
Maiden Name: Depken
Year Born 1883
Deported 1941
Minsk
Murdered
Emma--I love that name. She and her entire family were murdered. I looked up "Minsk" and found out it wasn't a concentration camp, but was a ghetto in Belarus (then in the Soviet Union) that is told to have been 'even worse' than one. Among the people of the ghetto were the "Hamburg Jews," so it makes sense that this was their destination.
When I see these stones I can't help but think. The Perlmans once walked the same streets I now walk. They most likely took their children to the same playgrounds. They could have had friends in our building. I wonder if they were a known and respected family here in Winterhude or if they more kept to themselves. I wonder if they were a loving family. I can't begin to imagine the horrors they went through. Did they die as a family, all at once? Or did they each suffer as they watched their loved ones murdered? Awful things to think about.
If you'd like to read a short article on the history of these stones--how they came about--just click on the link below. I think it's a very interesting article.
http://awchamburg.org/AWCH_GettingAround/AWCH_InterestingFacts/AWCH_Stolpersteine.html
I know, not a fun post to read, but the stones have impacted me so much I really wanted to share them with you. Thanks for reading and for journeying along with us.
With love,
Krista
With love,
Krista
1 comment:
I wanted to post on this sooner but could not log in... I really like this post and information. It was very interesting, so much so that I did more research online about it. Thanks for this.
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