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Stolperstein

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Re: Stolperstein

#71
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, you are not correct. Poles have been in Germany for centuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poles_in_Germany

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.

Re: Stolperstein

#72

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 Führer", "Deported and gassed for hiding Jewish neighbors", "Survived concentration camp but parents, siblings and rel…

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).

Re: Stolperstein

#73
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you are not correct. Poles have been in Germany for centuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poles_in_Germany

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.

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.

Re: Stolperstein

#74
post #6
post #4

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/

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.

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.

Re: Stolperstein

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you are not correct. Poles have been in Germany for centuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poles_in_Germany

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 acco…

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.

Re: Stolperstein

#76
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.

Re: Stolperstein

#77

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 Führer", "Deported and gassed for hiding Jewish neighbors", "Survived concentration camp but parents, siblings and rel…

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 th…

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.

Re: Stolperstein

#78
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

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.

Re: Stolperstein

#79

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…

I'm not sure why being reminded of the horrors of the past would make you feel guilty.

Re: Stolperstein

#80

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…

I'm not sure why being reminded of the horrors of the past would make you feel guilty.

"Why does confrontation with horror make you feel uneasy?"

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