Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stolperstein

en.wikipedia.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 187 posts

Re: Stolperstein

#111

Post by spython »

Klaster_1 wrote: post #46
uniqueuid wrote: post #3

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 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.

Re: Stolperstein

#112

Post by sealeck »

kybernetyk wrote: post #22
gpjanik wrote: post #7

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.

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.

The German government in general doesn't collect data on the composition of ethnic groups in Germany.

Re: Stolperstein

#113

Post by dislikedtom »

robert_foss wrote: post #79
Freak_NL wrote: post #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…

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

this guilt aspect is quite weird for me. Surely we younglings that have NOTHING to do with this, won't have to feel guilty.

Re: Stolperstein

#114

Post by wongarsu »

amelius wrote: post #94
robert_foss wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You are living in a home that would otherwise perhaps still be occupied by the people (or their families) that were taken away.

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.

Re: Stolperstein

#115

Post by Nitramp »

durnygbur wrote: post #19
tokai wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Stolperstein

#116

Post by mensetmanusman »

boffinAudio wrote: post #58
uniqueuid wrote: post #3

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…

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 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.

Re: Stolperstein

#117

Post by perlgeek »

gpjanik wrote: post #7

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.

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.

Re: Stolperstein

#118

Post by gpjanik »

Someone wrote: post #47
gpjanik wrote: post #7

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.

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?

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.

Re: Stolperstein

#119

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

gpjanik wrote: post #7

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.

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_concentration_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.

Re: Stolperstein

#120

Post by legulere »

keiferski wrote: post #73
gpjanik wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those lost their polish identity though.
Post reply on HN