“Here lived…”

Those travelling across Europe, especially throughout Germany and Central Europe, may, at one point, trip across an intentional protrusion in the sidewalk. Launched by the German artist, Gunter Deming in 1992, these protrusions, called stolpersteine, or stumbling stones, are meant to interrupt passersby and force them to acknowledge one of the many victims of Nazi violence. Each stone, installed at a victim’s last recorded residence of choice, begins with the words, “here lived…”

Though the project initially met with resistance, especially outside of Germany, there are now more than 75,000 stolpersteine across Europe, with more on the way. Each new installation is accompanied by an announcement in the local newspaper and a remembrance gathering. Though several cities and countries still refuse to install stolpersteine, many have embraced them, not only as a fitting means of commemorating the victims of Nazism, but also as a reminder of the scale and pervasiveness of the Nazi’s grip upon Europe, traits that many would often prefer to forget.

As our nation begins to look, introspectively, upon its lengthy record of bigotry, one begins to wonder just how we can memorialize the countless victims of our propensity toward hatred, from its most heinous expressions – slavery, Jim Crow laws, lynchings, and police killings – to its more banal, yet still life-altering manifestations – systemic inequity in education, career, and property opportunities, poverty, incarceration, and more. How can we, as a nation, ensure that long after the protests, long after reform, we regularly interrupt our everyday lives to acknowledge the scope and pervasiveness of a tradition of racism that left and continues to leave so many victims in its wake?

— Rabbi Josh Knobel