From next Tuesday there will be more stumbling blocks in Würzburg than in any other Bavarian city – a total of 696 such commemorative plaques. The ten by ten centimeter paving stones commemorate the victims of the Nazi dictatorship. They are embedded in the ground in front of the former homes or shops of Jews, Sinti and Roma, homosexuals and resistance fighters worldwide. On July 25, 15 stones are to be laid in Würzburg, which primarily commemorate killed homosexuals, as the “Stolpersteine Würzburg” working group announced on Tuesday.
The project goes back to the artist Gunter Demnig, born in Berlin in 1947, who wanted to make people stumble over the earlier Nazi terror in their immediate vicinity. On the stones, which have been laid since 1996, are small brass plaques with biographical information on those who were murdered or persecuted. At the end of May, Demnig laid his 100,000th stumbling block – in Nuremberg’s Bartholomäusstrasse, dedicated to fireman Johann Wild, who was executed by the Nazis in Munich in May 1941 with a guillotine for listening to and disseminating foreign radio reports.
Stumbling blocks are not laid in every city. Opponents see the dignity of the victims trampled in the dirt and trampled on.