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.
> I do find that Stolpersteine presume too much upon the public space to the point of becoming tasteless and an affront.
Oh please, they are 10x10 cm (or even smaller), how can they take up "too much public space"?
In my street in Berlin there are Stolpersteine almost in front of every house. They are a memorial just as much as they have become integral part of the "environment". In my daily life I don't pay much attention anymore, but sometimes they still make me stop and think, and I guess this was exactly the intent.
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagage_(Leiden)
A monument in multiple pieces remembering deportation. Most of them are placed in residential areas, in full view of the people who live there.
Those are a lot more abstract though, placed in much more considerate locations (I have lived in Leiden myself), and not nearly as numerous. You can tell that a lot of thought went into the planning and realization of these.
Having an actual name on it makes it a lot more personal (which is the intent after all), and having hundreds of them all over historic areas of any given town makes it a barrage rather than a subtle reminder.
Typically not sad things (they celebrate someone who achieved something(s) great) but in the UK one might live somewhere decorated by (literally on the exterior wall) a 'blue plaque'.
I realise that's not quite the same, but a similar reminder of someone you don't necessarily want to be reminded of (albeit for probably completely different reasons) who 'lived here'.
I have three stones in front of my house. I clean them once a year. They do not bother me.
Personally, I don't quite "get" why other Germans seem to personally suffer under the weight of the county's history. I was born in the 1980s, it is obvious that I am not "guilty", but I have no problem feeling responsible to keep the memory alive.
In fact, any reasonable observer will notice that admitting guilt, in the hardest possible terms, has been exceptionally good strategy for the country. Except for the British, and some, but few, Israeli jews, people tend to be impressed with the postwar behavior of the country. Any remnants of fear proved useful to "force" Germany into the Euro and get it of military engagements, although the latter has somewhat stopped.
So whenever I see Turkey, or Hungary, or, to some degree, Austria, trying to deny their respective genocides and/or participation in the Holocaust, it just feels exceptionally stupid! Everybody knows of the Turkish genocide against the Armenians. Denying it is silly and just keeps it alive. Build monuments honoring those you have harmed and the world will love you for it.
(if, that is, you also stop harming more people! wtf is wrong with you? It's not like land is worth anything, these days, or you-know-who would obviously not need more of it).
I was living in Budapest in a house marked with one of the plaques, and I never had a similar thought. What's the mental process that makes you uneasy with them?
Very interesting, but puzzling comment. It reality makes me understand how reality can be perceived in wildly different ways. Thank you for it.
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.
Survivors guilt can be severely debilitating for some people.
I can also see folks who are severely depressed, bipolar, or other conditions that involve irrationally strong responses to negative stimulus would be impacted by a constant reminder of horror.
I think I agree with the author here - I don’t know I would appreciate my home being marked as the site of an atrocity. Our homes are for the living and the future. It’s good to be aware, and I’m not diminishing the tragedy or the need to keep the memory of it alive to prevent it happening again and to remember the victims. But it feels an awful lot like turning your community into a cemetery, instead of having a cemetery for your community.
There have been a few cases in the media; though not necessarily focused on feelings of guilt. One couple in Amsterdam¹ lost their child and suffered a strong emotional response whenever people outside would gawk at their house with a solemn look after encountering the Stolperstein placed in the pavement there (they were branded neo-Nazis on social media for daring to speak out).
ok, but so what? sometimes memory has to be painful, it means it feels real, alive. public spaces are naturally a container of public memory, traumas, joy etc.
it makes me feel connected with the history of the place, i don't see it as an "affront". And affront to whom??
As a meta comment, this sort of verbal judo to put words in peoples mouths is really becoming common. Whenever I see a comment start with something like “It sounds like you are saying” I know I’m in for a wild ride.
I live in such a house. All houses in my street have them. Some have one or two, others have 10+. When we moved here I attended a ceremony across the street when they were putting new ones. During special events throughout the year people are cleaning them, put candles and flowers to remember. It think it is an excellent way to remember and understand our past.
I live in one of these houses and don't mind. Most of the time, you don't even think about it. In the few moments you do, it's just a reminder of what can go wrong.
I assume what you’re feeling is true but it’s a pretty unusual read on the memorial and I’m sure you’re right it is not a popular way to look at it. I suspect that’s why some people jump to assuming there’s some kind of secret agenda - actual anti-Semites use those sorts of arguments as well because they know they can’t say what they really think, and they are surely more common than people who feel guilty about living when forced to see memorials.
I gew up close to Nuremberg and like to take a walk to visit the dead whenever I'm there, as well as check out various Nazi grounds which ...are just part of our history. My family is also of polish origin (I was born and raised in Germany) and I've spent time in Cracow and Munich,so I make points of visiting the memorials whenever I visit friends there.
My perspective is: this isn't only for the dead, it's also for the living. This can happen again if we do not make a culture of remembering, and of not shying away from the uneasiness. It should make us feel uneasy that our neighbours, our family, ourselves might have participated in the holocaust, or fallen victim to them - that everyone involved was normal people. Having some parts of the land of the living dedicated to this when not even a century has passed is a small price to pay.
And as far as prices to pay go, Stolpersteine are literally the least possible intrusion. There would be a similar stone in the same place, the Stolperstein is simply made of a different material and burns the reminder into the city so that holocaust deniers and their ilk have a harder time. And like the name implies, the point is to not have a sanitized, dead, tucked away safely memorial "respectfully" shoved into some corner of a park - where it can be safely ignored.
"Never again" is not an empty slogan, or something that will happen automatically (as we can see with genocides and ethnic cleansings around the world continuing since then) it's something that we all have to work towards. The Stolpersteine are part of the Erinnerungskultur and in my opinion, some of the best parts.
Here's my two cent counter-argument. Captialism is the biggest ruthless killing machine, whatever form it takes: nazism (Hitler was put to power by German industry/bourgeoisie), fascism (Mussolini advocated for State/Capital unification under "corporatism"), State capitalism (USSR was not very different from a people's perspective, with salaried work and gulags and political police), or ordinary liberalism (French republic orchestrated the colonization and slavery of many folks, even long after slavery was formally abolished, under the form of wage slavery).
Yet there's little memory of those massacres and injustices, except for casualties of war who get the whole triumphant nationalist ceremonies to spit on them. Maybe a plaque for the dead workers who built a mountain road/rail, or for the victims of the Commune of Paris/Lyon/wherever. It's very discreet, when it exists at all, when it doesn't fall into the narrative of the State.
I don't know about younger folks, but when i was in school we got told so little about the history and reasons for these people to have died, when talking about it at all (good luck finding a history teacher spending more than 1 hour on the Paris Commune or the Algerian independence War). And we got told exactly zero about the living popular history of our own neighborhood and how people defied those injustices.
Whenever i find a plaque, memorial, carving or whatever remembering the past (and its mistakes) i try to take some time to investigate it, and i often learn something interesting. So much happened right around us, yet we are told/taught so little, and in the cities urban renovation driven by gentrifiers makes sure this history stays hidden and that only advertisement and store fronts remain.
Is that really the environment we want: an efficient, emotionless and pastless business machine? I personally don't want that. I wouldn't go so far as to call you a NIMBY resident, but i certainly encourage you to think or read about popular history, gentrification, and what it means when the latter tries to erase the former.
As a side note, i don't know about the netherlands, but here in France it's common for neonazis to deface the memorials honoring the (jewish or not, but the jewish in particular) victims of nazism. I agree with you it's bothersome in some sense that jewish victims are honored more than other categories of nazism victims (tsigans, cripples, homosexuals, etc), but if the alternative is to make the neonazis who'd like to rewrite history happy, i'm very happy with the current state of things.
I would accept several definitions depending on the context. Here's a few definitions that would cover all these variations of capitalism:
- a society in which some people work and some don't
- a society where money/status exists and drives access to resources ; more often than not, the most necessary and least desired jobs are the least compensated
- a society in which production is not based on reflections from a local community about their needs, but dictated by a third-party (a boss, a State..)
A society that's not capitalist would follow the old anarchist tenet "From each according to their capabilities, to each according to their needs". Arguably, it should be possible to have "State communism" or "Stateless capitalism" but neither form has emerged throughout history (even for a brief period) and these formula are inherently oxymorons. Stateless communism (anarchism) is definitely a thing and has emerged many times throughout history although it's more often than not been crushed bloodily (see also Paris Commune, Ukraine Commune / Makhnovtchina, Spanish revolution, etc).
As another commenter has pointed out, from a people's perspective, if you leave propaganda aside, there was really not drastic difference between USSR and capitalist countries. Depending on the local implementation, you may have had more or less women's rights or gay rights, or more or less free healthcare, but at the end of the day ordinary people are still destroying their bodies working in fields and factories all day long and going hungry at times while an enlightened elite will drown in luxury, and if those people dare question the status quo the police or secret political police will imprison, torture, or assassinate them.
Apart from the specific forms they take, there's not much difference between working life and political repression under USSR, and that under USA. For more reading on KGB-like political repression in the USA, i recommend to check out COINTELPRO. For more reading on how USSR was not communist, i recommend to read Emma Goldman's fantastic accounts of her time in Russia and her disillusions with the Bolsheviks, one of which is very brief entitled "There is no communism in Russia": https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-there-i...
TLDR: In USSR there was no abolition of property to develop the commons. There was seizure of some forms of private property to become State property instead.
There was no free market, thus the USSR was not capitalist.
I can't believe I'm even arguing this point. It seems like some weird attempt to rewrite history with a narrative "if something went wrong with communism, its capitalisms fault".
No, the USSR collectivized the entire country, everything was state owned, the state determined what was produced (to the point of murdering citizens who tried to stop them). It was as close to communism as anyone has every gotten and it failed miserably.
> There was no free market, thus the USSR was not capitalist.
Of course there was a free market, at least after the NEP was implemented in 1921. Yes there were taxes, but in the USA too, that doesn't make USSR non-capitalist. It's like if you were to say 2022 China is not capitalist for some reasons: yes it has "communist" in the name, and no billionaires are not 100% above the law (contrary to the USA) but there is still money, class, property, gentrification, and everything else that defines capitalism.
> I can't believe I'm even arguing this point. It seems like some weird attempt to rewrite history with a narrative "if something went wrong with communism, its capitalisms fault".
Well if you can't believe it, you probably rarely spoke with anarchists. That's the main historical disagreement between anarchists (and anti-authoritarian marxists who are a tiny minority but still exist) and marxist-leninists. The latter claim the "dictatorship of the proletariat" is the road to communism by seizing everything that defines capitalism (State, police, prisons, factories) and placing it under proletarian State governance, while the former consider it's impossible to build communism (freedom and equality for all) with the exploitative tools of capitalism.
I agree with you there's some history rewriting which took place, but it took place about a century ago and it was done by the bolsheviks who erased the memory of the militants who drove the revolution in early 1917 before they seized State power in October and massacred all who disagreed. They were a well-armed minority party who seized State power and applied a dictatorship. They rewrote history and called "counter-revolutionaries" everyone who disagreed, including proper communists who wanted all power to the people. The memories of Emma Goldman, Nestor Makhno, or Volin are really useful to understand the political context of that time, and whatever happened when Lenin and Trotsky (who was chief of the Red Army at that time) had the Communes of Cronstadt and Ukraine massacred in blood.
> No, the USSR collectivized the entire country
That's doubly false. First, social status and private property were never really abolished in the USSR (or rather, were reestablished shortly after being abolished), so you had luxury homes for the cadre of the Party and miserable living conditions for ordinary people. Second, the State nationalized everything, which has nothing to do with collectivization: the Bolsheviks actively repressed the local communities who tried to organize collectivization of land/resources (see also Cronstadt/Makhnovtchina i mentioned earlier).
Maybe give the Emma Goldman link i posted earlier a read? It's really short and you may learn a thing or two about history of that time and place. She's in a unique position because she was an ardent proponent of the 1917 revolution when she was in the USA, but when she was imprisoned and deported from the USA for anti-militarist propaganda, she was confronted with the reality of life under Bolshevik rule and how her anarchist comrades were hunted down by the regime. Her autobiography is a great read, but even the shorter pamphlets are informative.
Well, they are really similar, at some angle. As in capitalism, you promised freedoms, wealth and appreciation for you work hard enough. As in capitalism, all your work in going to entitled few, wars and keeping you enslaved. Also both are fiction and never existed.
> 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).
Working as intended then. The stones are victors' propaganda meant to terminate any critical thinking related to the mythology of WWII necessary to reshape the occident into what we have today.
Nevermind the very real threat of international Jewish communism in the maelstrom of Weimar Germany. Do not question the destruction of national sovereignty post-Nuremberg to form "international law" (i.e. world gov't). And don't even think of criticizing anything at all to do with the ethnonationalist Jewish state of Israel and the endless aid and support the west gives them. These are borderline illegal thoughts in Europe.
We've banned this account for using HN primarily (exclusively, in the last year) for ideological battle. You can't do that here, and race and religious flamewars are particularly unwelcome.
(for context once flagged, the comment I responded to was spreading a variant of the Elders of Zion "jews try to control us via world government" conspiracy myth)
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.