"Stolperstein" memorials across Germany serve as quiet, daily reminders of the millions persecuted and murdered by the Nazis. Students in Hagen are now bringing the stones to life with an online project.
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A group of students in the western German city of Hagen is helping give Holocaust victims a voice through digitization and geo-data.
The project, unveiled on Friday, provides an online guide to the city's "Stolperstein" memorials (stumbling stones in English). The small plaques, which are in many German towns and cities as well as in other countries, are placed in front of the former homes of people who were persecuted and killed by the Nazis. The memorials list a person's name and, when known, fate.
The students, who attend the Rahel-Varnhagen-Kolleg school, have mapped the Hagen's "Stolperstein" memorials as part of the city's geospatial data website.
After carefully researching the victims, the students then upload audio recordings of their stories to the site as well as pictures and additional information about their lives as well as their deaths.
"Sometimes history can be very dry and boring, but through this project it digs a lot deeper. The people also gain personalities — even if we don't know them personally," student Anne Asshauer told local public broadcaster WDR.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is January 27. Numerous memorials across Germany ensure the millions of victims are not forgotten.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/M. Schreiber
Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site
A large sculpture stands in front of Dachau. Located just outside Munich, it was the first concentration camp opened by the Nazi regime. Just a few weeks after Adolf Hitler came to power, it was used by the paramilitary SS Schutzstaffel to imprison, torture and kill political opponents of the regime. Dachau also served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi camps that followed.
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Wannsee House
The villa on Berlin's Wannsee lake was pivotal in the planning of the Holocaust. Fifteen members of the Nazi government and the SS Schutzstaffel met here on January 20, 1942 to devise what became known as the "Final Solution," the deportation and extermination of all Jews in German-occupied territory. In 1992, the villa where the Wannsee Conference was held was turned into a memorial and museum.
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Holocaust Memorial in Berlin
Located next to the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was inaugurated 60 years after the end of World War II on May 10, 2005, and opened to the public two days later. Architect Peter Eisenman created a field with 2,711 concrete slabs. An attached underground "Place of Information" holds the names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims.
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Memorial to Persecuted Homosexuals
Not too far from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, another concrete memorial honors the thousands of homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. The 4-meter high (13-foot) monument, which has a window showing alternately a film of two men or two women kissing, was inaugurated in Berlin's Tiergarten on May 27, 2008.
Image: picture alliance/Markus C. Hurek
Documentation center on Nazi Party rally grounds
Nuremberg hosted the biggest Nazi party propaganda rallies from 1933 until the start of World War II. The annual Nazi Party congress, as well as rallies with as many as 200,000 participants, took place on the 11-square-kilometer (4.25-square-mile) area. Today, the unfinished Congress Hall building serves as a documentation center and a museum.
Image: picture-alliance/Daniel Karmann
German Resistance Memorial Center
The Bendlerblock building in Berlin was the headquarters of a military resistance group. On July 20, 1944, a group of Wehrmacht officers around Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg carried out an assassination attempt on Hitler that ultimately failed. The leaders of the conspiracy were summarily shot the same night in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock. Today, it's the German Resistance Memorial Center.
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Bergen-Belsen Memorial
The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lower Saxony was initially established as a prisoner of war camp before becoming a concentration camp. Prisoners too sick to work were brought here from other concentration camps, and many also died of disease. One of the 50,000 people killed here was Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who gained international fame after her diary was published posthumously.
Image: picture alliance/Klaus Nowottnick
Buchenwald Memorial
Located near the Thuringian town of Weimar, Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps in Germany. From 1937 to April 1945, the National Socialists deported about 270,000 people from all over Europe to the camp and murdered 64,000 of them before the camp was liberated by US soldiers in 1945. The site now serves as a memorial to the victims.
Image: Getty Images/J. Schlueter
Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims
Opposite the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin, a park inaugurated in 2012 serves as a memorial to the 500,000 Sinti and Roma people killed by the Nazi regime. Around a memorial pool, the poem "Auschwitz" by Roma poet Santino Spinelli is written in English, Germany and Romani. "Gaunt face, dead eyes, cold lips, quiet, a broken heart, out of breath, without words, no tears," it reads.
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'Stolpersteine' — stumbling blocks as memorials
In the 1990s, artist Gunter Demnig began the project to confront Germany's Nazi past. The brass-covered concrete cubes placed in front of the former homes of Nazi victims show their names, details about their deportation, and murder, if known. As of early 2022, some 100,000 "Stolpersteine" have been laid in over 25 countries across Europe. It's the world's largest decentralized Holocaust memorial.
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Brown House in Munich
Right next to the "Führerbau," where Adolf Hitler had his office in Munich, was the headquarters of the Nazi Party, called the Brown House. A white cube now occupies the place where it once stood. In it, the "Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism" opened on April 30, 2015, 70 years after the defeat of the Nazi regime.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Sven Hoppe
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Bringing the past to life
On Friday, seven new Stolpersteine memorials were installed in Hagen — including one for Catholic priest Heinrich König, who was a curate in the Hagen district of Emst before he was arrested in 1941 by the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police.
"He died in 1942 as a victim of human experimentation. His body was cremated. The funeral mass in Ernst was under surveillance by the Gestapo," a young woman says in a steady voice.
The audio recordings of König's story are provided in German, English and Dutch.
An additional document on the site provides a transcript of the recording, as well as gives a face to the victim — including pictures of König, the home where he lived in Emst, as well as the crematorium at the Dachau concentration camp.
Many of the Hagen memorials marked on the website do not yet have additional audio or visual stories, but the students are continuing to work on researching and painting a more detailed picture of the victims where they can.
One of the students, Svenja Brücker told WDR that it is "definitely moving" when people listen to the recordings of the victims' stories.
"It's something different than if you just hear numbers about how many people died or if you listen to individual stories," she added.