Statement by Ruth Reinecke

A Stumbling Stone for my Uncle Aron

Stumbling stones bear witness to life that has been wiped out. They pay tribute to people who were persecuted and murdered, because the murderous politics of the National Socialists targeted them as worthless life to be systematically destroyed.

I live in Berlin in the Bavarian quarter and am surrounded by countless stumbling stones. These signs are there so that we do not forget the many neighbours who disappeared. A stumbling stone placed in front of a house or on a square reminds every one of us of the life that it represents, a life that was uprooted.

My mother’s family lived in Nuremberg, a Jewish family, one of many. Through anti-Semitism and persecution, the family was torn apart and destroyed. Not everyone could save themselves. Therefore, I was unable to get to know my uncle Aron.

My mother Emma, who during her student days joined the anti-fascist resistance in Hamburg, went into exile, in France and England. Thus, she was able to survive. Of those who survived, she was the only one who went back to Germany, to Berlin.

During my childhood I sensed the loss experienced by my family on my mother’s side. Something was missing. Only in the course of the years that followed did I come to understand what had happened. A consequence was the laying of the stumbling stone for my uncle Aron Cohn.

At roughly the same time, my cousin and my daughter, together with the younger branch-family of Aron Cohn, also laid a stumbling stone in front of his last place of residence in Amsterdam. From there Aron and his wife Gitella were brought to Westerbork.

It was important to me to lay a stone in Nuremberg. It was here that the expulsion began.

Our stone belongs to the project of artist Gunter Demnig, to the stumbling stone surface monuments that you find all over Germany and Europe. That is a good feeling.

Ruth Reinecke, April 2021