It was a coincidence that in 2010 I came across Gunter Demnig’s artistic remembrance-project. His “stumbling stones” seemed to me an appropriate attempt to confront the history of one’s own ancestors and that of the city. My late grandmother played as a child in Nuremberg’s castle district, visiting her aunty there, and spoke a lot about it. This relationship to the city of Nuremberg kept on obtruding itself, although I myself never lived in Nuremberg.

However, I had no concrete connections, no other reference points in my family history, no link to any particular location. For such a case, I found the offer from the artist important – to engrave “stumbling stones” with the names of people whose fate is documented but where biographical details are missing. They provide information about the lives of people who had almost been forgotten, because the dreadfully efficient extermination machinery of the “Third Reich” had erased all traces of them. For these reasons it is particularly important to preserve these details… “Never again” requires memories. Although I am now today more aware of the debate concerning the tangible forms remembrance culture can take, I believe that “stumbling stones” are justified and beneficial.

Laying these two stumbling stones was for me the beginning of a deeper investigation into the history of the city and Germany. I got to know some of the very few Jews who survived. I was able to hear their accounts at first hand, and these eclipsed everything I had read.

Now the era of contemporary witnesses is coming to an end. However, the duty to remember, to warn and to act remains. This is a direct personal challenge for me, for all those in the City of Human Rights and in our constantly changing municipal community. I hope that I will also be able to make in the future a contribution to ensure that the Shoa is not relativised, forgotten or interpreted in any way other than that what it was: an unspeakable singular crime against humanity.