c. 2006 Religion News Service

HAMBURG, Germany _ Crowbar in hand, artist Gunter Demnig sets to work on his latest memorial.

He pries five bulky paving stones from the sidewalk, scrapes the clumpy dirt underneath with his trowel, then pounds a small concrete brick into one corner of the hole he’s made. It’s capped with a simple brass plaque that reads:

Bela Anschlawski

Born 1939

Deported 1942

Auschwitz

The spot was once home to Hamburg’s German-Jewish Orphanage. But the children, some as young as 3, were all carted away to concentration camps in the 1940s. Allied bombs later laid waste to the building. All that’s left is a patchwork of asphalt and cobblestone.

Demnig hopes to keep the memory of the dead from being wiped away, too.

Over the last six years, the Cologne-based sculptor has installed 8,000 of these sparse memorials in sidewalks throughout Germany and Austria. Each of the four-inch square markers _ called “Stolpersteine,” or “stumbling stones,” _ is sheathed in rough-hewn brass and mounted on a six-inch concrete brick. Void of any artistic flourishes, each stone sits several centimeters above the surrounding pavement.

In some cities, like Hamburg and Cologne, it’s hard to walk far without tripping over one. That, Demnig says, is what separates his work from more imposing Holocaust memorials.

“It reminds people that the dead lived in their buildings, worked in their offices and attended their schools,” he says. “Otherwise 6 million is too big and abstract. People can’t make sense of it.”

Most of those who have gathered to watch him work today are astonished to learn that this scruffy lot was once an orphanage. “I’ve lived here 20 years and I had no idea,” says Tai Schlemmermeyer, 68. He looks around and scratches his head. Nothing but a few crumpled boxes and the sour stench from nearby dumpsters. “An orphanage, really?”

Demnig, 58, first glimpsed how little Germans knew about backyard history in 1993, when he painted a white streak through the streets of his hometown, Cologne, to mark the path the Roma, or gypsies, tread toward Nazi deportation trains. An elderly woman stopped to tell him, “no gypsies ever lived here.”

The artist decided that day that Germany needed a new kind of Holocaust memorial that recalled how close the horror was to home. But it was only seven years (and countless bureaucratic hurdles) later that he embedded the first batch of Stolpersteine in Cologne’s sidewalks. From there, the stones have spread to more than 150 cities.

Not everyone has welcomed Demnig’s creations. A number of people have balked at having them in front of their homes. One man even sued, saying they knocked 100,000 euros ($128,000) off his property value. The city of Munich has banned the Stolpersteine altogether.

“We already have many memorials,” says city spokesman Jurgen Marek. “People don’t need the stones to remember.”

Charlotte Knoblauch, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, has complained that they essentially invite people to “trample” the names of murdered Jews. And vandals in neo-Nazi strongholds have smashed dozens of stones to smithereens.

But the project has also spurred a groundswell. More than 500 people volunteer, many of them full time, to troll Gestapo lists and government archives and discover where Nazi victims once lived. And the wait to have a requested stone set _ available to anyone for 95 euros ($120) _ is more than a year in some places. Often, relatives travel from as far way as Israel, New Zealand and the United States to watch installations.

Demnig chisels a name in each stone by hand. “I want each one to be a work of art,” he says, “not an industrial production.”

Lately he’s been working 14-hour days. And when he works, the world around him fades.

His shirt caked with sweat and dust, he continues hammering in the Stolpersteine for the children, one by one. Between he wedges rough concrete blocks. Cameras hover and passersby clamor for his attention. But he doesn’t pay much heed. When all 31 stones are in place here, he sweeps powdered concrete into the cracks and buffs them with a soft, white rag.

Two hours later, the dedication ceremony begins, and more than 70 people turn out in their Sabbath finest. Cantor Arieh Gelber, a reedy man in a thick black fedora, sings Hebrew Psalms and says a pleading prayer: “Remember the generation of Jewish children that was reared for slaughter.” Then comes the reading of children’s names.

All around, faces wilt and people dab their eyes with tissue.

For most the dead are strangers, faceless innocents crushed by events. But not for Ruth Drager, who stands somberly amid the huddle. The orphanage was her home. She would have been hauled off to Auschwitz along with the others, on July 11, 1942, but her grandfather whisked her away at the last minute. She was the only one to make it out alive.

“It happened,” she says, looking down. “You can’t change it. You just have to accept it.”

When the ceremony is over, people line up to pay tribute, laying smooth pebbles on the fresh monument. Demnig, still in his grubby duds, hops into his car and revs up the engine. Tomorrow he has to install three stones for relatives of Hamburg’s mayor two hours away in Lubtheen. Then it’s on to Schwerin and Parchim and Steinfurt.

“I have to keep going,” he says with a shrug. “This is my whole life.” KRE/JL END BLAKE

Editors: To obtain photos of Demnig and the Stolpersteine markers, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.