Town near Dresden bans street memorials

Heidenau in Saxony has voted to remove stumbling stone memorials to Nazi victims from its streets. Councillors from the AfD and CDU supported the ban.

What are stumbling stones?

Since the nineteen nineties, small brass plaques called Stolpersteine have been embedded in streets across Europe to remember Jews and other Nazi victims. They are often placed outside where victims lived or worked.

Education Minister calls decision a scandal

Karin Prien, Germany's Education Minister and a CDU member, told newspaper Bild the ban was a scandal. She said it prioritises death over life and renders Jewish people invisible.

“Anyone who banishes Stolpersteine and memorial sites commemorating Jewish life from public spaces to the cemetery is prioritising death over life and rendering Jewish people invisible once again.”

Holocaust survivor opposes the move

Charlotte Knobloch, a Holocaust survivor and president of the Jewish Community in Munich, called removing memorials from the cityscape completely the wrong approach. She said decentralised remembrance in public space is crucial.

“decentralised remembrance, which is not banished from public space but, on the contrary, permeates and shapes it was crucial to a genuine culture of remembrance.”

Artist expected this outcome

Gunter Demnig, who initiated the Stolperstein project, said the ban was to be expected given recent AfD electoral successes in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

“given the recent electoral successes of the AfD it was certainly to be expected that something like this would happen.”

AfD's rise in eastern Germany

Some branches of the AfD are classed as right-wing extremist by German intelligence, a designation the party rejects. Its anti-immigration and Russia-friendly agenda has found support in former communist eastern regions.