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Loosening the Grid: Ideas for Mapping the Human Experience (IHS talk report)

Geographic Information Systems, or GIS, has become increasingly popular with historians because of its ability to visually present information and arguments that would otherwise be difficult to explain in text. However, not all history can be assigned a nine-digit number and placed on a map. “Loosening the Grid: Ideas for Mapping Human Experience,” the keynote address that kicked off this year’s Institute for Historical Studies (IHS) research theme of “Experiencing Place: Interrogating Spatial Dimensions of the Human Past,” questioned the ability of GIS to fully convey the human experience and offered some new ways to include more subjective data in geospatial practices.

Keynote presenters Dr. Anne Kelly Knowles and Levi Westerveld explained how testimonies from Holocaust survivors pushed them to find alternatives to traditional mapping via a method called coordinate geography and how their current work builds on their first experiments. Knowles, currently the McBride Professor of History at the University of Maine and co-founder of the Holocaust Geographies Collaborative, started out using traditional GIS to map historical events like the Battle of Gettysburg (view her TED-Ed talk here). She was eventually persuaded to study how to map experiences that cannot be reduced to straightforward grid coordinates. Together with one of her now-former graduate students, Levi Westerveld, a senior engineer at the Norwegian Coastal Authority, they developed a unique and ground-breaking “geographic language” to map these survivor testimonies.

IHS Director Dr. Mark Ravina opened the event by noting that while GIS can tell us a lot about specific locations and events, Knowles and Westerveld’s work is exciting because it “lies beyond conventional GIS” and addresses how “we map human experiences that don’t have geospatial data.” While extremely useful for understanding some parts of our world, Ravina pointed out that Knowles and Westerveld’s intervention comes from the inside – as historical geographers and devotees of the technology. They demonstrate that GIS can be “the wrong tool for massive parts of human experience.”

Teleconferencing from a small town in northern Norway, Westerveld opened the talk with a discussion of traditional cartography and some of the potential limitations that maps have for conveying the lived experiences of people on the ground. He said that while maps are a good way to deliver information, like changes to permafrost levels due to climate change, they often fail to inspire any larger actions because they “fail to connect with our imagination, our feelings, and our ability to put ourselves in the future that these maps are trying to present, and what this means for the human experience for the people living” in these locations.

Weswterveld’s presentation included some examples of his work on the human migration currently happening in the Mediterranean. He emphasized how changing the perspective and presentation of the information on maps can better tell the story of what is occurring on the ground and possibly reach the more emotional side of the viewer. Comparing one of his maps alongside a photograph from a failed immigration attempt, Westerveld said that he wants maps to inspire similar emotional connections as a way to foster broader social, political, or cultural change in the same way a photograph can: “I think there is room for creativity and innovation in the language of cartography for us to bring [the] geographical representation of space closer and more inclusive to the human experiences, not only for communication but also for analysis.”

Screenshot from the Holocaust Geographies Collaboration website,
courtesy of Anne Kelly Knowles *and Levi Westerveld*

Knowles acknowledged that she started the project without a background in Holocaust studies, history, or geography. However, being a leader in Historical GIS, she was contacted by the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. and was asked whether she thought “that GIS might be useful for studying the Holocaust?” She worked with the Museum, as well as other GIS and Holocaust experts, as they pored through millions of documents containing various geographic information. The result was a series of interdisciplinary workshops that created various maps focused on different scales – from the continental all the way down to individual bodies – that used geographic information to demonstrate spatial patterns.

The group produced many different and useful maps. Still, some members were frustrated with the inability to find the “people” in these maps – especially when the maps themselves were based on testimonies from survivors. To address these concerns, Knowles and Westerveld started to question how GIS and cartography, more generally, could represent the actual lived experiences of Holocaust survivors. Instead of building yet another database, Westerveld and other student researchers turned to more “old school” methods – physically drawing out timelines based on the testimonies, sometimes with markers and crayons, sometimes on chalkboards, and even once with Styrofoam and string. By going back to basics, the team could identify the type of spatial and temporal evidence that existed in testimonies.

A woman drawing a map, 1943. — “The basics” of map drawing: Private Arline MacKenzie is shown using a contour finder at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, circa 1943. The contour finder uses photographs to translate elevation into map contours. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

The team realized that many of the most important retellings from survivors centered on small spaces – sometimes even just a single room. They began to pour over the transcripts from interviews with survivors, highlighting all the mentions of space, often finding that important locations were based on places where the survivors could use all of their senses. This meant that locations where survivors spent more time often had more detailed information, even if that space was much smaller than what is traditionally required for mapping.

Attempting to balance scale and specificity, the team began to map testimonies in a way that was inclusive of the geographic data they found. They based their maps on mathematical topology. In mathematics, a topological space is a geometrical space, like a circle or square, where closeness can be defined but not necessarily measured with numbers – a great analogy for trying to map testimonies where the locations can be defined in relation to each other but not necessarily given a grid number.

Many of the maps look like what you would see in a biology textbook: circles filled with dots and other circles, some of which had fuzz or darkened clouds drawn on top. However, these circles represented the large but less specific locations in these testimonies, such as a city or large camp. The smaller dots could represent much more specific locations, such as a house or bedroom, and their location in relation to the other circles and dots represents their relative locations between each other and within the testimony. The final maps, then, represent less the geospatially correct locations you might see on a traditional map and focus more on what the survivors experienced, where, and the importance of these places to them.

*U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. Source: Library of Congress*

Knowles expands further on the importance of place between geography and survivor testimonies with her work on another collaborative project entitled Placing the Holocaust. Building on the experience of mapping testimonies with Westerveld, the project incorporates the named places in accounts and includes the important goal of identifying and analyzing “unnamed and non-coordinate places” that the team often saw in the previous project. With the help of machine learning, the testimonies will be coded for both named and unnamed places, “almost none of which, in this unnamed category, have been tagged in other transcript datasets.”

Screenshot from "I Was There" project — *Screenshot from “I Was There” project, Courtesy of Anne Kelly Knowles and Levi Westerveld*

Another aspect of the project looks much more traditional, with dots over a map of Eastern Europe in ArcGIS. Each data point represents a camp or ghetto and includes information about each site from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s authoritative encyclopedias. The goal, Knowles says, is for the two data sets to be combined or integrated: “What we want to set up is a dialog between the places of experience and the places as recorded largely in perpetrator data.” For instance, from the traditional map we learn that ghettos were more often surrounded by barbed wire than walls. Students or researchers interested in this aspect could then narrow in on testimonies of survivors and their memories of barbed wire, looking to see where these testimonies came from and their frequency in the record.

While GIS remains useful and important way of visualizing historical information, Knowles and Westerveld make it clear that there are still limitations to its use when it comes to representing the lived experience of the people who often make up those data points. It takes a fresh perspective and multidisciplinary approach to develop innovative methods that better represent how people actually experience spatial information. “Loosening the Grid” is just the start regarding how historians can better use geospatial techniques in their work and their telling of history.

Learn more about the keynote talk and presenters here.

You can also view the full discussion here:

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Justifying Genocide: Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to Hitler, by Stefan Ihrig (2016)

By Kelly Douma, Penn State University

Stefan Ihrig closes this book with a quote that encompasses his argument from Raphael Lemkin, the father of the word genocide: “Genocide is so easy to commit because people do not want to believe it until after it happens.” All the signs and symptoms of Nazi-perpetrated genocide existed throughout the decades leading up to the Holocaust, but were ignored by the greater public. Ihrig’s evidence takes the form of German reactions to the Armenian genocide. He argues that the pro-Ottoman nature of World War I Germany and the open genocide debate of Weimar Germany contributed to a “pragmatic” approach to “human rights, life, and liberty,” ultimately laying the groundwork for the virulent anti-Semitism of the Third Reich. Through extensive use of contemporary newspapers as well as court trials and military correspondence, Ihrig creates an image of German politics and culture beginning in the 1890s that makes the Holocaust seem – although still far from inevitable –a product of building tension rather than a sudden explosion of anti-Semitism.

Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter, 1930 (via Wikimedia Commons).

Ihrig begins his argument by elucidating an often overlooked connection in modern European history between the Jewish Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide. He does not attempt to compare their causes or results, but rather investigates Germany’s political involvement with the Ottoman Empire and Turkey both during the massacres of the 1890s and the genocide of the 1910s. From there he teases out an intricately woven political fabric connecting Germans and the Ottomans, resulting in a pro-Ottoman stance despite the rumors of anti-Armenian activity. He identifies several pro-Armenian Germans stationed in the Ottoman Empire whose correspondence stands against the bulk of material, which typically did not comment on genocidal activities. The most notable of these men was Max Erwin Scheubner-Richter, a German consul in Erzurum province. Scheubner’s correspondence, among others, helps Ihrig answer his question, “What could Germany have known about the Armenian genocide?” He finds that, in fact, the German military and government must have known nearly everything about the Armenian Genocide, although he does not go so far as to suggest that they were actively involved. He states that Germany knew what was happening, but was willing to “sacrifice the Armenians as the price of preserving Ottoman goodwill toward Germany.” This is a bold claim that has strong repercussions for the study of Germany in WWI and the interwar period.

After establishing German military and political knowledge of the Armenian Genocide, Ihrig tackles the much more difficult question: how much did the German public know of the Armenian Genocide and what was the cultural reaction to it? The second half of the book proves that Germans during the interwar period knew a great deal about the Armenian Genocide. Ihrig describes the emergence of a German cultural script that included pragmatic and extended debates on both the justification and the denial of the Armenian Genocide. Through intensive reading of German newspapers across the political spectrum during the interwar years, Ihrig defines what he calls “The Great Genocide Debate” of 1921-1923. His detailed analysis shows that pro-Armenian writers were consistently at odds with those who claimed the necessity of the Turkish reaction to the “Armenian problem” or reinterpreted the events to justify the genocide in terms of Armenian aggression. He also identifies two men, Franz Werfel and Armin Wegner, who wrote novels and open letters about the Armenian Genocide, but were ultimately too late to warn the German public about the genocidal capability of the Nazi party.

The German–Turkish Non-Aggression Pact was signed between Nazi Germany and Turkey in 1941 and lasted until 1945 (via Wikimedia Commons).

In the last section of his book, Ihrig finally answers the question that has been burning throughout his research: how did this cultural, political, and governmental response to the Armenian Genocide influence the events of the Holocaust? He could not be more clear in his answer. He states that the Nazis were inspired by the Armenian Genocide. He firmly critiques historians who argue that interwar Germany did not “come to terms” with the Armenian Genocide. Rather, he asserts, “Germany came to terms in a manner that we would perhaps not expect and cannot morally condone.” In his eyes, Germany recognized the events and, in a term he coined for this book, practiced a form of “justificantionalism,” or intellectual justification of the events of the genocide.

Deported Armenians leaving their town (via Wikimedia Commons).

Ihrig’s book is written for both experts of the field and general historical readers. The book leaves room for continuing research on the connections between Germany and the Armenian Genocide, such as why Germany was able to cross confessional lines to support the genocide of a Protestant Christian minority by a Muslim government. Ihrig also does not focus specifically on Hitler’s experience with the Armenian Genocide and instead assumes his knowledge of the events as a product of the developing cultural discourse and his position as an avid newspaper reader. This answer doubtless will not convince some readers of his connection and it could use further fleshing out. However, the work stands overall as a thorough treatment of to otherwise missed connection between the first and second acknowledged genocides of modern history.

You may also like:

The Tatars of Crimea: Ethnic Cleansing and Why History Matters.
Trauma and Recovery, by Judith Herman (1992).
The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 by Saul Friedländer (2007).

Review of The Anatomy of Fascism (2004), by Robert Paxton

When people think about fascism, two men come to mind: Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. However, as Robert Paxton shows in The Anatomy of Fascism, fascism was a practice that extended far beyond these two leaders. This is an original approach, as the majority of scholars focus on fascism as an ideology. Paxton instead examines fascism’s variations and focuses on fascists’ actions, and he compares them with other successful or unsuccessful versions of fascism. Paxton argues that fascism can be understood only through an examination at the local level. He builds his argument in stages by studying how these movements were created, how they were rooted in the political system, how they seized and exercised power, and if they were incorporated into the existing system.

Fascist propaganda in 1920s Italy. The text reads: "The misdeeds of Bolshesivm in 1919; the benefits of fascism in 1923." — Fascist propaganda in 1920s Italy. The text reads: “The misdeeds of Bolshesivm in 1919; the benefits of fascism in 1923.”
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Paxton argues that fascism is not like other political movements. It is not supported by any coherent philosophical system but is a product of mass politics invented only after the introduction of universal suffrage, the spread of nationalism, and the entry of socialist parties into coalition governments. Coalition politics disenchanted many workers and intellectuals, while many politicians did not have the skills mass politics required. After the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the foundation of an anti-leftist movement that could adopt elements of the Left’s mass organization was necessary. The aftermath of the First World War and, later on, the Great Depression were critical for fascism’s spread.

As it was not based on any political program, fascism used rituals and ceremonies to appeal to emotions. Paxton demonstrates that fascists were preoccupied with community decline and victimhood. They sought unity, purity, and nationalist mobilization and wanted unquestioned devotion to the community and its leader. Many fascists played an active role during the First World War, and they adored violence and sought to materialize the final victory of their chosen race or nation over what they saw as its inferior opponents.

Benito Mussolini in 1917, as a soldier in World War I. In 1914, Mussolini founded the Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria that he led. Via Wikipedia — Benito Mussolini in 1917, as a soldier in World War I. In 1914, Mussolini founded the Fasci d’Azione Rivoluzionaria that he led.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Explaining the anatomy of fascism, Paxton deconstructs the myth that fascist movements seized power by force. It was liberals and conservatives, frightened not by fascism but by the Left, who accepted fascists into their coalition governments and gave them the opportunity to govern. In Italy, despite the fact that the pan-Italian fascist march into Rome turned into a fiasco, the conservatives gave Mussolini the chance to enter into a coalition government. What the Italian fascists had proved was that they could successfully crush the Left, as they did in North Italy, for the sake of the local great landowners and with the help of the local state apparatus. Similarly, other European fascists tried to convince conservatives and businessmen that only they could handle the communists and protect the social and economic order. German fascists were successful in that task and came to power in the early 1930s with the help of German conservatives and businessmen. In Romania, where the Left was not an actual threat, conservatives not only did not need fascists, but they crushed their three coups.

German fascists created a structure parallel to the state apparatus, while the Italians relied mostly on the existing bureaucracy. The problem that both faced was their radical party members, who did not want the reestablishment of the old authoritarian regimes but a “permanent revolution” that would succeed in maintaining radicalization in the fascist regimes. However, Mussolini never succeeded in gaining absolute control over his party; he chose normalization rather than radicalization. Hitler, on the other hand, personally controlled his subordinates and promoted competition between them as to who would prove the most radical. Fascist radicalization reached its ultimate stage in Germany, and the Holocaust is an example of what that radicalization meant. Nazi policy on “inferiors” evolved from discrimination to expulsion and to extermination. Hitler’s subordinates in eastern occupied territories competed with each other in implementing the Final Solution and came up with even more extreme actions than the Nazi leadership required, which led to a chaotic situation during wartime. Ironically, although the war was promoted as a means to benefit the nation, it was a war that destroyed the fascist regimes.

*Munich Marienplatz during the failed Beer Hall Putsch, 9 November 1923. Source: Wikimedia Commons*

Paxton offers a thorough guide to fascism. In addition to earlier fascism, he also discusses the presence of fascism inside and outside of post-war and post-1989 Europe and argues that in all democratic countries, some citizens flirt with the idea of denying established freedoms to fellow citizens and social groups. He also reviews the various, but mostly short-lived, fascist or proto-fascist movements and parties in the United States and what he considers the paradox of not having a fascist movement against the Civil Rights movements in the 1960s.

Paxton’s study is crucial now, in an era of major freedom setbacks, massive xenophobia, and openly neo-fascist movements and parties gaining momentum and entering European parliaments and governments. As Paxton says, “[f]ascists are close to power when conservatives begin to borrow their techniques, appeal to their ‘mobilizing passions,’ and try to co-opt the fascist following.” That’s important to remember.

Charalampos Minasidis is a European Research Council Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Centre for War Studies at University College Dublin, working on “The Age of Civil Wars in Europe, c. 1914–1949” ERC Advanced Grant Project. His research explores Greek historical actors’ involvement in different European civil wars, the international influences on their thinking and actions, and their life trajectories from the early 20th century until the Greek Civil War. Charalampos completed his PhD in History at The University of Texas at Austin in 2023.

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The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Sound Maps: The New Archive (No. 6)

By Henry Wiencek

In the study of history, it’s easy to fall back on national identities: “Irish music,” an “English accent,” “American Exceptionalism” are just a few examples. But a closer examination of the local cultures—music, dialects, history—that exist within nations demonstrates how misleading those generalizations can be. Just look through one of the British Library’s “Sound Maps” and you’ll be convinced. This remarkable site takes many of the library’s 50,000 recordings of music, regional accents, and oral histories and arranges them geographically on Google Maps. The project is at once global and local—each sound map is an aural window into a unique part of the world. You can hear birds chirping in Algarve, Portugal, a folksinger perform in Carlistrane, Ireland, or the local dialect in Morton, Mississippi.

One of the most fascinating—and addictive—features on the site is “Your Accents,” a global map of the world’s seemingly endless variety of dialects. The map features recordings of people from across the globe reading the same English phrases, allowing listeners to discern how each locality articulates “scone,” “garage” and “schedule” among other richly pronounceable words. The most immediate differences are apparent along national lines, as English, Indian, American, and various other accents contour the words in unique ways. But the map goes even deeper—revealing the astonishing regional differences that exist within those nations. Although people from Brighton and Leeds ostensibly share an “English” accent, the sonic differences between them are vast.

Other sound maps use the same technology to tell far more sobering stories. “Jewish Survivors of the Holocaust” archives oral histories of that traumatic epoch. Again using Google Maps, the page arranges survival stories based on geographic origins: individuals from France, England, Germany, Poland and even Azerbaijan are all represented. These unique and deeply affecting histories underscore the striking heterogeneity of the Holocaust’s victims and survivors. They were rich and poor; came from big cities and small towns; and identified as religiously devout and irreligious. By mapping their oral histories, the British Library visually captures that geographic and experiential diversity. And by letting them speak, reinforces the kinds of variations that get flattened out or even erased when reading text on a page.

The British Library’s “Sound Maps” is an invaluable tool for anyone interested in hearing what the world sounds like. Cultural historians and preservationists will take particular interest in the collections of music and dialects—time capsules of old folkways quietly vanishing in a globalizing world. Readers may note the site’s emphasis on English speaking regions, especially the UK, but the geographic breadth of its collection remains deeply impressive. These maps do not just capture the sounds of the world, they capture its most compelling minutiae: the small town pubs, the remote jungles, and the fascinating people.

Explore the latest finds in the NEW ARCHIVE:

Charley Binkow on iTunes’s salute to Black History Month

And Henry Wiencek finds a new way of looking at Emancipation

Photo Credits:

Screenshot from “Your Accents” sound map (Image courtesy of the British Library)

Screenshot from “Jewish Survivors Of The Holocaust” sound map (Image courtesy of the British Library)

Quebecois lumbermen making music with a violin and sticks, 1943 (Image courtesy of National Film Board of Canada)

The Hadamar Trial: Inadequacies of Postwar Justice

By Madeline Schlesinger

Download “The Hadamar Trial”

The UT history department has announced that Madeline Schlesinger is the winner of this year’s Claudio Segre Prize, which recognizes each year’s best History Honors Thesis. For her award-winning project, Madeline researched the infamous Hadamar Institution, a German hospital in which Nazi officials undertook a mass sterilization and euthanasia program against “undesirable” elements of society. Madeline’s project specifically focuses on the legal proceedings that took place after Allied Forces discovered the facility and placed its personnel on trial for crimes against humanity. You can read her project’s abstract below or download the entire paper in the link above.

Abstract:

Throughout the Second World War, the Third Reich used facilities at the Hadamar institution to carry out the Nazi euthanasia program—an operation that targeted German citizens suffering from mental illness and physical disabilities. Just months after Allied victory and the American liberation of Hadamar, a United States Military Commission led by the young Leon Jaworski tried personnel from Hadamar for violation of international law in the murder of 476 Soviet and Polish forced laborers. The Hadamar War Crimes Case, formally known as United States of America v. Alfons Klein et al., commenced in early October of 1945 and figured as the first postwar mass atrocity trial prosecuted in the American-occupied zone of Germany.

Smoke rising from the crematoria at Hadamar, probably 1941 (Image courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

Hadamar Institute personnel socializing, sometime between 1940 and 1942 (Image courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

Although often overlooked in the shadow of the subsequent events at Nuremberg, the Hadamar Trial set precedent for war crimes trials and the rewriting of international law to include the charge of crimes against humanity. In its historical context, the Hadamar trial tells a story much larger than the conviction of seven German citizens. It tells the story of the Third Reich’s murderous euthanasia program, one of the United States’ first confrontations with the crimes of the Holocaust, the inadequacies of international law in the immediate postwar period, the impossibility of true retribution in the aftermath of Nazi atrocities, and the slow erosion of justice in the years following the war.

Three inmates of the Hadamar Institute soon after the U.S. military discovered the facility, April 5, 1945 (Image courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

Irmgard Huber, chief nurse at Hadamar Institute, after American soldiers liberated the facility (Image courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

My thesis aims to accurately depict the crimes committed at Hadamar, present the collision of German and international law during the proceedings, and prove the inadequacy of contemporary legal infrastructure to prosecute the crimes against humanity committed during World War II.

Gunter Demnig’s “Stumbling Blocks”

by David Crew

“Stumbling blocks” (in German, Stolpersteine) are unobtrusive reminders of the Nazi past.

These small squares of concrete (about 4 x 4 inches), covered with a thin brass plate, are embedded in the sidewalks of Berlin and hundreds of other German cities, as well as locations in other European countries. Each of these stones bears a simple inscription giving the name of an individual victim of the Nazi dictatorship who lived in the house or building in front of which the stone has been set as well as details about this individual’s fate. Most of the victims are Jewish but these stones also draw attention to the fate of Sinti and Roma, gay men and women, mentally or physically handicapped people, Jehovah’s witnesses, political opponents of the Nazis, and German soldiers who deserted at the end of the war.

These “stumbling blocks” are the result of a project started by a Cologne artist, Gunter Demnig, in the 1990s. Demnig wanted to bring the Nazi past out of the museum into the neighborhood and into the everyday lives of Germans and other Europeans. He thought the stones would encourage ordinary citizens to realize that Nazi persecution and terror had begun on their very doorsteps. By “stumbling” over the Nazi past of their own hometowns (metaphorically, not literally; the stones are actually not raised above the level of the surrounding pavement), ordinary citizens would be challenged to think about what it meant to live where victims of the Nazis had once also gone about their everyday lives. Inscriptions are short and can be brutal; one in Berlin reads “Paula Davidsohn (maiden name Katz) lived here. Born in 1905. Deported to Theresienstadt 1943. Murdered in Auschwitz.”

Demnig’s project asks Germans to take an active role in the reconstruction of the Nazi past of their own cities and localities. Demnig sets stumbling stones in the pavement only on the invitation of local organizations or groups of citizens who have developed an interest in his project and who have researched the histories of the victims who are to be remembered with these stones. Placing these stumbling stones has sometimes provoked controversy. Some homeowners argue that a stone in front of their property may lower its value, a few city governments have refused to give the necessary permission, and some Jews have questioned whether stepping on the names of the victims is an appropriate way to remember them. Yet, Demnig’s project is constantly expanding. In a recent YouTube clip, Demnig claims to have now set more than 23,000 stones in over 500 German communities. “Stumbling Blocks” has also become a European project; examples of this “decentralized monument” can now be found not only in Germany, but also in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Ukraine.

Compare the stumbling blocks to other Holocaust memorials:

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

Information Portal to European Sites of Remembrance

Photo Credits

Stumbling block commemorating Alfred Wilhelm Algner
James Steakley, via Wikimedia Commons
Students cleaning the stumbling blocks
Sigismund von Dobschütz, via Wikimedia Commons

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