Today is the International Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Holocaust, the same day that the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp was liberated in 1945. Around six million Jews and millions of other people were murdered by the German Nazi regime and its accomplices.
A project to honor and remember those who were killed uses small stones made of brass.
It is physically hard work, and perhaps just as mentally taxing. Five days a week, eight hours a day, Michael Fredrich-Friedlander hammers names onto brass plates. Names of people murdered during the Holocaust.
It gets stuck in your head, he says. After a day’s work, he has to take a walk or sit for a while in silence before he can go up to his apartment above the workshop where he lives with his wife.
On the brass plates are names, date of birth, date of death and the place of the murder. You can often read out tragic family fates – parents who were murdered first in Buchenwald, the children a few years later in Auschwitz. Stories from one of the darkest chapters in human history, retold in a few words on brass.
Around 100,000 stones have been produced
The brass plate is mounted on a paving stone, called Stolperstein or “stumbling stone” in Swedish.
Michael estimates that he has made about 80,000 of the total of 100,000 stones made so far. Despite the hard work, he plans to continue. It is his way of remembering the Holocaust and his hope to prevent something like it from ever happening again.
“These people have no grave; they don’t have a cemetery,” he says during an interview with TV4 Nyheterna, from his workshop on the outskirts of Berlin.
Right now, Michael thinks work is more important than ever. A party in the German Bundestag has discussed “remigration” in secret meetings – that people who are not considered German enough in any way should be forced to leave the country. He also mentions an increase in anti-Semitism, wars around the world and a growing divide between people.
He turns and continues his work, hammering in name after name. He is aware that he will never be able to honor all the millions of people who were murdered, but he will continue as long as he can.