Every “stumbling stone” memorial to local residents of the eastern German town of Zeitz who fell victim to the Holocaust was apparently ripped from the pavement on Monday by unidentified perpetrators.
Stumbling stones, called “Stolpersteine” in German, can be found across Germany and elsewhere in Europe. They are small brass plaques the size of a small cobblestone placed in front of the last place where identified Jewish people and others persecuted by the Nazi regime once lived.
The plaques are inscribed with the names of victims as well as what is known of their fates.
In Zeitz, local officials noticed on Monday that all 10 of the stumbling stones in the town were missing. The day marked the one-year anniversary of the deadly October 7 attacks on Israel.
A town spokesman said a criminal complaint has been filed with police, who are investigating the crime as well as possible political extremist motivations.
According to police, the stumbling stones are believed to have been stolen overnight between Sunday and Monday, although the last confirmed sighting of the memorials in place was on Friday.
Zeitz is a town of just over 30,000 residents.
The act was “unforgivable and never excusable,” wrote Götz Ulrich, the district administrator of Burgenland, which includes Zeitz. “Anyone who does this also wants to tear the Holocaust out of our memory culture.”
Gunter Demnig, the German artist who started the effort to place stumbling stones across the country and had laid many of the plaques himself, said there have been repeated incidents of theft.
To date, around 112,000 Stolpersteine have been laid in 32 countries around the world. According to Demnig, around 900 have been stolen.
He pointed to two incidents that both occurred around the anniversary of the Nazi-led Kristallnacht pogrom against German Jews on November 9, 1938. In 2012, all the stumbling stones in the northern city of Greifswald were stolen, and seven years ago at least 16 stumbling stones were stolen in the Berlin district of Neukölln.
Demnig said he saw a clear connection with the October 7 anniversary and the theft of the stumbling stones in Zeitz.
But he said the gaps in the pavement will not remain long. He vowed to replace the missing stumbling stones and relay them in Zeitz as quickly as possible.
The Stolpersteine for Zeitz initiative, a group of local residents that formed in 2006 to place the stones in the town, has called for a walk next week to all 10 locations where the small memorials were torn out.
