The story of stolpersteine lives on

Last week I finally got to writing a blog post I got the idea for back in January from a series of e-mails I exchanged with my archaeology professor Dr. David Gradwohl.  The post looked at the ongoing story about Anne Frank, recent archaeological research in Poland, and the stolpersteine (or stumbling stone) memorials to those murdered during the holocaust.

Then this morning a Facebook post from Prof. Bonnie Stewart at Cal State – Fullerton gave me my second look at these stolpersteine in less than a week.  The story from NPR’s Code Switch blog looks at how last week’s white nationalist/ne0-nazi protests in Charlottesville, VA looked to someone currently living in Berlin.

NPR reporter Maggie Penman writes that Germany has managed to find a way to both remember Germany’s role in World War II without seeking to glorify its Nazi past:

Often the argument for preserving Confederate statues and allowing Confederate flags is that we should not forget our history. In Germany, Nazi buildings are extremely hard to come by — nearly all have been destroyed. Yet Germany certainly has not forgotten anything: There’s just a recognition that remembering and memorializing are two different things.