Berlin memorials recall deaf Shoah victims

June 18, 2009

http://jta.org/news/article/2009/06/18/1005966/berlin-memorials-recall-deaf-shoah-victims

BERLIN (JTA) -- The installation of several new "stumbling block" memorials throughout Berlin recall deaf Jews persecuted in the Holocaust.

Several members of this nearly forgotten sub-category of victims were remembered this week, with the installation of "stumbling block" memorials. Privately funded, they consist of bronze plaques set into the cobblestones in front of buildings where Holocaust victims lived before being deported. The concept for the memorials was developed by German artist Gunter Demnig; they have now been installed in cities throughout Germany, and in other countries as well.

A major memorial dedicated to deaf Jews is unlikely, the director of Germany's Holocaust memorial said Wednesday.

Uwe Neumaerker, director of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, said deaf Jews were "a small minority among many others" persecuted during the Holocaust, so a separate memorial is unlikely. But "we would like to see knowledge about them increase," Neumaerker said at the presentation of a new book on the subject

The book, "Overcoming the Past," published in English by the Signum Verlag in Seedorf, grew out of a conference on the history of deaf Jews in Nazi Germany hosted by the Humboldt University in Berlin, and organized by Mark Zaurov, president of the Association of Deaf Jews in Germany.

At the recent installation, neighbors stopped to watch, and to talk - with the help of a sign language interpreter - with Zaurov.

One woman, Michaela, wanted to know in which apartment in her building the Jewish family had lived. "If you 'stumble' on these stones, you think about what happened," she said.