Remembering our history
We never want to forget the event-filled, solemn history in and around “Haus Nazareth”.
Holocaust Remembrance Day
The 27. January was designated by the United Nations General Assembly on 1 November 2005 International Holocaust Remembrance Day. This day commemorates the tragedy of the murder of 6 million Jewish people, 200,000 Romani people, 250,000 mentally and physically disabled people, and 9,000 homosexual men by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. For the past years, our sister organization, “Philosophia Europa”, has been host to a memorial service held in the stairwell of “Haus Nazareth” by the Inge Deutschkron Foundation [link in German] in memory of the Jewish residents of the Haus that lived here up until the beginning of the Holocaust, when it was a Jewish home for the blind.
Reflecting on this year’s (2018) memorial service, Dr. Clark Peddicord wrote down three lessons:
1. Edmund Burke was a British philosopher and politician who opposed the treatment of the American colonies by Britain during the time of the War of Independence. Considered the “father” of principled conservatism, he is best known for the quote:
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
2. God through His prophets warned the nations to be careful how they treat the Jewish people:
“He who touches you touches the apple of (my) eye…”, he said. (Zechariah 2:8)
God is the sovereign ruler of all things and the evil of the Third Reich ultimately came crashing down in ruins. But God does not exempt us from our responsibilities; we are accountable to hold up our candles against the darkness. Even when it seems there is no hope.
3. Edmund Burke also warned that, in the face of evil, people of good will must unite across partisan political lines and social divides. Only then is there any hope of good prevailing. He argued:
“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”
“Stolpersteine” (Stumbling Stones)
Now, there are 28 “Stolpersteine” (Stumbling Stones) placed in the front sidewalk of “Haus Nazareth”. On 1. September 2018, we witnessed the laying of the last seven “Stolpersteine” (Stumbling Stones) in memory of Jewish residents of “Haus Nazareth” who perished in the Nazi terror and death camps of the Holocaust. (The Haus was a Jewish home for the blind before the so-called “Third Reich”.) The artist Gunter Demnig installed the commemorative brass plaques in the front sidewalk. Demnig refers to the saying in the Talmud that “a person is only forgotten when his or her name is forgotten” when he embeds the “Stolpersteine” in front of the last voluntary residence of the person who once lived there. Each memorial begins with the words: “Hier lebte…” (HERE LIVED…). One “stone”. One name. One person… to help make sure…. “Never again!”