Europe24 September, 20262 min read
Heidenau Council Backs AfD And CDU To Halt New Stolpersteine Holocaust Memorial Stones
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Heidenau, Saxony, approved banning future Stolpersteine installations. The move was backed by AfD and CDU in a joint motion.
Heidenau ends new plaques
Heidenau’s town council in eastern Germany approved a motion to stop installing new Stolpersteine, or "stumbling stones," to commemorate people persecuted and killed by the Nazis. The council’s secret ballot produced 13 votes in favor, six opposed, and one abstained, and the decision came after members of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and local civic group Oberelbe backed the proposal.
The motion said future commemorations would focus primarily on a site in the town’s northern cemetery rather than on sidewalk plaques, and local authorities discussed creating a central memorial for victims of war, terror, dictatorships and expulsion with emphasis on victims of National Socialism. German artist Gunter Demnig launched the Stolpersteine project in the 1990s, and each plaque is a 10-by-10-centimeter brass memorial embedded outside the last freely chosen homes or workplaces of people persecuted, deported or murdered under Nazi rule.
CDU, AfD, and backlash
The Reuters account said Heidenau approved the motion by the AfD and the ruling centre-right CDU to reject future installation of brass plaques commemorating victims of Nazi persecution, and it said the decision concentrated commemorations at a memorial site on the town’s northern cemetery. Charlotte Knobloch, president of a Jewish regional association in Bavaria, told the Funke group of newspapers, "I am appalled that a democratic party has chosen to support such a transparent manoeuvre by the extremist AfD."
The Reuters report said the approval ran counter to a recommendation from the city administration, and the city administration said, "A blanket ban on future Stolpersteine is neither necessary for the creation of a central memorial nor justified by the proposal itself." The DW account said the ban passed with CDU and AfD voting together to stop installation of new memorial plaques bearing the names of Holocaust victims, and it said Felix Banaszak described the move as "a scandal."
Demnig vows to continue
Gunter Demnig, who started the Stolpersteine project in the early 1990s, rejected the argument for moving commemoration to a cemetery, and he said remembrance must be visible where people used to live. Demnig told DPA that "After the electoral successes of the AfD, something like this was completely expected," and he said he hoped the Heidenau ban would remain an exception.
Demnig pledged to "push on now more than ever" with his work, and he accused the center-right CDU of abandoning Christian values by saying the party of Chancellor Friedrich Merz "should maybe drop the C" from their acronym. Christoph Heubner, the executive vice president of the International Auschwitz Committee, said the decision was "a transparent and despicable attempt to drive Nazi victims in Heidenau out of the city once again" and criticized the cooperation between CDU and AfD on the issue.