Heidenau’s council voted Thursday to ban new Stolpersteine—brass Holocaust memorial plaques—from public roads and pavements, drawing widespread criticism. The motion said many relatives consider them inappropriate because passers-by walk over them.
Stolpersteine are small brass plaques embedded in pavements, usually outside a victim’s last known home, bearing the names and fates of Jews and others persecuted by the Nazi regime. The cross-party motion was brought by councillors from the far-right AfD and Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s CDU; it said remembrance should preferably move to Nordfriedhof cemetery on Heidenau’s outskirts.
Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor wrote “I’m ashamed,” noting that some Stolpersteine in Germany recall the fates of his family members. Education Minister Karin Prien called the vote “a scandal” and said moving places of remembrance of Jewish life to cemeteries would make Jewish people “invisible once again.”
