Heidenau imposed a Heidenau Stumbling Stone ban on new Stolpersteine on public streets after the CDU voted with the AfD. The decision stops new memorial plaques bearing the names of Holocaust victims from being installed in the town and raises the question of where remembrance will now be placed.
Stolpersteine are concrete cubes with metal plaques on top that bear the victim's name. Gunter Demnig started the project in the early 1990s, and most of the 128,000 Stolpersteine are in Germany, with others in 30 other countries affected by the Nazi regime.
Gunter Demnig on Heidenau
Demnig, 78 years old, rejected the ban and said remembrance must be visible where people used to live. He said, "After the electoral successes of the AfD, something like this was completely expected," and added that he hoped the Heidenau ban would remain an exception.
He also said he would push on now more than ever with his work. On the CDU, he said it should maybe drop the C "because they have dropped Christianity already."
CDU and AfD vote
The initiators of the ban argued that passersby walk over or step onto the names of the victims. They suggested honoring Holocaust victims at one of the city's cemeteries instead, moving the memorials away from public streets and into a separate place.
That choice is what set off the sharpest criticism. Felix Banaszak called the move "a scandal." and said everything must be done "to keep alive the memories of those who were persecuted and killed."
International Auschwitz Committee response
The International Auschwitz Committee said the CDU support for the motion was scandalous. Christoph Heubner said, "This is a transparent and despicable attempt to drive Nazi victims in Heidenau out of the city once again and dispose of them where, according to the AfD, their memory has belonged a long time ago — at the cemetery".
That leaves Heidenau with a local rule that changes where new remembrance markers can appear, while the dispute over the CDU's vote with the AfD stays fixed on one practical issue: whether Holocaust memory belongs on the streets where victims once lived, or only in a cemetery.
