: "Here lived Ida Arensberg. née Benjamin *1870 – deported 1942. Murdered in
Theresienstadt on 18.9.1942" are always installed at the last place that the person chose freely to reside, work or study, with exceptions possible on a case-by-case basis. In cases where the actual houses were destroyed during
World War II or during later restructuring of the cities, some have been installed at the former site of the house. By the end of 2016, Gunter Demnig and his co-workers had installed about 60,000 stones in more than 1,200 towns and cities throughout Europe: •
Germany (since 1992) •
Austria (since 1997) •
The Netherlands and
Hungary (since 2007) •
Poland and
Czech Republic (since 2008) •
Belgium and
Ukraine (since 2009) •
Italy (since 2010) •
Norway (since 2011) •
Slovakia and
Slovenia (since 2012) •
France,
Croatia,
Luxemburg,
Russia and
Switzerland (since 2013) •
Romania (since 2014) •
Greece and
Spain (since 2015) •
Belarus (since 2014) •
Lithuania (since 2016). •
Finland (since 2018) •
Moldova (since 2018) •
Denmark and
Sweden (since 2019) •
Serbia (since 2021) •
Bosnia and Herzegovina (since 2024) •
Jersey and
Guernsey in the Channel Islands (since 2024)
Netherlands Since 2007, Demnig has frequently been invited to place in the Netherlands. The first city to do so was
Borne. As of 2016, 82 have been installed there. By January 2016, in total, more than 2,750 have been laid in 110 Dutch cities and townships, including
Amsterdam,
The Hague and
Rotterdam, but particularly in smaller cities like
Hilversum (92 ),
Gouda (183),
Eindhoven (244),
Oss and
Oudewater (263 each). In March 2016 Demnig was in the Netherlands again, placing stones in Hilversum, Monnickendam, and Gouda, and Amsterdam. In the latter city he placed 74 stones; 250 had already been placed, and there were requests for 150 more.
Czech Republic In the Czech Republic, the work on started on 8 October 2008 in
Prague Today, are found across almost the entire country. As of January 2016 the exact number of has not yet been established, but the main work was done in the larger cities, including Prague,
Brno,
Olomouc and
Ostrava. There are also in the small cities of
Tišnov (15) and
Lomnice u Tišnova (nine). One of them commemorates
Hana Brady, who was murdered at the age of 13. Since 2010, a in
Třeboň also commemorates her father.
Italy . They were harbored there from 1943 until they were captured outside the institute on 5 April 1944. The blocks read "Qui trovò rifugio" – "here found refuge". They were murdered in Auschwitz on 23 April 1944. Work in Italy began in
Rome on 28 January 2010; there are now 207 (in Italian called "pietre d'inciampo") there. In 2012, work continued in the regions of
Liguria,
Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol and
Lombardy.
Veneto and
Tuscany joined in 2014,
Emilia-Romagna in 2015,
Apulia,
Abruzzo and
Friuli-Venezia Giulia in 2016,
Marche in 2017. In Italy, marked differences are observed, as compared to other countries: many are dedicated not only to Jewish people and members of the political resistance, but also to soldiers of the Italian army who were disarmed, deported to Germany, and made to work as forced laborers there. They were given special status, so that they were not protected as
prisoners of war under the
Geneva Conventions after Italy left the coalition of the
Axis powers after 8 September 1943.
France In
France where 75,000 Jews were deported to the concentration camps, initial efforts to install were rejected. Notably, after a year-long campaign in 2011 led by a schoolgirl, Sarah Kate Francis, in the coastal town of
La Baule-Escoublac (where 32 Jewish residents, including eight children, were deported), the councillor in charge of relations with patriotic organisations, Xavier de Zuchowicz, refused to allow a request for to be installed, claiming that to do so might infringe the French constitutional principles of secularism ("laïcité") and freedom of opinion ("liberté d'opinion") and that they would therefore need to consult the
Conseil d'État, France's constitutional court. In fact, contain no reference to the religion of the victim who is commemorated, and 'freedom of opinion/expression' has never been invoked in either French or European jurisprudence to justify the refusal to commemorate individual victims of war crimes. The Mayor of La Baule has consistently refused to elaborate on his reasoning, and there is no record of the Municipal Council of La Baule having sought a declaration from the Conseil d'Etat in respect of these objections. The first were installed in France in 2015 in
L'Aiguillon-sur-Mer in the
Vendée.
Other countries have also been installed in
Spain,
Sweden,
Switzerland and the
United Kingdom, though these countries were never
occupied. In Spain, a large number of
Republicans who fled to France after
Francisco Franco's victory were caught by the Nazis after they had invaded France, and were either handed over to the
Vichy regime, or deported to
Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. About 7,000 Spanish people were held prisoner there, and were subjected to
forced labour; more than half of them were murdered. The survivors were denationalized by the Franco regime, and became
stateless persons, who were denied any form of recognition as victims, and deprived of any reparation. In Sweden, since 2019, the few remember Jewish refugees who escaped there only to be captured by German spies and taken to the camps. In
Helsinki,
Finland, there are seven to honor Austrian Jewish refugees who had arrived in the country but who were given over to the Gestapo in November 1942. They were taken to Auschwitz and only one of the eight people survived. In
Dublin,
Ireland, six (unveiled in 2022) commemorate six
Irish Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust:
Ettie Steinberg, her Belgian-born husband Wojtech Gluck and their son Leon Gluck, who were all murdered at
Auschwitz in 1942; Isaac Shishi, killed at
Viekšniai, Lithuania in 1941; and siblings Ephraim and Jeanne (Lena) Saks, murdered at Auschwitz in 1944. Shishi and the Sakses were all born in
Dublin but moved to continental Europe before war broke out. In November 2022 the first in the UK was installed in
Golden Square, Soho, London, commemorating Ada von Dantzig, who was murdered at
Auschwitz in 1943 after she returned to the Netherlands, to rescue her family, who also became victims. Even in countries where no are installed, such as the United States, the decentralized monument of the has attracted media attention. ==
Stolperschwellen: "From here..." ==