First Stolperstein. Installed on 16 Dec 1992 in front of the City Hall in Cologne , Germany.
Over the past 30 years the team of German artist Gunter Demnig installed over 100,000 Stumbling Stones – ‘Stolpersteine’ – across 26 countries in Europe – the world’s largest memorial.
Demnig’s Stolpersteine are small, cobblestone-sized brass memorials for the victims of National Socialism. Set into the pavement of sidewalks in front of the buildings where Nazi victims once lived or worked, they call attention both to the individual victim and the scope of the Nazi war crimes.
The very first Stolperstein, was installed on 16 December 1992 in front of Cologne City Hall , with Heinrich Himmler’s order for the initiation of deportations of all Roma (Gypsies) :
„Auf Befehl des Reichsführers SS vom 16.12.42 – Tgb. Nr. I 2652/42 Ad./RF/V. – sind Zigeunermischlinge, Rom-Zigeuner und nicht deutschblütige Angehörige zigeunerischer Sippen balkanischer Herkunft nach bestimmten Richtlinien auszuwählen und in einer Aktion von wenigen Wochen in ein Konzentrationslager einzuweisen. Dieser Personenkreis wird im nachstehenden kurz als ‚zigeunerische Personen‘ bezeichnet. Die Einweisung erfolgt ohne Rücksicht auf den Mischlingsgrad familienweise in das Konzentrationslager (Zigeunerlager) Auschwitz.“
Notes
Photo : First Stolperstein at the Cologne City Hall, Germany. Photo Jan. 1, 2008, by Willy Horsch, CC-BY .
Filmmaker Rudolf Breslauer also filmed two of his children in the Westerborkfilm…
Stefan (left) & Ursula Breslauer, children of Rudolf Breslauer, the filmmaker of the Westerbork film at the farm of Camp Westerbork in 1944 – identified by the dutch photographer Sake Elzinga, who received Breslauer’s family photo albums last year when the family of Ursula – the only survivor – visited an expo on Breslauer in the Westerbork museum in the Netherlands.
Camp commander (SS-Obersturmführer) Albert Gemmeker ordered the Westerbork film , made by the German Jewish prisoner, photographer, Rudolf Breslauer in the spring of 1944.
Today 80 years ago – March 5, 1944 – the camp is an ‘Arbeitslager’ – a work camp – when Rudolf Breslauer starts filming the daily life of the Westerbork prisoners — inside : in the barracks, for example a religious service, cabaret, workshops, factories, aircraft and battery recycling, medical care, and outside the barracks : construction of a greenhouse, a football match, women working out, chopping wood, incoming transports, and eventually also the departure of a deportation train. After Breslauer films the deportation of Jews, Roma and Sinti to Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz on May 19, 1944 the filming stops. The haunting image of the 9-year-old dutch Sinti-girl Settela, standing in the closing doors of the goods train, and the unique footage of that deportation train that leaves the Westerbork camp, became iconic after the war.
Deportation Breslauer family
Werner Rudolf Breslauer , his wife Bella Weihsmann, sons Stefan and Max Michael (Mischa), and daughter Ursula were deported autumn 1944 from Westerbork to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. Only Ursula survived.
Stefan & Ursula Breslauer in Westerborkfilm | 20240305 | Settela•Com | Frame 127475 from Westerbork Film 🎦 2021 | 20220302 | Settela•Com | ISSN 2949-9313 | Footage filmed by Rudolf Breslauer in 1944, courtesy of NIOD | Sound and Vision
Scene with Stefan & Ursula Breslauer, starting at 56:13 in the 1986 RVD edition of the Westerborkfilm: Stefan & Ursula Breslauer in Westerbork Film RVD | 20240305 | Settela•Com | URL https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxfNzA72JeGgVoOFp_VTI4EQQr3yTwXu6_
Settela Film | 20220630 | Michel van der Burg | Settela•Com
Deportation Westerbork Film | 20210719 | Michel van der Burg | Settela•Com
‘Entartete Art’ 1935 – Coleman Hawkins & Leo de la Fuente in Holland
American saxophonist Coleman Hawkins announces and plays – accompanied by Leo de la Fuente on piano – on his tenor saxophone ‘I wished that I were twins’.
In 1934, Coleman Hawkins left the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra and Amerika, moved to Europe, and joined the Jack Hylton Orchestra in England. Hylton and his band made regular ‘continental’ tours, and started another European tour January 1935 accompanied by Coleman Hawkins in Holland. At the end of January 1935 Hawkins joins the dutch band The Rambers … for 8 days … because Hawkins was denied entry to Germany because of his race, while Hylton and his band continued their tour without him and play for eight days at the Berlin Philharmonic Hall.
To end this special week with Hawkins well, the bandleader of The Ramblers – Theo Uden Masman – arranged with Decca for recordings 4 february 1935 in Pulchri Studio in The Hague, Holland, including this : I wish I were twins…that was also recorded on film by Polygoon (Polygoontoon) for the dutch cinema news for next week .
Coleman Hawkins is accomponied here on film by the dutch jazz pioneer Leo de la Fuente on piano , playing ‘I wished that I were twins’ . After the recordings, Hawkins moves further into Europe.
Leo – Leonard Henriques – de la Fuente, who was born Jewish in Amsterdam 28 March 1902, was deported by the nazi’s to Auschwitz on 2 November 1942, and died 30 April 1944 ‘somewhere in Mid Europe’.
Citation : ‘Entartete Art’ 1935 – Coleman Hawkins & Leo de la Fuente in Holland | 20231123 | Settela•Com | ISSN 2949-9313 | TakeNode 4f388407-5ccc-4816-aef6-6064fcee35b2
Silent film — Towards the end of World War I – in the summer 1918 , after the Allies defeated the Germans in the Second Battle of the Marne – large groups of Belgians and French refugees flee in front of the retreating enemy force to the neutral Netherlands.
The Dutch army and Red Cross prepared to receive a possible 100,000 evacuees in the border towns in the south of the Netherlands.
After wandering weeks in the north of France , and next crossing Belgium on foot, the first group of French refugees arrived at the Dutch border October 20, completely exhausted.
At the gate in the electric wire fence at the border to the Netherlands – the so-called ‘Death Wire’ (dutch : Dodendraad ) Dutch soldiers took them over from German escorts.
Some refugees had travelled by tram part of the route crossing Belgium to the belgian border town Molenbeersel.
At the dutch border the refugees were welcomed and ladies from relief committees provide the refugees with food and drinks on the road to Stramproy in the Netherlands.
Within days , thousands of French refugees arrive in the village of Stramproy and are transferred to the city of Weert .
On arrival in the city center of Weert the dutch army registered people and handed out soup and bread.
The weak, the sick, and maternity women were cared for by the Red Cross and taken to an aid post for further care.
The refugees were sheltered the night in buildings like convents and schools in Weert, before being housed elsewhere in the country the following days.
References
Source (video footage) : Belgische vluchtelingen 1e Wereldoorlog. Open Images | Beeld & Geluid (Sound &Vision).
Weert en het einde van W.O.-I. | Jan Henkens | Stichting Historisch Onderzoek Weert | URL http://www.showeert.nl
Pilgrims on 50th year celebration pilgrimage at the Gaza wall visiting the bomb shelters, and the Path to Peace mosaic creation upon the border wall – that divides the Gaza Strip and Israel – adjacent to the homes of the settlement Netiv HaAsara, Friday Oct 6th, just hours before the attack Saturday morning Oct 7th 2023 by Hamas terrorists infiltrating Netiv HaAsara using paragliders, going from house to house, killing 15 people and injuring many more.
Today – Oct. 12, after days of waiting – the pilgrims are finally evacuated in Tel Aviv, getting a return flight safe back home.
Images from the Westerborkfilm have been used countless times in documentaries and films about the Second World War. Here images screening in the virtual opera PUSH – based on the story of Simon Gronowski – an 11 year old Jewish boy who was pushed from the train – Transport XX – by his mother on the way to Auschwitz — Video clip https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxsM6Rj_HB0xEh4TksbjhIm4EzY81dc4H0
A virtual performance, during the April 2020 Corona virus lockdown, of the epilogue of the community opera PUSH , entitled : Ma Vie N’est Que Miracles | My life is only miracles – hosted by composer Howard Moody. It premiered on the night of the 19th April 2020, exactly 77 years after three Brussels resistance heroes stopped the Nazi train Transport XX, transporting 1600 Jewish deportees to Auschwitz, and more than 200 prisoners escaped from the train before the German border. Info : michelvanderburg.com/2020/04/19 .
