“Stumbling Stones”

All over Europe, German activist and sculptor Gunter Demnig has installed more than 100,000 brass-plated “stumbling stones” (or “Stolpersteine” in German) with the names of Holocaust victims in the sidewalk in front of their former homes to commemorate them. About 7000 are in the Netherlands, with some 700 in Amsterdam. Demnig started engraving them by hand in 1995, but since then, the project grew so fast and became so vast that he now works with other artists to make sure no victim is forgotten. Demnig refers to the Talmud to explain why he is passionate about his project: “A person is not forgotten until their name is forgotten.”

Due to Covid restrictions, the 75th Memorial Day speech in 2020 of Dutch King Willem-Alexander took place on an empty Dam Square in Amsterdam. The King talked about the culpability of the “bystander,” and even admitted that his own grandmother, Queen Wilhelmina had perhaps not done enough.

The same May 2020 speech of the Dutch King pointed out that “Sobibór started in the Vondelpark,” referring to the culpability of the Dutch who had looked away first when their Jewish fellow-citizens were no longer allowed to enter the Vondelpark, and later when they were taken to death camps like Sobibór. The speech prompted activist Niels van Deuren to place a mirror at the entrance to the park there were once the sign “Forbidden for Jews” had been. The title, “Sobibór-What Are You Going to Do?” refers to a poem by Gerrit van der Veen, the Resistance Fighter who forged ID cards for Group 2000 (–of which Truus Wijsmuller and Kairos’ girlfriend Anne-Sophie were members as well). Van der Veen had also participated in the bombing of the Amsterdam Civil Registry Office in March of 1943.

Reina Prinsen Geerlings

Reina Prinsen Geerlings (pronounced /Ray-na Prrin-san Ghayrr-langs/) was a half-Jewish rather precocious girl who attended the Barlaeus School (which Kairos and Trudy attended as well). She was a passionate girl who galvanizing fellow-students for the February Strike of 1941, and later got involved in the militant resistance group CS-6 of the Boissevains.

She and Louis Boissevain took the blame for killing pro-Nazi Police Chief Pieter Kaay. Years after her execution by the Nazis, her parents finally learned about her heroic death. Due to Reina’s literary aspirations, her parents instituted a literary prize, the first of which went to literary icon Harry Mulish (who wrote among others The Attack ). Mulish famously stated, “I am the second world war” because his mother was Jewish and his father a collaborator.

Gracing the wall of Reina Prinsen Geerlings Street 28, a plaque commemorates this Resistance Hero of CS-6 with a poem she wrote before her death:

“Alone amidst misery I stand

with hands and feet of lead,

for there around the corner lurks

my own imminent death.

My God, why did you desert me?

So that when you’ll go,

you’ll truly know

what it means to be human.”

Ik sta hier in het midden der ellende

mijn handen en mijn voeten als van lood

zie daar om gindse hoek begint reeds de dood

mijn God, waarom ben ik verlaten

opdat je beter zult gaan,

opdat je beter zult verstaan

wat het wil zeggen mens te zijn