On September 8th, at the initiative of the Stolpersteine Völklingen Action Alliance, three additional Stolpersteine were laid in memory of people who became victims of the so-called euthanasia during the Nazi dictatorship. They were persecuted, deported, and murdered.
The Stolpersteine serve to draw attention to people whose fates have been forgotten for decades. The ten by ten centimeter cobblestones by the Cologne artist Gunther Demnig bear a brass inscription that provides the most important details from the life of the victim. "As a city, we are naturally obliged to maintain this culture of remembrance. That is why we support the work of the alliance and jointly set signs against forgetting and at the same time a memorial to our future generations that these crimes must never happen again," explained Mayor Christiane Blatt during the laying ceremony.
Caroline Conrad from the Stolpersteine Action Alliance reaffirmed these statements and described to those present the brutal manner in which the National Socialists acted and the fates that the victims and also the relatives of the victims had to endure.
The first Stolperstein was laid for Robert Müller at Hofstattstraße 72. Students from the Sonnenhügel Community School described the life story of the man, who was murdered in 1944 at the Hadamar psychiatric institution in Hesse, during the laying of the stone.
The second stumbling block was dedicated to Barbara Meyer, who was also transferred to several mental institutions and ultimately died in Hadamar in 1944.
The third Stolperstein in Völklingen was placed in Fürstenhausen, at Freiherr-von-Stein Street 31, for Alfred Köcher. He was only 15 years old before he was murdered in 1943 at the Hadamar State Institution.
In total, 30 stumbling stones have been laid in the Völklingen city area since 2012.
