Located in the West Berlin district of Charlottenberg, the elegent Giesebrecht Straße is the only street in the German capital where Stolpersteine, or memorial stones, have been laid for every single Jewish resident deported by the Nazis. Before World War Two, Berlin was home to roughly half of Germany's half-a-million Jews. 60,000 of them were victims of Nazi deportation between October 1941 and March 1945. Stolpersteine, concieved of and designed by the artist Günther Demnig, is one of the most successful Holocaust commemoration projects throughout Europe. To date, close to 50,000 stones have been laid in 17 countries. About half of these are found in cities and towns throughout Germany (although famously and controversially not in Munich, although that is starting to change). In Berlin alone, there are over 5,000 Stolpersteine. To visit Giesebrech Straße, whose 116 Stolpersteine glisten from beneath 21 imposing pre-war buildings,  is to be confronted with the loss of Jewish community and life on an intimate scale.

Stopping in front of #18 is especially arresting. Among the 22 Jews who lived here prior to deportatation was the street's oldest Jewish resident, Franziska Harczyk who was 83 when she was dragged to Therensienstadt, as well as the street's youngest, Zilla Schlesinger, not even a month old when she was murdered at Auschwitz along with seven other members of her family.  

The residents' initiative, which was completed on May 8, 2011, 66 years after the fall of Nazism, is an uncommonly powerful reminder of how Jewish a city Berlin was before the war.  Please click on the individual photos for further information, as I intend to give equal weight to the both the pictures and the captions. 

My fascination for Stolpersteine has also inspired a short story, which can be found here.