Golden plaques in the floor are also intended to commemorate victims of National Socialism in Erding.
It starts in 2022.
Erding
- The confrontation with National Socialism has received intense attention in Erding for some time. This is mainly thanks to the historian Giulio Salvati, who devotes himself to the Hitler dictatorship without blinkers, but also without zeal for burden. His forced labor exhibition is currently on view in the Erding Museum. Now Salvati is daring to tackle a new topic together with fellow historians: In Erding, too, small, gold shimmering memorials in the floor are supposed to commemorate the victims of the Nazi era - the stumbling blocks known from many other cities that contain the names and dates of the murdered people.
Salvati, deputy museum director Elisabeth Boxberger and Katharina Keßler presented the project to the city council - and received applause from all factions. Keßler reported that the stumbling block idea has been pushed since 2019. After all, it is the “largest decentralized art project in Europe”. The stumbling blocks pursued the goal of “commemorating the victims exactly where they spent their everyday lives”, namely in public spaces, for example near their homes or workplaces. The murdered Jews and Gypsies, the victims of euthanasia and many other groups whose lives were dismissed by the Nazis as unworthy are remembered.
In Erding, Keßler hopes, “we can lay the first stone in 2022”. The stumbling blocks do not ask the question of why, but of what - “what did these people have to die for?” The stones should not only stimulate reflection in Erding, but also in the districts. “Our goal is to make the fate of the victims known.” And whoever wants to read the stones “has to lean forward, so also bow”. At the same time, they are a "memorial against racism and anti-Semitism today".
Boxberger reported on the research, "in which one is repeatedly moved by fate".
For Erding, the intention is to commemorate each group of victims with a person.
However, the source situation is difficult, "many traces have now been lost," said the deputy director of the Erding Museum.
Research has been carried out in many archives, not least in that of the city of Erding.
But baptismal registers and family books have also been evaluated and support has been asked from the Documentation Center in Dachau and the Israeli memorial site Yad Vashem, among others.
With the appearance in the city council, so Boxberger, one begins the course to the public.
A round table and projects with the Erdinger schools are planned.
"We can still use fellow campaigners," she asked for support.
Salvati reported that there were also euthanasia victims in Erding, i.e. people who were only murdered because of a disability.
Three cases are known.
But Erdinger Jews were also killed in the concentration camps, as were prisoners of war and foreign forced laborers.
A stumbling block, announced Salvati, will remind of Sophie and Leopold Einstein, who lived on the Lange line.
At the age of 42 and 43, they were killed in the Lublin ghetto and in the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
Pierino Riccio, who lived in the Eichenkofen camp and, among other things, worked in the air base, will stand for the memory of the forced labor.
Lord Mayor Max Gotz (CSU) praised that forced labor, thanks to Salvati, has been a topic of conversation in Erding for weeks and that it is attracting a “considerable public”.
Salvati was delighted after the meeting: “It is really very astonishing how quickly the processing in Erding has picked up.” He would never have thought that it would be so easy to draw the citizens' interest to the latest research. Recently, several events had taken place to commemorate the forced labor, including a rally in Erding, at which the foreign workers literally got a face again - on greatly enlarged index cards from the Nazi era.