(JNi.media) Munich’s City Council on Wednesday upheld a decision to ban brass bricks commemorating Jewish victims of the Holocaust on city streets, in response to the city’s Jewish community’s insistence on repeating this practice.
According to dalje.com, the vast majority of council members voted to keep enforcing the ban after some Jewish community leaders argued these “stolpersteine” — German for stumbling blocks — were an inappropriate form of remembrance because people would step on them.
Thousands of these bricks can be found in every German city, placed in sidewalks outside buildings where Jewish victims of the Nazis used to live. Each brass block features victims’ names, dates of birth and information about their fates.
The council decided to erect a central monument downtown Munich, which will list, like the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC, all the names of Munich’s Jewish victims. The council also approved placing plaques on the walls of individual houses where German Jews once lived.
The vote took place after the opposition Greens party submitted a motion to end the ban, imposed in 2004, citing some Jewish groups who value the stones as a form of commemoration.