It sounds like Handworks was a great success — Congratulations to all!
We’re sorry we missed out on all the fun, but as mentioned in an earlier post, we had a scheduling conflict. The story starts a couple years ago (well, our part of the story — the real story starts in 1939 when Linda’s father fled the Nazis) and I wrote about it briefly here. Instead of Amana, Iowa, we found ourselves once again in Themar, Germany, this time for the placing of Stolpersteine in front of the house where Linda’s father, Manfred, and the Rosengarten family lived prior to their flight. Their journey took them to Shanghai, China, the only haven for refugees at that time. But that’s another story altogether.
The Stolpersteine project is the work of Gunter Demnig, an artist and social activist. He started with his first installation in 1997 and sometime next month will have placed 40,000 of these simple, elegant memorials to victims of the Holocaust. His Stolpersteine have been installed in several countries in Europe, making the project the world’s largest memorial. He places or supervises the placement of each stone and was there in Themar to install these four.
We were warmly received by the city of Themar, Burgermeister Hubert Bose and Themar Trifft Europa (Themar Meets Europe). My thanks to all of our new friends there for so graciously embracing this project.
The Sharpening Blog 