Art News

German Artist Gunter Demnig Revives Names of Holocaust Victims

BERLIN (AP).- Artist Gunter Demnig carefully pried a cobblestone out of the sidewalk on Friedrichstrasse in downtown Berlin and replaced it with a shiny square brass plaque. “Davisco Asriel lived here,” the inscription read. “Born in 1882. Deported 25.1.1942. Murdered in Riga.” It was the latest of more than 25,000 such plaques that Demnig has installed across Europe in front of the homes of people later killed in the Holocaust. He calls his works “Stolpersteine,” or stumbling stones, and says that with his art he wants to bring back the names of the millions of Jews, gays, resistance fighters and Gypsies who perished at the hands of the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. “The victims get back a piece of their identity and at the same time, every personal stone is also meant as a symbol for the entirety of all victims,” said the 62-year-old