German town bans stumbling stone memorials to Nazi victims

A town council in eastern Germany has voted to remove "stumbling stone" memorials honoring victims of the Nazis from its streets, prompting sharp criticism from national officials and Jewish community leaders.

Councillors in Heidenau, a town near Dresden in the state of Saxony, decided that the small brass plaques known as Stolpersteine should no longer be embedded in public sidewalks. Under the measure, passed with support from the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), future memorials will instead be placed at the town's Nordfriedhof cemetery, according to BBC News. The text of the motion argued that the change would ensure people could not physically step on the memorial markers.

Stolpersteine have been installed across Germany, Austria and other European countries since the 1990s, typically set into pavement outside buildings where Jewish residents and other victims of Nazi persecution once lived or worked. The plaques are largely funded through public donations and are designed so passersby encounter them unexpectedly, prompting reflection on the history tied to that specific location.

Germany's federal education minister, Karin Prien, condemned the Heidenau decision as a "scandal" in comments to the newspaper Bild, according to BBC News. Prien, herself a CDU member, said pushing the memorials out of everyday public view and into a cemetery amounted to prioritizing death over life, and risked making Jewish history invisible once again. She added that her own party's branch in Saxony shared responsibility for backing the move.

Charlotte Knobloch, a Holocaust survivor who leads the Jewish Community in Munich, also criticized the council's action, telling the Funke Media Group she found it the wrong approach. She said she was troubled that a mainstream democratic party would align itself with what she described as a maneuver orchestrated by the AfD. Knobloch noted that she personally is not an advocate of Stolpersteine as a memorial format, but stressed that keeping remembrance woven into everyday public life, rather than confined to a cemetery, is essential to genuine historical reckoning. She pointed out that Munich itself does not permit Stolpersteine on municipal land, opting instead for memorial plaques on buildings.

Gunter Demnig, the artist who created the Stolperstein project, said he had anticipated that a move like Heidenau's could happen given the AfD's recent gains at the ballot box, according to BBC News. The party has been classified as extreme-right by German domestic intelligence in Saxony, a label the AfD disputes. It has also posted strong results in recent state elections in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, part of a broader pattern of support for its anti-immigration and Russia-friendly platform in Germany's former communist east.

The Heidenau vote adds to ongoing debate in Germany over how the country should continue to memorialize victims of the Holocaust and Nazi-era atrocities, particularly as the AfD expands its influence in local and regional politics.