Stolpersteine: remembering Holocaust victims, one stumble at a time

Catalan photographer and communist Francesc Boix was born in Barcelona in 1920. In 1939, he was exiled to France, and two years later, he was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp. He was liberated from the camp in 1945.

This is how Boix is remembered on a Stolperstein, a small concrete cobblestone with a brass plaque that protrudes ever so slightly on the pavement of Carrer Margarit, 17, in front of his childhood home, engraved with the words “Aquí visqué” - “Here lived.”

The cobblestone measures only 10x10 cm and is part of a worldwide art project initiated by the German artist Günter Demnig in the 1990s to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust.

The project initially began as an art piece in Cologne in 1990 to remember the 50th anniversary of the ‘Auschwitz Decree,’ which ordered the deportation of Sinti and Roma people to Nazi concentration camps.

"Important for young people”

Five years later, the Stolpersteine project was born, and the first stones were laid in Cologne to commemorate all victims of the Nazi regime, including Jews, LGBT+ people, folks with disabilities, communists and resistance fighters.

The name means “stumbling stone,” and the idea is that passersby will stumble over the stones, bow down to read the plaque, and in that way pay their respects to a Holocaust victim or survivor.

During the installation of 21 Stolpersteine in the Catalan city of Manresa in 2017, Demnig told the Catalan News Agency that the project is “especially important for young people who want to know how this could happen."

There are currently more than 85,000 Stolpersteine around the world, with the vast majority being in Europe.

First Stolpersteine in Catalonia in 2015

In 2015, the town of Navàs, north of Barcelona, became the first place in Spain to lay Stolpersteine as part of Catalonia’s policy of democratic memory.

Five were laid in the town, one in memory of Ramon Sala Besa, the Republican mayor of Navàs during the Spanish Civil War. Sala was deported to Mauthausen and later killed in the Gusen concentration camp in 1942.

Since then, the project has grown, and there are currently 562 Stolpersteine across the territory.

Lluís Companys and Neus Català among Catalan recipients

The profiles of Ramon Sala Besa and Francesc Boix are common to Catalan victims of the Holocaust: A Republican or Communist during the Spanish Civil War who had been caught while in exile in France during the Nazi occupation in the 1940s.

A very prolific Catalan person who received a Stolpersteine in 2020 is the former Catalan president, Lluís Companys. After fleeing to France in 1939, he was captured by the Gestapo the following year before being handed over to Spain’s Francoist authorities and executed on the Montjuïc Castle.

Companys’ Stolperstein is placed in front of the entrance to the government headquarters in Barcelona’s central Plaça de Sant Jaume square.

Fortunately, some Catalan Stolpersteine recipients did not perish at the hands of the Nazi regime, as in the case of Neus Català. Her Stolperstein was laid in front of her childhood home in the southern Catalan town of Els Guiamets in 2018. She passed away one year later, at the age of 103.

127 Stolpersteine to be installed

In early February, the Catalan government announced plans to lay another 127 Stolpersteine in 28 Catalan municipalities this year. Of these, 22 will receive their first, while the other six already have one.

“With the Stolpersteine project, we are ensuring a personal and dignified tribute to those who suffered from the horrors of the past, keeping their memory alive for future generations,” said Jordi Font Agulló, the director of the Democratic Memorial, the Catalan government institution focused on recovering Catalan history in a statement in February.

The Stolpersteine project in Catalonia is ongoing, and the government encourages family members, organizations, and city councils to apply for one.