ritas kleine welt

a few years back on QI, stephen fry quipped, 'sometimes there's just not enough vomit in the world.'

i have just spent some four hours on the phone with friends and we were mutually at our whits' end and we three kept repeating the same phrases over and over again. 'i am lost for words! i can't form a coherent thought!'

a quick search query on deviantART with the words 'cute nazi' returned a staggering number of 1,365 hits. that is discounting an unchecked number of nazis and fascists on there promoting their 'art' and helping deviantART fill their own pockets by passively lending a platform to these people. they seem to fall into two categories: dumb girls between the age of 14 and 18 who truly think that mengele was as cute as a button and göbbels just your average kind of misunderstood adorable sweetums of a guy. and then there are the hardcore, die-hard, true neo-nazis who wank to american history x and send their love to deary adolf. yeah, the last time i visited a concentration camp i smiled with glee. especially when i remembered that spread in country&style and suddenly realised that good german oak makes for a hell of a good barrack for outings over the weekend.

most of all i am disappointed and disgusted by the owners of deviantART, though, for supporting antisemitism on the web by lending these people webspace for free!!! i had once thought of opening an account there. not so much now. i won't stoop so low and associate with such people who piss on the millions of graves filled on account of nazis cheerully wanking over human suffering in the most painful, most dreadful way unimaginable.

deviantART, you truly have revealed yourselves as the sad bastards of this passing year!

with the help of a diagramme and a photograph of the surrounding area provided by maria a., i tried to find the stolperstein dedicated to the memory of susanne aizen in löhrs carree last week. on that occassion, i literally stumbled across a new block located directly in front of the entrance to the sparkasse. it's really odd. when i started looking out for stolpersteine last year, it was really difficult spotting them. now it appears that i have acquired a certain 'eye' for them. i remember looking for the stolperstein for dr. cohn at the nordplatz and walking by it again and again and again until i found it. this time, i spotted the bronze stone for menni buchsbaum already from far away. (walking through london is rather irritating for that matter, because much of the pavement is littered with yellow plastic plaques every couple of metres.)

on a recent trip to halle, maria a. found the following three stolpersteine in commemoration of the frankenthals and provided the photos. thank you very much for your contribution!

yesterday, i received an email from sabine who took a picture of a pair of stolpersteine on her walk through the nikolaiviertel in berlin.

thank you very much for your contribution!

the other day i had asked for some help photographing stolpersteine, especially the ones that are located outside germany. a very friendly dutchman sent me some photos. at one point i should perhaps start mapping the homes and the names that have been given back to the people by installing the stones.

thank you very much, ruud, for participating in documenting the stolpersteine of europe! (find ruud's profile and some of his other images here.)

a fellow member on the photography community site, woophy, read an entry i posted about my project of collecting images of stolpersteine. suzan was so kind to provide me with a picture she took in fritzlar. there are a few blog entries on the web about the installation of some of the stolpersteine, but unfortunately, i could not find biographies of the family baruch who are commemorated by these stones.

on our strolls through birgit's neighbourhood in berlin on wednesday and thursday, we encountered many stolpersteine. quite a few were recently installed. they were all shiny and reflected the sun in such a way that they almost looked white. however, some of the older stones have not received proper attenion and are either dirtied over or even have dents. i still don't know why people who live in houses with stolpersteine in front don't take better care of them.

on a related note, on 9 april a number of new stolpersteine will be installed across a number of locations in leipzig.

commemorating the victims of the reichspogromnacht 70 years ago, six new stolpersteine have been installed next to the eutritscher straße by the westin hotel. the original house where the family zellner lived was destroyed and has been replaced by a car park. but now their names and their home are being called back into the memory of the people who pass by that place.

it was on my way to the uni earlier this week that i discovered the the stones commemorating the family zellner.

as mentioned in the entry from earlier today, s. and i went on a bike tour across the north-western to south-western part of the city centre of leipzig to look for stolpersteine. suffice to say we found too many. the really depressing point was discovering the first stone in commemoration of a killed infant, flora prinz.

over the past few days, i had asked several people if they could provide examples of stolpersteine for the blog. and the first person very helpfully contributed her photographs already. alley took pictures of no less than 27 stolpersteine in hagen yesterday. find her report bellow the pictures. this is depressing. finding so many, even of children, within a walk's distance.

on our mutual stroll through night-time leipzig, s. and i found a number of stolpersteine.