Stolpersteine, a dream realizes itself
“My feet find unerring the paths my mother, my father, my grandparents, cousins,
great aunts, uncles took. Feet need no translation. They relax, recognize. They know homeland.
I vow to get a Stolperstein for grandma Klara, whose name I hold between the arms of my first and last name.” (excerpt from The Lost Notebook) to be published and launched April 3, 2025 in Vienna)
Years ago began the process to lay memory stones at the last addresses:
For my mother Else Pappenheim and her mother Edith, where they lived until the Nazi regime forced them out.
Luckily my mother came to the USA, but her mother had to return to Germany where she joined her sister and brother-in-law in Bonn.
Where Veronal took them into eternal sleep. Together. Rather than be degraded, then murdered in a camp.
Klara Frischauf, my paternal grandmother, and her sister. Frieda Altmann, friends with Edith lived in another neighborhood.
Taken, put into a collection apartment, then shoved into sealed train wagons to be shot naked into a killing pit outside Riga, Latvia.
I know nothing about the other murdered tenants, Rosa Blum and Georg Pollack, residents of the same buildings, but honor them too.
