Today, Thursday, two Stolpersteine were laid for Anna and Moritz Reissner at Strausberger Straße 1a in the Herzfelde district - the couple's last freely chosen place of residence. In 1939, they fled to Shanghai via Berlin to escape persecution by the National Socialists.
Both Stolpersteine were laid personally by the inventor of the stones, Gunter Demnig. According to his own information, around 95,000 stones in many European countries now commemorate the victims of the National Socialists. The stones invite people to commemorate in front of the last freely chosen residences of the victims.
While Demnig laid the stones, Stephan Wapenhans opened the event with a song performed in Yiddish. Sabine Franke, the longstanding head of the Stolpersteine working group at Heinitz-Gymnasium, then welcomed the 40 or so people present. In her speech, Mayor Sabine Löser emphasised the special value of the Stolpersteine, which give the victims their names back - even if some of them had already disappeared from the collective memory of those living here. In this context, the mayor expressed her wish that the working group would continue and pledged the support of the municipality.
Pupils from the Stolpersteine working group then recited the biographies of the Reissner family, who ran a textile business in Herzfelde, and talked about their escape. After a final poem, white roses were laid at the stumbling stones.