Under Our Feet

This morning I had an early appointment with a friend. He was stuck in traffic, and while having a smoke and waiting for him I took a closer look at a brass plaque embedded in the sidewalk. I’ve seen these all over Hamburg a million times, but like most things on the sidewalk, I’ve always just stepped on or over them and rarely stop to examine one.

The inscription reads:

Here lived / JULIUS COHN / Born 1886 / Deported 1941 / Murdered / Minsk

Obviously it and the three other plaques around it are memorials to Jews who once lived in the building I was waiting in front of.

A strange coincidence. The biggest news story today in Germany, splashed across the front of every newspaper in the country, is author and intellectual Gunther Grass’ admission that he was a member of the Waffen SS during World War II, and not a “Flakhelfer” as he’d claimed for decades (informative article at the Int’l Herald Tribune, sensationalism at Time). I’m no WWII buff, and I’m not looking to be flippant, but his turnaround is like admitting, after decades of saying you were in the house next door when the murder occured, that you actually gave the gun to the murderer.

Now Lech Walesa is demanding Grass give up his honourary citizenship in Danzig, many are calling his Nobel Prize into question, and debate is raging.

Update: Ulf on Polanoid explained that these plaques are an artist’s project. There’s a web site all about them, unfortunately only in German.