‘Pained and extended discussions have transpired in Europe, in Japan, and in the United States over potential and actual memorials and monuments commemorating World War II, the Holocaust, and the atomic bomb. Should such memorials be literal or abstract? Should they honour the dead or disturb the very possibility of honour in atrocity? Should they be monumental, or instead disavow the monumental image, itself so associated with Nazism?’
— Martha Minow Between Vengeance and Forgiveness 6
Aisling O’Carroll
Demnig’s project resolves this dilemma simply by focussing on the individual and creating a memorial that is immediately comprehensible and phenomenologically accessible. The remembrance creates a public narrative of home and family. 7 The strength of the collective memorial is not dependent on there being stones laid for every single victim of the Nazi regime, instead the memorial acknowledges the ‘scalelessness’ of the tragedy and builds this quality into its own expression. It is impossible to comprehend exactly the collective memorial – one cannot know in a single moment every single stone that has been laid as part of the memorial.The scale and entirety of Stolpersteine is understood in the way that one comprehends historical memory.
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