Tales from Stumbling Stones
Translation/adaptation from Polish to English: M.KRAKOWSKA
New Holocaust memorials for Jewish German architect Paul Ehrlich and his family have been unveiled in the yard of the Shalom Aleichem Jewish elementary in Wrocław. The memorials recall forgotten history of former German city of Breslau and its Jewish citizens.
In Wrocław’s district of Krzyki, located in the southern part of the city, communist-era architecture dominates city’s landscape. Brutal shoe- box apartments complexes and modernist blocks define city’s historical narrative that old prewar German architectural designs can’t conform. The architectural blend of old and new.
In the postwar years, many of these old German houses were destroyed or modified. But others were allowed to age undisturbed, waiting to be taken care of.
Like a one old, magnificent house on Jastrzębia street. The mansion, built in 1905, was owned by a famous and prolific Jewish- German architect Paul Ehrlich who lived there with his wife Elisabeth. A sculptural monogram of their names is placed at an entablature height above the main entrance.
Ehrlich (1870–1943, has together with his brother Richard, designed many buildings in Breslau before 1933. He dove into the task of designing a.o. Jewish cemetery on Lotnicza Street (1902) or the historic White synagogue and buildings for the Jewish religious community that include magnificent ritual bath. White Stork synagogue is the only synagogue in Breslau that escaped the torches of Kristallnacht of 1938.
This was a century of violent social and political changes. After the outbreak of World War Two, Ehrlichs have ignominiously lost their home. Richard, Paul, Elisabeth and Margarete were deported to the concentration camp in Theresinstadt (today in Czech Republic) where they all died.
Their house was orphaned.
At first, the abandoned villa served as interim accommodation for Jews awaiting deportation to concentration camps. Later, during the Siege of Breslau in 1945, it was used as a medical facility by the Soviet Army.
It is yet unclear who resided the mansion after the war. Some believe that a communist secret service was operating from there for a while. Others claim that military officers lived there because of the military court- also designed by Paul Ehrlich- which is situated nearby the villa.
Before the mansion was converted into a Jewish school, it served as an education facility of the Cracow-based Theatre Academy, which is the legal owner of the estate.
Stolpersteine
At the end of May, the students have unveiled four Stolpersteine dedicated to Paul Ehrlich, his wife Elisabeth, brother Richard and their sister Margarete.
Dan and Steven Phalk, who are Ehrlich’s distant relatives, and accidentally were in Wrocław, have also attended the ceremony.
Stolpersteine, or stumbling stones, are the largest ‘decentralized’ Holocaust memorial in the world. The project, created by the German artist Gunter Demnig in 1992, commemorates the victims of the Nazi extermination policy: Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, mentally disabled, and all the conscientious objectors of the Hitler’s regime.
The Ehrlich memorials differ from original Stolpersteine.
“Our children have designed the memorials themselves. They have created the templates. They have painted them”- Agata Gołubna, chairwoman of the AH Foundation tells Deutsche Welle. AH Foundation is a non- profit organization for the preservation of Jewish- German heritage and history in Wrocław.
“Usually, people install a cube with a brass plate inscribed with the name and life dates of victims Nazi extermination or persecution”, she explains. The children from the Shalom Aleichem Elementary have chosen paving plates in the schoolyard instead.
Stolpersteine are always placed in front of the victims’ homes. They intend to provoke thoughts about victims’ identity, articulating their history, and thereby intruding passersby memory into everyday life. The blocks are an allegory of the past, present and future.
First Stolpersteine were installed in Cologne in the 1990s. In Poland, passersby can stumble on them in Wrocław and Słubice (Frankfurt Oder).
Today, there are at least a dozen Stolpersteine in Breslau.
And the Ehrlichs Stolpersteine arouse nostalgia after Jewish Breslau and its citizens who are long gone. They bring former inhabitants and their history thrillingly into life.
A farewell…
The four-storey villa has been granted preservation status by local bodies.
But not only the conservator oversees the mansion. Also the children at Shalom Aleichem Elementary take care of the Ehrlich house. They work in the garden, they show their guests around, almost never referring to it as “school”, and calling it their home instead.
There is an ethical value in a moral compensation in all of that. The Ehrlichs were a childless couple. The unveiling and commemoration have a generous and humane sensibility which has awakened an aspect of Wrocław’s history that was beginning to languish.
Yet at the same time, the ceremony was also a farewell to their home.
The owner of the villa has raised the rent so dramatically, that the school can’t afford paying it. In August, the Sholem Aleichem will be scrapped, and its students relocated to other schools in Wrocław.
Gołubna regrets that the local government has not showed interest in buying out the property, despite a legal right of pre-emption.