Commemoration of the victims of the Reichspogromnacht: Humboldt-Universität sets an example of remembrance

To mark the anniversary of the Reichspogromnacht on 9 November 1938, the HU Presidential Board, together with representatives of the Student Parliament (StuPa) and the Referent*innenrat (RefRat), cleaned the stumbling blocks in front of the main building of the University, Unter den Linden 6, and laid flowers. With this gesture, the university members want to keep the memory of the victims of National Socialism alive and send a clear signal against forgetting. ‘During the National Socialist era, Jewish students and researchers were also threatened and persecuted at our university. The stumbling blocks in front of our entrance portal remind us of their fate every day. We have a responsibility to keep the memory of the people who were victims of National Socialism alive and to take consistent action against anti-Semitism and all forms of discrimination,’ emphasised Julia von Blumenthal, President of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

The night of 9 to 10 November 1938 marked the beginning of an escalation of violence and the systematic persecution and murder of Jews in National Socialist Germany. Synagogues, shops and other Jewish institutions were vandalised and set on fire. Jews were persecuted, deported and murdered.

The Stumbling Stones commemorate people who were persecuted, expelled and murdered by the National Socialists between 1933 and 1945. They are small concrete blocks that are set into the pavement in front of the last freely chosen place of residence of those persecuted by the Nazis. The name and fate of the person being commemorated can be read on a brass plate on the top. The project launched by Gunter Demnig in 1996 now has more than 100,000 stones in 31 European countries.