German town’s memorial stones for Nazi victims are stolen on Oct. 7 anniversary

Ten stones that memorialized victims of the Holocaust in a German town were discovered to be missing on Monday, the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israel.

Residents in the eastern German town of Zeitz woke up to find that all of the town’s “stumbling stones,” called “Stolpersteine” in German, had been dislodged and stolen. The brass plaques had been lodged between cobblestones in front of the houses where Jews lived before the Nazis deported and killed them.

Stumbling stones like those in Zeitz have been placed across Europe and serve as a memorial to Jews and others persecuted by the Nazis, listing their names, birthdates and what is known of their fates — including their arrests, deportation to concentration camps and death.

In November 2023, weeks after the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas War, four stumbling stones that marked the residences of Jews in Rome were defaced with black paint or burned.

The stones stolen from Zeitz were laid in various locations across the city, which has just over 30,000 residents. They commemorated the lives of Siegfried Fürst; Bertha Mendelsohn, née Bachmann; Emma Esther Mendelsohn, née Bachmann; Siegfried Mendelsohn; Dr. Gustav Flörsheim; Hilda Flörsheim, née Hamburger; Ingeborg Flörsheim; Auguste Lewy, née Hesse; Hermann Blumenthal; and Lydia Blumenthal, née Weissmann.

The city of Zeitz and the Stolpersteine for Zeitz initiative have organized a fundraising campaign to replace the stumbling stones and planned a memorial march for Oct. 19 that will pass all the locations of the stolen stones.

Zeitz officials reacted with horror at the missing stones. Götz Ulrich, the county governor, called the crime “unforgivable and never excusable” in a statement on X on Tuesday. “Whoever did this also wants to tear the #Holocaust out of our #CultureofRemembrance,” he wrote.

Zeitz Mayor Kathrin Weber said, taking the date of the vandalism into account, she saw it as clearly “politically motivated” and called it “an attack on our democracy.”

Sebastian Striegel, a member of state parliament from the Green Party, also posted images of places where the stumbling stones were ripped from the ground. In coordination with the Zeitz Alliance for Diversity and Democracy and the Stolpersteine for Zeitz initiative, Striegel said he is offering a reward of 1,000 euros for information that leads to the arrest of the perpetrators and the return of the stones.

Federal police have taken over the investigation to track down those responsible.

As in other parts of eastern Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany party has become increasingly popular in Zeitz. AfD won the most seats of any individual party on the city council in June’s municipal election, with nearly 30% of the vote. The party’s rise has spread fear among German Jews.