It will be offered to pay tribute to the memory of Holocaust victims in Crimea by installing the “stumbling blocks” – plates with names and dates of birth and death of the perished installed near the houses where they used to live. The project initiator Anatoliy Gendin, who is the chairman of the Jewish National-Cultural Autonomy of the urban district Simferopol, told the agency about that, Krymmedia informs.
Gendin has already presented his idea to the Crimean parliament and the Republican Committee of the Republic of Crimea on inter-ethnic relations and deported citizens (nowadays it is the State Committee on inter-ethnic relations and deported citizens) in 2013. The Verkhovna Rada of Crimea agreed to support the project with the proviso: to install the “stumbling blocks” not only in remembrance of the Holocaust victims, but also near the houses of the deported people. A. Gendin didn’t like this idea: “Deportation it is forceful migration. Yes, the conditions were subhuman but there was a chance to survive. And Holocaust was a program of a complete extermination.”
Reference: “Stumbling blocks” is the project of the German artist Gunter Demnig. It constitutes of cubic concrete stones with plates, built into pavements or sidewalks in front of the houses of victims of Nazism. Name, year of births, year and place of death of a person is engraved on every plate. By 2008, approximately 17 thousand of the “stones” have been installed in Germany, Austria and other European countries.
