The artwork
Who was Gunter Demnig?
Gunter Demnig was born on October 27, 1947 in Berlin and is considered as a famous artist all over Europe thanks to his project: the Stumbling Stones, a work created to remember missing people due to the atrocities of the Nazis. In 1985 Gunter Demnig opened his first studio in Cologne, working for various local projects. From 1992 he started laying the stones all over European soil to make people not forget the past despite its terror.
The history of stones
The Stumbling Stones project began in 1990 by Gunter Demnig, who decided to
create memories by placing these stones in front of the houses of people deported and killed during World War II, as a way to make us remember, know and understand their history and their meaning.
The name "Stumbling Stones" comes from the fact that people, stumbling on them, were
forced to observe and read their story to never forget the atrocity of the extermination camps, but many people got hurt and therefore the stones were placed at the level of the
land. Gunther Demnig himself asked for the authorization of the local administration to place the stones throughout Europe.
To insert the Stumbling Stones, the authorization of the heirs of the victims and of the apartment buildings in which the victims had lived was required. There was one difficulty, because not all owners agreed on placing these stones in front of the buildings and, moreover, some families wanted to try to forget the horrors of the past.
An example of a city where these Stumbling Stones are present is Sanremo, in the province ofImperia in Liguria, according to which tourists and locals can remember the
victims of Nazism at the Vittorio Veneto Gardens and in Corso Garibaldi. Among the Stumbling Stones of victims present in Sanremo there are those of Vittorio Ottolenghi, Edvige Norzi, Lodovico Orvieto, Ines Pacifici,Guido Norzi and Anna Luciana Norzi.