WHU Students Make Vallendar Stolpersteine Shine

Where a tall building now looms large over Hellenstraße is where Hermann and Nettchen Salomon and Leopold and Helen Nathan once called home. Eighty years later, the only sign of their time in Vallendar are the golden “Stolpersteine” [stumbling blocks], a set of commemorative plaques embedded into the street honoring those violently taken from their homes and later put to death at the hands of the Nazis.

For International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, members of the chapter of the Ring of Christian-Democratic Students (RCDS) at WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management, gathered to clean and polish the plaques, underscoring how important it is to continue actively engaging with this side of Germany’s history.

Artist Gunter Demnig started this initiative in 1992 as a way to honor all those who were deported and executed during the Nazi period. To date, there are over 90,000 plaques embedded in streets all across the European continent, reminding passers-by of the acts of cruelty that occurred during the Second World War—and that those who lost their lives during this time should never be forgotten.

“This was far more than a mere symbolic gesture,” said Florian Schibber, Chairman of the RCDS WHU Vallendar. “By taking care of these plaques, we’re helping to keep the memory of the victims alive and strengthening our awareness of our own part in history.” The club members also polished the plaques in the Löhrstraße in Vallendar.