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Comment by richardhod | Hacker News Reader

Berlin has 10cm^2 brass memorials set into the pavements where (mostly) Jewish people, sometimes whole families, were killed during the Third Reich. Look down and you will see them everywhere there. It's a touching and present reminder, to give pause for perspective in everyday life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolperstein

[edited for accuracy]

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These are also Pokemon Go stops, because Niantic ingested some global POI database without considering local contexts. It’s sort of funny, but also pretty offensive.

https://twitter.com/jlev/status/1026068175966928896?s=21

The Stolpersteine can be found in most German cities, not only in Berlin.

Also in a few places in Poland.

With the exception of Munich.

That's because the Jewish community in Munich had concerns about people walking over the memorials, so they asked them not to be placed there.

Which is strange, given that it's the place where WW2 could have been avoided.

So how could WW2 have been avoided?

They have those in Prague too, many European cities have them

100 cm² (10×10 cm), not 10 cm² (3.16×3.16 cm).

I'm never sure how appropriate memorials are on the ground, where people will walk on them, will be sick on them, dogs will go to the toilet on them, etc. I guess they also get worn down much more quickly.

Now that you mention it, it's kind of thought-provoking. These same streets where people now live their lives, walk the dog, party get drunk and puke on the streets, just "yesterday" there were horryfing things happening there. It's easy to forget, and we do forget, that those living nightmares can and did happen, when we today live so free and safe.

These stones have local patrons which clean and care for the stone regularly. If this isn't done, the stones do degrade quickly.

I understand the objection to people stepping on it, but at the same time, where else would you place something to have the same effect? These memorials are so effective exactly because it's a highly unconventional location for them. I've walked past hundreds of Holocaust memorials in my life and none have had the same effect on me as seeing one of these stones with a candle next to it in front of my house on the day of the "Night of Broken Glass"

Given that people these days will more likely stare into their phones, that is towards the ground, I guess it is.

What perspective is that? That humanity shouldn't go on mass killings of people or of jews? If it's the latter then lesson learned, if it's the former, the lesson is not even close to being learned thus rendering this whole thing pointless.

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