Stumble Stones

Berta Spiegel, whose maiden name was Scheuer, and her husband, Josef Spiegel, ran a sporting goods shop at 6 Buccheimer St. in the Cologne suburb of Muelheim. The couple was "deported," the Nazi euphemism for removal of Jews from Germany, to Theresienstadt concentration camp, located in the present-day Czech Republic. They died there. Berta on Feb. 16, 1942, Josef on Aug. 7, 1942.

They are called stolpersteine -- stumble stones. They are meant to trip memory.

Each is a brass plaque measuring about 4 by 4 inches and hand-engraved by artist Gunter Demnig with the name and a few terse details of someone lost to the Holocaust. Each stumble stone is set permanently into the sidewalk outside the place where the individual lived, laughed, and loved -- usually a house or apartment building and sometimes a shop or office. http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2007/01/13/in_germany_singular_remembrances/

And that's all that's left of a life. A stumble stone. 64 years later, so little has changed.