Julie Brill spent years piecing together what happened to her family in the land now known as Serbia during the Holocaust. Her grandfather, first put in a forced labor camp by the Nazis, was executed and buried in a mass grave in Belgrade. His wife never learned his fate.
I Can’t Mark Where My Grandfather Is Buried, but I Want to Mark Where He Lived
For the last three and a half years, I’ve been trying to get
stolpersteine, translated from German as “stumbling stones,” in front of the last place my grandfather lived: Solunska Uliza 8 in Belgrade. Stolpersteine are small stones placed on the street outside the last voluntary residence of Holocaust victims and survivors.
Over 70,000 stones have already been placed across Europe, making them the world’s largest decentralized memorial. A stone with my grandfather’s name on it would be a small victory against genocide and hatred.