A pavé de mémoire is the French name for a Stolperstein. It is a concrete block with a brass plate on top, set flush with the pavement. On French stones the text is in French. Below are the French words that appear most often, with their meanings.
How the text begins
The text usually begins with ICI HABITAIT, which means “here lived”. Then come the name, the year of birth, and what happened, such as the date and place of arrest or deportation, and the place and date of death.
Words about life and persecution
- né (masculine) or née (feminine): born. The year of birth follows this word.
- arrêté: arrested.
- interné: interned. The person was held in a camp or another closed place.
- déporté: deported. The person was forced to another place, often a camp.
- assassiné: murdered.
Where the stones lie
A stone lies in front of the last home the person chose freely, before they were forced to move, go into hiding or were arrested. Sometimes it lies in front of a workplace or school. Each stone is for one person. Families get stones side by side, in front of their home. Stones lie in France and Belgium, among other countries. Since 2019 the Stichting 18 September has kept a database of Stolpersteine in the Netherlands and Belgium, and it now also includes stones in other countries.
Gunter Demnig often quotes a saying from the Talmud: a person is only forgotten when his or her name is forgotten.
Where very many people were victims, there is sometimes a Stolperschwelle, or stumbling threshold: a long brass strip with one text for the whole group.
Stones are requested and paid for by private people and local groups, such as relatives, residents, schools, local foundations and history societies. Local volunteers research the person’s life in archives, look for relatives and ask the municipality for permission, because the pavement is public ground.
Outdoors, brass first turns brown and then dark. If the text is hard to read, you may clean the stone. Anyone may do this, and no permission is needed. See the cleaning page.
On the Stolpersteine.app map you can find a stone by name, street or city.
Read on
What was Westerbork, the name on so many Dutch Stolpersteine?
Westerbork was a transit camp in Drenthe, through which most Jews from the Netherlands were deported to Auschwitz and Sobibor. Here are the figures.
Auschwitz, Sobibor, Bergen-Belsen: place names on Stolpersteine
Many Stolpersteine name a Nazi camp such as Auschwitz or Sobibor. Here is what these place names refer to on a stone, and where to find more.
Are there Stolpersteine for Sinti and Roma?
Yes. The first Stolperstein, laid in 1992, recalled the 1942 order to deport Sinti and Roma. Sinti and Roma are among the commemorated groups.
