Stolperstein Part-Two: Arrested

Coming from the US, we tend to think of the Holocaust primarily in terms of concentration camps. I know I did. These Stolperstein show another side.  I’ve found these Stolpestein where the the victims died at the hands of those who were meant to protect them. They could have been targeted for any number of reasons.

Verhaftet is ‘arrested’. Poleziegefangnis means, ‘police prison’ or perhaps better ‘police custody’. Flossenburg was a work camp in Bavaria. During its years of operation, it was home to about 90,000, mostly ‘undesirables’ or Russian Prisoners of War. They worked in an ancient quarry, mining granite and breaking it into gravel. Flossenburg was liberated in 1945, but trains were still being sent there as late as December of 1944. Borgemoor was a prison near the Dutch border opened in the 1930s, early in the Nazi regime. Originally it was a military prison for soldiers who had committed offenses, yet political prisoners were also placed there for ’protective custody’. As the Allies approached, the prison was closed and the 1000 inmates sent on a death march, of which about 100 survived.

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