Stolpersteine in memory of Mindel and Aron Salzman

A couple of months ago I wrote about how, after someone contacted me about installing Stolpersteine memorial blocks for cousins of mine, I had done further research into what happened to them during the Holocaust (Tracking down a couple that disappeared during the Holocaust).

Those Stolpersteine (stumbling blocks) have now been installed in the sidewalk near where the couple, Mindel and Aron Salzman, lived in Cologne, Germany. Someone photographed the installation ceremony and posted the photos to Wikipedia, which can be viewed in a kind of album there.

Below are a few photos from that album:

By Geolina163Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link
By Geolina163Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link
By Geolina163Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link
By Geolina163Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Lastly, it’s worth pointing out two things that seem to be wrong (or at least not clear) in the information in Mindel’s Stolperstein.

It says that she was deported to Bentschen/Zbaszyn as part of the Polenaktion, the first deportation of Jews from Germany to Poland, which took place in October 1938. While there is clear evidence that Aron was part of that deportation (see my previous article on this couple), there does not seem to be clear evidence that Mindel was part of that deportation as well.

Second, it says both were killed in ‘Occupied Poland’. I don’t know when Aron died, but I do know that while Mindel was killed during the war, she was in fact killed after the occupation of Poland ended (although perhaps one might argue it was then occupied by the Soviet Union instead). As described in my previous article, she was murdered along with a dozen other Jews participating in a Passover Seder in her birth town of Kańczuga, after having come out of hiding during the war.

The first is unproven, and the second is a technicality, so maybe I’m being too critical.

Overall, I’m happy to see these memorial blocks put into place.

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