Two schools in Anderlecht—one of the 19 municipalities that make up Belgium’s Brussels-Capital Region—have refused to take part in a ceremony marking the laying of Stolpersteine, or Memory Stones, for Belgian Jews murdered during the Holocaust.
The schools said that they “do not wish to impose the children any discussion on the Holocaust given the current conditions in the Middle East.”
The gold-colored paving stones, known as “Stolpersteine’’ and created by German artist Gunter Demnig in 1992, are placed in front of the last places where victims of Nazi extermination or persecution, mostly Jews, chose freely to live, work or study. More than 100,000 have been laid across Europe.
The Association for the Memory of the Shoah is working in Brussels to install these stones in public spaces, in collaboration with local authorities. The next installation was due to take place on Friday in Anderlecht, where many Jews lived in the 1930s.
The ceremony is usually attended by schools located close to where the cobblestones are laid. With a survivor’s testimony and preparatory work, this participation is accompanied by an educational project.
Two schools in Anderlecht, however, declined invitations to attend the ceremony.
“The schools didn’t want us to come and talk about the Holocaust with the pupils, given the current conditions in the Middle East,’’ Bella Swiatlowski, treasurer of the Association of the Memory of the Shoah, who had invited the two schools, told Belgian daily La Dernière Heure.
“We don’t talk about the current conflict when we visit schools with Holocaust survivors. We’re there to promote a duty to remember. These are two separate elements,’’ she explained.
The refusal came in particular from some parents in the schools. One of the schools involved recently removed an Israeli flag that was part of a “Flags of the World” event, according to reports that sought to explain the decision, at the behest of a parent who had complained about the flag in the school playground.
European Jewish Association Chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin expressed shock and anger at the decision by these schools, saying that such an ignorant approach to what happened is precisely why the two schools must attend.
The EJA represents hundreds of Jewish communities across Europe, fights antisemitism and regularly takes delegations of senior politicians and influential figures to Auschwitz to witness, remember and help find solutions to fight against antisemitism.
In a statement, Margolin said: “At a time of record rises in antisemitism, it is precisely to the next generation that we should be transmitting the warning from history of the greatest crime against humanity committed.’
“The Holocaust is beyond politics. Conflating the mass murder of 6 million Jews with the current conflict with Gaza is shocking and an appalling dereliction of duty on the part of two schools that have a moral, civic and human duty to transmit the reality of the Holocaust to the next generation,’’ he added.
“I believe that this decision has been taken to not offend the parents of a particular group of children from a particular religious background. This is pandering to the basest of lies: The lie that seeks to draw a similarity between the Holocaust and the war in Gaza. The minister of education should be intervening. We cannot eradicate the truth to please a minority who may think otherwise,’’ Margolin said.
Originally published by the European Jewish Press.
