40 | MAY 2 • 2024 

where I saw a gathering of over 50 people, 
the group mostly comprised of young stu-
dents and their teachers.
I made my way into the crowd, gratified 
that it was indeed a crowd, though disap-
pointment wafted over me as I recalled the 
pro forma installation for the Goldsteins 
a few days earlier. This was exactly how it 
should have been done.
From my wife’s place close to the front, 
I could see Dieter, speaking with several 
women who had traveled from Israel for 
the event. Their stolpersteine had been laid 
in March 2021, without ceremony during 
the COVID-19 pandemic. This day, the 
Horowicz descendants were animated and 
visibly pleased to honor their relatives, one 
of whom, their uncle Manfred, had been a 
focus of Dieter’s research. He and the Israeli 
relatives had driven to Lieberose the day 
before, the site of the forced labor camp 
where Manfred had perished. 
The Horowicz stolpersteine indicated 
that all four had escaped (FLUCHT) to 
Belgium in 1938, and in 1944 had been 
interned (INTERNIERT) at the Mechelen 
transit camp, before being deported 
(DEPORTIERT) to Auschwitz. The father 
Abraham and his son Menachem Manfred 
were murdered (ERMORDET), one in 
Auschwitz; the other, at Lieberose. The 
mother Gitla and her 14-year-old daughter 
Charlotte had been liberated (BEFREIT) 
from Auschwitz in January 1945. Both 
“interniert” and “befreit” were new words in 
my growing stolpersteine lexicon. 
When Charlotte’s daughter Orna spoke 
at the ceremony and later in conversation 
at a reception, I learned more about the 
Horowicz family. There seemed a perfect 
symmetry between the four stolpersteine set 
in the pavement and their aligned stories — 
two men who perished, two women who 
survived. However, three months after the 
event at Mendelssohnstrae, I consulted 
a website devoted to Berlin stolpersteine to 
determine exactly when these four stones 
had been laid. The site also includes brief 
biographies of those commemorated, and 
I was surprised to discover that Charlotte 
“Lotti” Horowicz’s stone includes a signifi-
cant error. Unlike her parents and brother, 
the 14-year-old Lotti had been hidden with 
a Catholic family in a small Wallonian vil-
lage, where she survived the war. Reunited 
in 1945, the mother and daughter moved 

to Paris and eventually to Israel. Correcting 
Lotti’s stolperstein would require yet anoth-
er term, one for those who survived by 
being hidden — VERSTECKT.

STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES
Before the program itself commenced, I had 
noted a few young students in wheelchairs. 
Berlin, despite other enlightened social poli-
cies, seems particularly challenging for those 
with physical disabilities. Its impressive 
public transport system is almost impossible 
for the wheelchair-bound to negotiate. And 
I had been in enough public buildings to 
realize that many were decades behind their 
ADA-compliant counterparts in the United 
States. I was pleased, then, that these chil-
dren in wheelchairs were present. 

As the ceremony continued with speech-
es, violin music, and the placement of 
flowers around four stolpersteine, I finally 
registered the full nature of the Helene-
Haeusler-Schule and the students it serves. 
There were indeed students with physical 
limitations; but the school is also devoted to 
educating those with cognitive disabilities.
When a dark-haired young girl with 

Down syndrome placed her flower on 
the stolpersteine, I was delighted by her 
jaunty T-shirt, depicting two young riders 
atop a white horse, one with flaming red 
hair, the other with icy blonde. But then I 
remembered my visit years ago to Hartheim 
Castle in Austria, outside Linz and the site 
of a Third Reich “euthanasia” center. Nazi 
physicians there had used bottled carbon 
monoxide to kill the disabled. Hartheim 
and the other medicalized killing centers 
were the proving grounds for techniques 
such as using the truck exhaust, instead 
of expensive bottled gas, employed first to 
deadly effect at Chelmno — where on May 
15, 1942, Frieda Goldstein reached the end 
of the specific suffering begun when she 
was forced out of her Fehrbellinerstrae 
apartment. 
The girl wearing the colorful T-shirt; 
the young man in a wheelchair offering 
a large sunflower to be placed among the 
rest; indeed, all the children attending the 
Helene-Haeusler-Schule would have been 
condemned to death by the Nazi state. The 
road to Auschwitz had first been paved at 
places like Hartheim. Or to be more pre-

YOM HASHOAH

continued from page 39

Stolpersteine commemorating the Horowicz family of Mendelssohnstrae