On the last day of school before the Easter vacations and exactly one month before the start of Passover, Margret Löther, 1st Chairwoman of the Association for the Promotion of the Former Synagogue in Kitzingen, was able to welcome a colorful group to the laying of six Stolpersteine. of the Friends of the Former Kitzingen Synagogue, welcomed a diverse group of people to the laying of six Stolpersteine in the Old Kitzingen Synagogue at 10 a.m.: in addition to Rabbi Shlomo Zelig Avrasin, Jewish Community of Würzburg, Mayor Stefan Güntner and the sponsors of the Stolpersteine, members of the Friends, representatives of "Inner Wheel" and two school classes were also present. The pupils of the 9th grade of the Siedlung secondary school had already walked through the city in September with Ms. Löther "in the footsteps of (15-year-old) Otto Oppenheimer".
They decided to donate a stumbling stone at the end of their school years and played a decisive role in the ceremony: in addition to songs, they presented the biographies of those murdered in words and pictures. The fate of the needlework teacher Frieda Roßmann, the Stein family of three, the wine merchant Max Stern and the businessman Moritz Lustig and his wife Betty from their town obviously touched the young people.
The 1st Chairwoman felt that the aim of the Association had been achieved with these young people: "to inform - to remember - to commemorate - to encounter - to confront - to act" and thanked the dedicated teachers in particular. 20 years ago, the artist Gunter Demnig laid the first 10 Stolpersteine in Bavaria here in Kitzingen - thanks to the private initiative of Claudia Gonschorek. She also organized the most recent laying in cooperation with the Gunter Demnig Stumbling Stones Foundation, the town and the Kitzingen building yard. The guests learned that there are now more than 100,000 Stumbling Stones across Europe and that the 100 mark has just been passed in Kitzingen - 100 memorial stones for 100 Jewish people who were expelled from Kitzingen and murdered. Around 80 years later, more people had turned up than at most of the previous layings.
In doing so, they sent a positive signal of humanity, on the one hand retroactively into the past: the Jews exposed to the injustice of a fascist-controlled society should at least be remembered. On the other hand, they signaled how they want to live and treat each other in the present and the future: with dignity, humanity, tolerance, freedom and peace. After a short break for Berches (a traditional Franconian-Jewish recipe) and Easter eggs, a considerable procession of people made their way to Schmiedel-, Moltke- and Paul-Eber-Straße, where the six Stolpersteine had already been laid by the employees of the building yard. After decades of oblivion, the names of those murdered were brought back to their former homes and Rabbi Avrasin was able to say words of prayer for them.
