"Remembering Willy Zimmerer, Victim of the Nazis: Placing the 70,000th Stolperstein (stumbling block) on October 23, 2018"
October 23, 2018
Willy Zimmerer’s Stolperstein surrounded by flowers.
Frankfurt, Germany -Dr. Michael Hayse, Wally and Lutz Hammerschlag Associate Professor of Holocaust
Studies at Stockton University, and his sister, Patricia Haller, have been exploring
their family roots. Over the summer they uncovered a forgotten relative in their family
tree, Willy Zimmerer. Zimmerer was a cousin of Dr. Hayse’s maternal grandmother. His mother remembered
visiting Zimmerer with her mother when she was a little girl, and described him as
quiet but intelligent. Zimmerer was eventually lost to history until this year when
Dr. Hayse began his research into Zimmerer’s life and death. Willy Zimmerer was found
to be a victim of the Nazi “Euthanasia” Program.
Willy Zimmerer was murdered in Hadamar, a Nazi “euthanasia” killing site disguised as an asylum, in 1944. Of the estimated 200,000 mentally and physically disabled victims of Nazi “euthanasia,” roughly 15,000 were killed at Hadamar. Dr. Hayse spent months documenting the details of Willy Zimmerer’s fate. This research led him to visit the Hadamar “Euthanasia” Centre Memorial to read Zimmerer’s patient file.
On Tuesday, October 23, 2018, Dr. Michael Hayse, together with relatives and friends, watched as the 70,000th Stolperstein (stumbling block) memorial was placed in front of Willy Zimmerer’s last home, Rotlintstreet 41 in Frankfurt am Main; Zimmerer lived there with his two younger sisters until he was admitted for psychological care in 1944. Dr. Hayse’s family sponsored Willy Zimmerer’s Stolperstein.
The Stolpersteine (plural) project is the world’s largest decentralized memorials, and are installed
by the German artist Gunther Demnig. Each stone is dedicated to a single victim of
the Nazi regime. Stolpersteine are placed in the sidewalk, in front of a victim’s last freely chosen address. A brass
plate inscribed with the victim’s name, birth date, and eventual fate at the hands of the
Nazis is attached to a concrete block, about the size of a cobblestone. Since the
first Stolperstein was laid in Cologne in 1994, the project has expanded to hundreds of other towns and
22 countries, with most installed in Germany. Walking around almost any German city,
you are likely to “stumble upon” these small memorials.
Because Zimmerer’s Stolperstein was the 70,000th, the installation was attended by a sizable crowd, including numerous reporters. The event was widely reported in prominent German newspapers. Speaking at the installation ceremony, Dr. Michael Hayse told the assembly, "It means a lot to us…Willy will not be forgotten."
In English, the stumbling stone reads:
“Here lived
WILLY ZIMMERER
Born 1901
Admitted 3/17/1944
Weilmünster Asylum
‘Transferred’ 10/13/1944
Hadamar Asylum
Murdered 12/18/1944”
Read more about the Stolpersteine project: http://www.stolpersteine.eu/en/home
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