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Appeal to raise £2,000 for Britain’s first Holocaust stolperstein memorial
The stone will commemorate Ada Van Dantzig, who left London and died in Auschwitz in 1943
January 16, 2020 10:33
The stone will commemorate Ada Van Dantzig, who left London and died in Auschwitz in 1943
January 16, 2020 10:33An appeal has been launched to raise £2,000 for Britain’s first "stolperstein" to commemorate the death of a woman who left London to search for missing relatives and was murdered in Auschwitz in 1943.
The JustGiving page tells the story of Ada Van Dantzig, a Dutch painting conservator who worked with Helmut Ruhemann, a consultant restorer at the National Gallery, at his studio in Golden Square, Soho in the 1930s before the Second World War.
After war broke out, she travelled to France, despite pleas it was not safe, to locate her missing family. In 1943, she was arrested and transported to Auschwitz where, on February 11, she was murdered.
Her parents were murdered on the same day. Her sister, Jenny, had been taken to Auschwitz two weeks earlier and was killed, and her brother, Paul was killed in April that year.
"Stolperstein" – literally "stumbling stone" – orginated in Cologne and mark the homes and workplaces of those killed by the Nazis with small plaques in the ground bearing their names.
But none has ever been laid before in Britain.
The JustGiving page says Westminster Council charge more than £1,000 for the licence and supervision of the laying of the stone.
The funder is also to cover the costs for artist Gunter Demnig, who created the Stolperstein, to travel to London to lay the stone.
Any extra money raised will be donated to the Wiener Holocaust Library.