Stumbling Stone Rosenstraße 11

This small, brass memorial plaque (Stolperstein or stumbling stone) commemorates:

* Fritz Macher, born 1909, arrested 1941, Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp, Emslandlager, Neuengamme, drowned 3 May 1945, Cap Arcona.

No information was found on the life of Fritz Macher.

Fuhlsbüttel was a prison and satellite camp of Neuengamme located in the Fuhlsbüttel section of Hamburg. It was used to hold German and foreign resistance fighters and other people unsatisfied with the Nazis or disliked by the Nazis. In 1987, a memorial was established there at Suhrenkamp 98.

Emslandlager refers to a group of 15 penal and POW labor camps in the moors of northwestern Germany where prisoners worked primarily in the peat bogs.

When the Nazis emptied the Neuengamme camp in April 1945 before the arrival of the Allies, thousands of prisoners were put on the Cap Arcona, a ship which became an overcrowded concentration camp with no food and no drinking water. The Cap Arcona and several other floating concentration camps were hidden in plain sight among other troop ships. With a goal of keeping the Germans from escaping by boat, the British bombed the ships in the harbor. Approximately 7,000 concentration camp prisoners died by fire or drowning, or were shot by Germans on the shore.

Four days later, the Germans signed an unconditional surrender of all German forces to the Allies.

"Stolpersteine" is an art project for Europe by Gunter Demnig to commemorate victims of National Socialism (Nazism). Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) are small, 10x10cm brass plaques placed in the pavement in front of the last voluntary residence of (mostly Jewish) victims who were murdered by the Nazis. Each plaque is engraved with the victim’s name, date of birth, and place (mostly a concentration camp) and date of death. By doing this, Gunter Demnig gives an individual memorial to each victim. One stone, one name, one person. He cites the Talmud: "A human being is forgotten only when his or her name is forgotten."

For more information and photos about the Cap Arcona, please see Floating concentration camps in the Bay of Lübeck.

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Source

• Text: Fedor de Vries & Anne Palmer
• Photos: Hinnerk11
• Stolpersteine in Hamburg: Fritz Macher
• Fuhlsbüttel Memorial
• WW2 Aerial Reconnaissance Studies: Emslandlager Prison Camps
• Stolpersteine.eu