Oberhausen.
The case is a mystery: in Oberhausen, two stumbling blocks disappeared within a short time. One has now reappeared.
The stumbling block that unknown persons removed from the sidewalk on Lipperheidstrasse in Oberhausen a few days ago has reappeared. The memorial plaque for the Jewess Julia Schäfer, who was murdered by the Nazis, will be relocated in the coming days. But the case remains mysterious.
On Monday it was noticed that the stone had disappeared. Our editorial team reported that the memorial hall appealed to the perpetrators on Facebook to return the stumbling block. On Tuesday morning, a resident of Straßburger Strasse suddenly discovered the stumbling block: it was embedded in the pavement directly on the wall of the house under the downpipe of a gutter. How he got there, and above all why, remains a mystery at first.
A stumbling block on Elpenbachstraße has also disappeared
Memorial hall historian Claudia Stein is happy to have gotten the memorial stone back. In the next few days it is to be relocated to Lipperheidstrasse. The memorial hall will not press charges, and Stein no longer assumes, as initially assumed, that the crime had an anti-Semitic background.
However, the stolen stumbling block is not an isolated case: As is only now becoming known, local residents noticed at the end of February that the commemorative plaque for Bruno Blank, a KPD politician persecuted by the Nazis, had disappeared. This was relocated to Elpenbachstrasse in 2015. So far there is no trace of the stone, the memorial hall will probably have to have the brass plate redesigned, explains Claudia Stein.
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