This page was translated from the German original with the help of AI. The German version is authoritative.

Message for the Stolperstein laying from Ezequiel Lindenberg and his family

First of all, I would like to thank everyone who has taken part in this project. Through our joint work, this laying has now become possible. Sadly, my grandfather Hans-Joachim Lindenberg is no longer alive and cannot witness it. He had a hard childhood in his country of origin and was eventually forced to leave it. A few words about his life:

He was the kindest and most sincere person I knew. He was proud of his origins and also of his family name. He always told me stories about our family’s origins in Germany, and that the Lindenbergs had been respected citizens of this town. He also told me about a street that bore our name, because his family had already been living here for 200 years.

My grandfather, however, did not want to talk about his childhood in Germany in detail, and he strongly rejected Germany.  As a child of 13, I did not really understand his life story. He told me few details about his home town, but there is one story I have never forgotten, because he told it to me with tears in his eyes: how he was thrown into a frozen lake by his own schoolmates and former friends because he was Jewish. Experiences of this kind were the cause of his negative feelings towards Germany, which he also partly passed on to his children. But this never stopped him from also telling good things about his family.

My grandfather died in January 2007, and in December 2009, during the summer holidays, my wish to learn more about my family name and my origins grew. I spent that summer doing research, starting with the few things I could remember. I googled the name of my great-grandfather “Hugo Lindenberg” and “Bruchhausen-Vilsen”.

This led me to some information that I was able to confirm or correct with the many pictures and documents I found in my grandfather’s house. I also tried to find the Lindenberg street, but at that time Google Maps only showed a “Linnenberg”. I was, however, fairly sure that it had something to do with my grandfather’s story.

It was 2010 and I was starting my final year of upper secondary school. I no longer remember exactly how it came about, but my teacher of Jewish history told me about a project to which such research could be submitted: it was a competition held by the Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv (Beit Hatfutsot). With my report I won a special prize for my school, and my text was then uploaded to the school’s website.

You can imagine how happy and enthusiastic I was as a 17-year-old. My goal in life was to travel to Bruchhausen-Vilsen with my grandfather’s family photographs, to find out more about his life and to find the house he came from. In January 2012 I flew to Germany for 3 days with a relative who speaks German, just to visit this town for one day.

We visited the archive, where we were told that the house  in which my grandfather grew up was probably no longer standing, because it had either been destroyed or rebuilt. We were also given some information about Hugo Lindenberg’s siblings, which I already had, and then we left the archive and wandered around the town. We did not find the house at that time, but we found the Lindenberg, and that alone made the journey worthwhile. We also saw the Lindenberg pharmacy (Lindenberg-Apotheke), but I was too shy to go in and ask questions. We had been told beforehand that it had nothing to do with my family but was named after the street.

To make a long story a little shorter: in 2015 a girl from the USA contacted me; she had found my school text because it also mentions her great-grandfather. She too was researching her family for a school project. We met in New York and since then we have been working together on documenting our history. We are now in contact with a number of relatives from different branches of the family who are also helping with our research: among them descendants of Hugo’s sister Clara and of his brother Emil, all of whom originally came from Vilsen. Since 2018 the research has been supported from Germany by Ms Meyer. Since the end of 2018 we have been in contact with the group of pupils at the Gymnasium Bruchhausen-Vilsen who have been working towards the Stolperstein laying since 2016.

So far I have told you what has happened in the last ten eventful years of my life, but I would like to conclude my message by speaking briefly about what the Stolpersteine, and everything connected with them, mean to me:

I have already spoken of the aversion my grandfather felt towards Germany, and that he also passed it on to his children, including my father. But I am sure that my grandfather, Hans-Joachim Lindenberg, would be proud of me and of this project, because it is a project with children, schools and their families.

My father, who had similarly negative feelings, has also come to understand through the project that times have changed. That there are people who are different and want to act differently.
He is grateful for this, and for the laying he was even willing to break his vow never to travel to Germany. For him, this project symbolises a request for forgiveness and a recognition of our family by our place of origin.

My whole family, especially my father and my uncle, would like to express their thanks to everyone involved who has helped with this project.

Because of the coronavirus we unfortunately cannot be present today, but we are nevertheless very happy about this laying. For me personally, a childhood dream comes true today, but what matters most to me is that the Stolpersteine project is an educational project.

Through the Stolperstein project we can ensure that what happened here is never forgotten. And through it we can help the younger generations understand what happened.  

We want passers-by to ask themselves: why are the stones here? We tell what happened, and in this way we ensure that it never happens again.