These stones are a constant reminder of how remembrance and atonement for the crimes of the Second World War is integrated into everyday life here in Germany. I wish there was a similar project in the US to commemorate similar crimes against indigenous peoples. Many things in America still have indigenous names, but this practice is treated more as a historical curiosity, a vestige absorbed into English and flattened, than as something problematic. Indigenous erasure seems to extend to car culture, which disconnects people from physical space and makes land itself yet another impediment to be blasted out of the way. How could such a subtle monument as the "stumbling stones" exist in a country where no one walks anywhere?

‘Stumbling Signs’!