Stolpersteine NRW – Listening to Audio Stories
With the Audio Stories, the WDR radio play editorial team makes the stories of people behind the Stolpersteine audible and experienceable. Some stories are kept in special memory.
Grete Eichenwald in der AppOriginal Source: WDR / Claus Langer
Stolpersteine for listening
Grete Eichenwald was the only member of her family to survive the concentration camp and spent years fighting for redemption. Users can listen to her biography in the app "Stolpersteine NRW – For Remembering" and on the website.
The Audio Story of Grete Eichenwald from Horstmar is one of many Stolpersteine stories in NRW that narrators of the German broadcaster Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) make audible and tangible.
Acoustic journey into the past
In addition to historical facts and sound recordings, they also use authentic sounds, staged dialogs and fact-based re-narrations. The stories behind the Stolpersteine thus introduce listeners acoustically to the Nazi era. Author Dunja Arnaszus says about her work on the audio stories:
"While I was writing, I focused on depicting the lives of the characters more than their death. Just as I would want it for myself if I were the victim of a crime. Nobody should keep talking about my murderers afterwards; they should rather talk about the fact that I liked artichokes, bathing in lakes, and cello duets."
Dunja Arnaszus, Sprecherin WDR-HörspielredaktionOriginal Source: WDR / Asmus Henkel
Dunja Arnaszus' story about Paul Krey
Dunja Arnaszus particularly remembers the story of Paul Krey. The Wehrmacht soldier does not return to the troops in the summer of 1941 because of two runaway horses. The author vividly depicts his longing for a peaceful life in Krey's respectful way of treating the shy horses he was actually supposed to capture.
Jeanette Wolff – the SPD politician
It’s an entirely different story for the author of WDR Radio to write about the survivor Jeanette Wolff, who never stopped campaigning for social causes and became a politician.
"I have compiled the many original recordings in a way that I hope it conveys what a serious and clever woman has been relentlessly whooshing through the century. I want to remember that kind of resilience!"
Die Geschichte von Jeanette Wolff in der WDR-App "Stolpersteine NRW"Original Source: WDR / Simone Maurer
Jeanette Wolff – one of the first women in the Bundestag
Jeanette Wolff was born in Bocholt on June 22 in 1888. As a political activist for the SPD she is sent to prison and later to the Riga concentration camp. She survives but loses almost her entire family.
Salomon Meiseles – the scrap dealer from the Ruhr area
Bruno Schulz is part of the voice-ensemble of the WDR Radio, who creatively set the stories behind the Stolpersteine to music. Looking at his work for the app and the website "Stolpersteine NRW – For Remembering", he says:
" Reading the Stolpersteine texts, I think from page to page: ‘It couldn't be worse!’ And again and again I taught better. The Nazi killing machine stopped at nothing, sparing neither children nor old people; innocence was a worthless commodity at the time.
I am particularly enraged by fates like that of Salomon Meiseles, because it reveals sadism in its purest form. None of the SS man’s actions described can be traced back to a chain of command, peer pressure or the pull of National Socialism. No; it is proactively sadistic. Murdering included. Disgusting."
Benno Schulz, Sprecher WDR-HörspielredaktionOriginal Source: WDR / Stefan Domke
Bruno Schulz tells the story of Salomon Meiseles
The scrap dealer Salomon Meiseles was born in Poland. In his mid-30s he moves to the Ruhr area and lives with his wife and three children in Wattenscheid. In 1939, the Nazi authorities deport him to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
More Stolpersteine stories to listen to and further information on the project "Stolpersteine NRW – For Remembering" on stolpersteine.wdr.de
