Outrage as East German town bans Holocaust ‘stumbling blocks’, tell me about this news in (https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/26/europe/german-town-holocaust-stolpersteine-backlash-intl)

An East German town council in Heidenau, near Dresden, voted to ban the future installation of “Stolpersteine” (stumbling blocks)the famous brass-plated cobblestones embedded in sidewalks to commemorate victims of the Holocaust. Instead of keeping these memorials outside the former homes of Nazi victims, future commemorations will be concentrated at a site in the town’s northern cemetery.

The motion was approved with the support of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), going against the recommendation of the city administration. Proponents of the ban argued that walking over the stones in public streets is inappropriate, while critics and Jewish leaders have expressed outrage, warning that moving the memorials away from public view turns a project of remembrance into a project of forgetting.

The decision has sparked a wider backlash and reignited fierce debate over Germany’s “Brandmauer”the informal firewall whereby mainstream parties pledge to avoid formal cooperation with the far-right.