I think it might be interesting to clarify some things about that soccer team and your perception of it. I understand their appearance and bearing must be frightening or enstranging. I feel the same about being on a train with a load of soccer fans as well. But despite the brown shirts and skulls on the shirts, these were fans of the most leftist soccer team in Germany. They only play in the second league but they are famous for being rather far on the left bordering anarchy. The skull represents a connection to piracy and not bending to the rules of the former middle-class smugness and rules of the hanseatic city. If they play against teams like "'Hansa Rostock" whose fans are known to be often neo-nazis, fans of the soccer team you saw gather for big street fights to get those people out of Hamburg. I am sorry if my English is not good enough to really explain what I'm trying to say. I guess I just hope to clarify that sometimes those first impressions of hostility might turn out to quite something different. Those people couldn't have been further away from those they reminded you of. And sometimes the staring at somebody who watches the stumbling-stones is not hostility or seeing a "Nestbeschmutzer". But if I would see somebody pausing and contemplating to take pictures of the house, I would ask myself if you might be a relative of those who lived there. Or a tourist condemning those now living there, because they "took away" what did not belong to them. I would feel uncertain how to behave towards you. I would also feel ashamed a bit. But I am quite certain that most people would not think of you as a Nestbeschmutzer. And at least the people of my age (in my twenties) think that the Stolpersteine are a great project that helps us to remember. I too wonder who would have gone to school with me if the Holocaust hadn't happened? Did I miss a friend? What is missing from our culture? How did Christmas/Hanukah look before the Holocaust? Were there chandeliers in the windows? Were there not only Christmas songs heard through the closed windows on Christmas eve, but also different tunes? Just some thoughts and I hope I could convey what I tried to say here.
Sabrina S.
