Stolpersteine: Stumbling into Hope

Our daughter Hanna now has a small stash of yellow coins on the windowsill here in Berlin. They get her rides on the kiddie carousel at the large Christmas Market down the street. Christmas Markets spring up all over Germany (and much of Europe) in town squares or blocked-off streets beginning around the 1st Sunday of Advent and sometimes last until the week after Christmas. About twice a week we stop by ours to get some mulled wine, perhaps buy some crafts, and of course, watch Hannah go for a round or three in the fire truck on the carousel. I will cherish these memories of Hannah’s first winter in Berlin.

But in this neighborhood, in between a large Jewish cemetery and a memorial to the Berlin Wall, both Christmas Markets and Advent have mixed meanings that are embedded in the same history of empires and their cruelty that suffuse the Christmas story itself: hope within trouble and oppression.

As we walk the two blocks to and from the Christmas Market near us in Berlin, I now often l…