VALKENBURG 2024 – 80 years free

Point 6 – Stumbling Stones

Guy Caelen and Selma Benedik

Remembrance: I let my mind wander and write down what comes to me: Difficult… grief for family members you didn’t know. And yet you feel grief. A feeling that is difficult to give a place to. And especially between other people, I get an inexplicable feeling that others are touching my grief. And what do I do with these feelings, I feel uncomfortable. And globally… Once I used to think that remembrance was good for something: preserving history, lessons about the past, connecting generations, learning from it. How naive. The war between Israel and Palestinians is so indescribably sad. Honestly, I no longer know where commemoration leads.

Selma Benedik * 1954. The Benedik family counts 18 stumbling stones in South Limburg of which 7 in Valkenburg. See photo.

Dear Selma,
This is exactly what I feel too, when I think of that war: indescribable sadness. And yet I think that it is precisely here that it becomes clear how important remembrance is. But in the appropriate way. Not in the hateful way that also here in Europe caused so much misery: “Our fallen are heroes, those of the enemy did not deserve better!”
So said the German AND French governments after World War I. The result was an even more terrible war with words like “Untermenschen” and “lebensunwertes Leben.”
This is also how we heard the Hamas murderers declare, when they committed their mass murder on that black October 7. And tragically, voices are also coming from Israel, who only want revenge. There are deep traumata on both sides, and it will probably take many generations until peace has a real chance there. To heal these deep wounds, appropriate remembrance is an immeasurably important and also difficult matter.
We must learn that our enemies are people too; we must learn to talk to them. Perhaps one day we will experience the day when the presidents of Israel and Palestine will stand hand in hand in front of a memorial to mourn the victims of this intensely sad current war.
That is the meaning of remembrance: to care for wounds, but also to prevent new ones. This war reinforces, with me at least, the conviction that this is more urgent than ever.

Arnold Schunck, member of the editorial board of this publication.

That is why we of the Workgroup Valkenburg 80 jaar bevrĳd (Valkenburg Liberated 80 Years Ago) find it so important to also remember the fallen German soldiers. See for that the Peace Vigil on the Goudsberg on September 17, 2024.