Stolperstein dedicated to Hans Loew

The Stolperstein dedicated to Hans Loew is a small brass memorial plaque set into the pavement on Pařížská Street in Prague's Josefov, the city's former Jewish quarter. It marks the last home of a Prague lawyer murdered in Auschwitz in 1944 and belongs to a much wider network of similar stones scattered across the city, each recalling a resident deported and killed during the Holocaust.

Where exactly is the stone located?

The Stolperstein is set into the pavement outside the building at Pařížská 131/28, on one of Prague's grandest streets, which links the Old Town Square with the Vltava riverbank. This was Hans Loew's last freely chosen home before the war — as with every stone in the project, it is placed at the victim's final residence rather than at the site of death.

Who was Hans Loew?

Dr. Hans Loew was a lawyer practising in Prague. He lived in Josefov with his wife, Gertrud Loew, née Hertzka, the daughter of Dr. Alfred Hertzka. Gertrud had studied economics and worked at the Czechoslovak Ministry of Foreign Trade; the couple had no children. Both were deported and murdered at the German Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp in 1944.

What is a Stolperstein, exactly?

Stolpersteine, or "stumbling stones," are the work of German artist Gunter Demnig, who launched the project in the 1990s. Each stone is a small cobblestone topped with a brass plate engraved with the victim's name and, where known, the dates and circumstances of their deportation and death. The stones are always installed in the pavement directly in front of the building where the person last lived before persecution uprooted them. More than 100,000 have now been laid across Europe, making the project the largest decentralised memorial to the victims of Nazism in the world.

Why does Prague have so many of these stones?

Before the Second World War, Prague — and Josefov in particular — was home to thousands of Jewish residents: lawyers, merchants, officials and craftsmen whose ordinary lives were violently interrupted by the German occupation and the deportations to ghettos and concentration camps that followed. Stones like the one for Hans Loew turn that history back into something human-scaled: a name, an address, a single interrupted life, rather than a line in Holocaust statistics.

What else is worth seeing nearby?

Today Pařížská is an elegant boulevard lined with Art Nouveau townhouses and upscale boutiques, running straight to the Old Town Square. Its immediate surroundings hold the key monuments of the historic Jewish quarter, including the Old-New Synagogue and the Old Jewish Cemetery, so a walk past this Stolperstein fits naturally into a wider visit to Josefov's Jewish heritage sites.

Frequently asked questions

Who was Hans Loew? A Prague lawyer who lived in Josefov and was murdered together with his wife, Gertrud, in Auschwitz in 1944.

Where exactly is this Stolperstein? In the pavement outside the building at Pařížská 131/28 in Prague's Josefov — Hans Loew's last home before the war.

What is a Stolperstein? A brass plaque set into a cobblestone, engraved with a Holocaust victim's name and fate, placed outside their last freely chosen residence as part of artist Gunter Demnig's memorial project.

Are there other Stolpersteine nearby? Yes, Josefov and other Prague districts hold numerous stones commemorating residents deported during the Second World War.

Why is this stone worth pausing at? Because it turns an abstract Holocaust statistic into a specific person, a specific address and a specific life story that was cut short.