Stolperstein dedicated to Karel Jelinek

The Stolperstein dedicated to Karel Jelinek is a brass-topped "stumbling stone" set into the pavement on Zborovská street in Prague, on the border between Malá Strana and Smíchov, right above the Vltava riverbank. The small plaque carries the name of a Holocaust victim along with the key dates of his fate – one of several hundred such stones scattered across Prague's streets to commemorate people murdered by Nazi Germany.

Who was Karel Jelinek?

Karel Jelinek was born on 12 August 1895 in Vienna. He lived in Prague with his wife Margarete, née Winternitzová, and their two children – daughter Hana, born on 1 August 1922, and son Otto (also known as Musil), born in 1934. The address on Zborovská street was the family's last shared home before the war tore their lives apart.

What history lies behind this particular stone?

On 10 August 1942 Karel Jelinek was deported from Prague on transport "Ba" to the Terezín (Theresienstadt) ghetto, listed as number 135 out of 1,474 people. Less than a month later, on 8 September 1942, he was put on a further transport, "Bk", to the Maly Trostinec extermination camp near Minsk, numbered 193 out of a thousand deportees, and was murdered there. His wife Margarete and daughter Hana were deported in July 1942 and were likewise murdered at Maly Trostinec. Their son Otto, still a child during the war, survived. The inscription on the stone at Zborovská street reads: "Here lived Karel Jelinek, born 1895, deported 1942 to Theresienstadt, murdered in Maly Trostinec."

What exactly is a Stolperstein, and where does the idea come from?

Stolpersteine are the work of German artist Gunter Demnig, an ongoing project since the 1990s that now spans many European countries. The concept is simple: a small brass plate, engraved with a victim's name, birth year, and the date and fate of their deportation or death, is set into a cobblestone embedded in the pavement outside their last freely chosen home. In the Czech Republic the initiative is known as Kameny zmizelých, "stones of the disappeared." Each stone restores the memory of one specific person at one specific address, rather than leaving them as an anonymous number in Holocaust statistics.

Where exactly is the stone located?

The stone is set into the pavement on Zborovská street, near house number 84/60, in the area linking Malá Strana with Smíchov, close to the Vltava riverbank. Its coordinates are approximately 50.080213 N, 14.407124 E – a quiet residential stretch, away from central Prague's main tourist routes.

Why is this stone worth pausing at?

The word Stolperstein literally means "a stone you stumble over" – not physically, but with your eyes and your thoughts. Unlike large monuments, this form of memorial works at the scale of a single family and a single address: Karel Jelinek, his wife, and his daughter were murdered, and their story could easily have vanished along with the house they once lived in, were it not for this small brass marker set into the cobblestones. Pausing for a moment at the stone on Zborovská street is a simple but meaningful act of remembrance while walking along Prague's riverside district.

Frequently asked questions

Are there other stones at this same address? The documentation for this specific spot mentions only the stone dedicated to Karel Jelinek; there is no confirmed information about additional Stolpersteine at exactly the same address.

Did the whole family die in the Holocaust? No – Karel Jelinek, his wife Margarete, and his daughter Hana were murdered, while their son Otto survived the war.

Is the stone easy to find? The stone is the size of an ordinary cobblestone set into the pavement, so it's worth looking carefully at the ground near the given address on Zborovská street rather than searching for a larger monument.

How do you get there? Zborovská street runs along the Vltava between Malá Strana and Smíchov; the easiest way there is by tram along the riverside line or on foot from the Legion Bridge (Most Legií) or Kampa Island.