Stolpersteine grieve for victims of the Nazis, one at a time

Max Kösterich lived for a time at 204 Chaussée de Waterloo, an elegant apartment block on a hilly thoroughfare in Brussels. A married father of four sons, he probably arrived in the Belgian capital from Frankfurt in 1934, aged 50. What Kösterich did for a living is lost to time, though a previous stint working in the Dutch East Indies suggests a well-off trader of some sort. Why the family moved is also not known, but might be guessed at. For if history remembers Kösterich at all, it is as a statistic: one of 6m Jews murdered by the Nazis. Three of his sons died with him at Auschwitz. Only the second one, Manfred, survived. In 1938 an opportunity came up for just one brother to emigrate to Australia, an escape from the impending horror. It was Manfred who drew the winning straw. Those not so lucky were rounded up, landing in French camps before being loaded onto eastbound trains.

Last month the Kösterich family returned from Australia to the Chaussée de Waterloo. Manfred died in 1984, unable or unwilling to share with his loved ones much about the circumstances of his emigration. His son Joe Kosterich (the umlaut on the “o” was lost in the move down under), a medical doctor from Perth in his early 60s, had made the journey with his wife Cathy and their grown children. Number 204 is a little faded these days, its entrance flanked by a dingy bar and a dental practice. One drizzly Saturday morning in November the Kosterich family looked on as a small slab of pavement in front of the building’s threshold was excised. In its place, a brass plaque the size of a cobblestone was cemented in. “Here Lived Max Kösterich. Born 1884”, it starts, before noting his grim fate. As trams rolled by and city life went on, a few short speeches were attempted to a dozen well-wishers. “My grandfather until today was just another number,” said Joe, unable to hold back a tear. Cathy laid down a few flowers by the plaque: a kangaroo paw and some eucalyptus, an Australian wink to the new life the tides of history had foisted upon the Kösterich/Kosterich clan.