Ernst Simon Salomon

Look down before you walk on: set flush in a German pavement, a small brass stone catches the light. It is a Stolperstein, a stumbling stone, and the name engraved on it is Ernst Simon Salomon. Ernst Simon was born on 3 October 1894, the twin of his brother Leo, into a Jewish family. The ground looks unchanged, yet memory presses up from it here.

Both brothers attended the Kaiser Wilhelm Gymnasium, and a world of prospects stood open before them. Under Nazi rule, their Jewish heritage and their homosexuality marked the two men as targets twice over. The Nazis killed Leo in Wolfenbüttel prison in 1942. Months later, Ernst Simon was murdered in Auschwitz. On 6 November 2017, two Stolpersteine were set into the ground before the brothers' former home. Three years later, more stones followed at the site of their vanished school. Two of the school stones honour the twins as former pupils, and others remember Jewish schoolmates.

For decades after the murders, the two had names but no faces. In 2025, photographs of the two surfaced from an archive for the first time, and faces finally joined the names. The stone leaves everyone who passes a question: who do we see, and who do we forget, as we walk these streets?