Bart Witteman's grandson, Ton Witteman, placed a stumbling stone outside his grandfather's former home in Haarlem, commemorating Bart's courageous act of sheltering two Jewish people during WWII. This plaque is part of a broader artistic initiative by Gunter Demnig, designed to honor individuals who resisted Nazi oppression. Despite the town's tragic history of losing 733 Jewish, Sinti, and Roma individuals during the war, not everyone supported memorialization efforts, showing the sensitivity and complexity surrounding historical remembrance in the local community.
"Gunter Demnig developed these stumbling stones to lay before the houses where someone last lived in freedom, so that you simply come across them in the street."
"My grandfather is remembered as a policeman in the police station in Haarlem, where there is a plaque of seven names of fallen policemen including his. But this is a place for us to go to."
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