LIVINGSTON — Tens of thousands of brass stones, five pounds apiece, are scattered across Europe. Called Stolpersteine, or "stumbling stones" in German, each one has a name, a year, and the fate of one of the people who disappeared during the Nazi era etched into its shining surface.

They’re meant to catch the eye – if not outright stop walkers in their tracks. Among the 43,500 stones that have been laid by a German artist, one is the stone of Beate Bravmann, an 11-year-old Jewish girl who lived in a house next to the synagogue where her father was a cantor.

Seventy-six years later, Bea, now Muhlfelder and a Livingston grandmother of five, stands in her local synagogue holding the stone – one of a handful that exist outside Europe. To her and her religious community, it’s going to be the centerpiece of a season of reflection on a tumultuous past that cannot be forgotten.

“I couldn’t believe how heavy it was,” said Muhlfelder.

As the Jewish High Holidays begin, Muhlfelder and her congregation at Temple Emanu-El of West Essex are planning to tailor their Holocaust exhibit to the lessons of the stone that represents the escape of the 11-year-old girl, now a pillar of a Jewish community.

“We have a lot of families who lost loved ones in the Shoah and the Holocaust,” said Rabbi Greg Litcofsky, of the temple. “Rosh Hashanah is also known as the Day of Remembrance. To have Bea, and her past, honored with a work of art, is a blessing.”

Gunter Demnig, a German artist, began laying the gold Stolpersteine in the late 1990s to commemorate the victims of National Socialism, he says on his website. The German word translates as "stumbling stones." Reached by phone as he was installing another stone in Germany on Wednesday, Demnig said only a few exist outside of areas of Nazi occupation. Muhlfelder became familiar with the shining stones, each the size of a deep cobblestone, on a few visits to her old hometown, along the banks of Lake Constance and Germany's southern border with Switzerland.

In 2012, four stones were laid in front of her former house: one each for her father Jakob, mother Flora, and brother Siegbert. Bea fled German with her parents in August 1938, just three months before the synagogue next door was torched during Kristallnacht, the "Night of Broken Glass," referring to the wave of anti-Jewish violent attacks throughout Germany and German occupied countries.

In 2013, three more stones were laid in front of the house for the Levis, a family of three – the teenage boy who vanished in 1935, and the couple Max and Rosa who died in 1942 Limoux, France and Auschwitz, respectively, according to the stones.

Muhlfelder met Demnig, the artist, at the two events. So in June, when she was unable to attend a laying of a stone in front of her old synagogue next door, an idea occurred to her: could one of the stones help with educating the younger people here in the 21st century United States?

“Nobody here knew what a stumbling stone was,” she said. “I knew it was an important lesson

Temple Emanu-El’s Holocaust Remembrance Center is a unique place, even among Jewish houses of worship. The display cases hold mementos such as final letters to children from parents on their way to the gas chambers of Eastern Europe, menorahs, prayer books rescued from burning temples like Muhlfelder’s, two centuries-old Torah scrolls – and even grisly pictures of mass graves, and Zyklon B canisters.

Next month, a new exhibit will be centered around Muhlfelder’s small stone. She will talk to the congregants in November, for a Kristallnacht anniversary service, temple officials said.

“In her own quiet way, she’s so wonderful in making sure that people don’t forget,” said Wendy Lubin, a member of the temple’s board of trustees, and a longtime Holocaust Committee member. “They listen. The kids don’t forget – and the adults don’t forget.”

Muhlfelder’s husband Ludwig, a Holocaust survivor himself who returned to Europe just a few years later to fight against the Nazi forces at the Battle of the Bulge, died in 2004. Muhlfelder, now a widow, keeps busy in the temple life, going to services and Torah studies. She has an irrepressible, wry sense of humor. She sees her children and grandchildren regularly. For her, it’s been a life well-lived, despite the challenges, she said.