German woman lit 8,000 candles to pay homage to virus victims

As Coronavirus pandemic has a worst affect on Germany, the country has lost many precious lives due to the lack of vaccine and following governments’ guidelines.

Now, as German government has lifted a long-month imposed lockdown, a 60-year old woman Gertrud Schop has lit 8,000 candles in the memory of COVID-19 victims, determined to continue until a vaccine is found.

The woman makes the rounds of an imposing cross marked out with candles on the grass in Zella-Mehlis. Each of the flickering flames represents one of the 8,000 people who has died since March.

“I wanted to make visible the numbers from the Robert Koch Institute (for disease control),” said Schop, who was also motivated by her Christian faith.

“Three numbers on a sheet of paper, a statistic, that doesn’t touch people’s hearts like this installation that grows day by day,” she added.

VIDEO: German woman lights 8,000 candles in memory of each victim of COVID-19.

Once a week Gertrud Schop lights a candle in her garden for every person who died from COVID-19 in Germany. This week, she and volunteers lit nearly 8,000 of them pic.twitter.com/2pVeEGlsOO

— AFP news agency (@AFP) May 21, 2020

Gertrud Schop has switched her original plan to commemorate the dead alone as number of Coronavirus cases witness a rapid rise.

She plans to continue the installation to keep their memory alive, even as the infection rate has slowed and Germany gets back to its normal life.

Germany – Coronavirus update: