If we forget we are unwanted and reviled, there is always someone to remind us. Hence the vandalizing of stolpersteins, or stumbling blocks, in Oslo, on Rosh Hashana eve. The stolpersteins are brass paving “stones” with the names of those murdered in the Holocaust. These brass pavers appear where Jews last lived and worked before they were carted off to camps where they were gassed and burned. These particular pavers stand directly outside of Oslo’s main synagogue.

The defacement of the stolpersteins was accomplished by painting over the engraved names of Jewish victims with black paint. Someone would like us to forget that these Jewish victims of the Holocaust are too unimportant to remember. The rest of us won’t let that happen.