While walking through Römer in Frankfurt, we came across cobblestone streets marked by small plaques in a distinct gold shade. At first, they seemed decorative, until our guide explained that these are Stolpersteine, or "stumbling stones," a memorial project initiated by German artist Gunter Demnig in the 1990s. Each stone is hand-installed into the pavement outside the last freely chosen residence of a victim of the Holocaust. Engraved into the brass surface are names, birth years, and often the dates of deportation and death, in a way to return the identities to those who were once reduced to numbers. The placement is deliberate: right outside the buildings from which they were taken.
Looking at this made me wonder: will we honour the victims of hate crime in India? People who are dying due to religion, cast, creed and difference of opinion? People are being forcefully sent down the gutter because they come from a certain class? Will we remember the dead we so brutally violated and unalived?