Feature: Artist's "stumbling blocks" keep Holocaust memories alive through generations 

For nearly 20 years, pedestrians have been walking over cobblestone-sized brass blocks embedded in the streets of German cities and towns.

Known as "Stolperstein" or "stumbling blocks" in English, those small blocks have built the world's largest decentralized memorial for Nazi-era Holocaust victims.

Each Stolperstein bears a stark text, with the name of an individual, their year of birth, date of deportation and, if known, the date and place of death.

The 50,000th stumbling block was laid this month, ahead of Tuesday's 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp prisoners.

"If concentration camps are the end, the starting point is the victims' own home. I want to take their names back home," said German artist Gunter Demnig about his Stolperstein project.

Demnig, who was born in Berlin shortly after World War II, started the project in the mid-1990s.

He said the stumbling blocks, which are embedded in the pavement in front of the victims' last known addresses, would symbolically return them to their neighborhood so many years after being torn away from their daily lives.

Over the past 20 years, the memorial project has been gradually progressing with the support and participation of many individuals and social institutions.

In 2010, Demnig brought the stumbling blocks to China for an exhibition in the German pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo.

"This is part of the image of our country, letting the world know how we treat our own history," Demnig explained.

Germany's attitude towards its history during the Nazi era has been widely acclaimed. Over the past decades, the country has never stopped reflecting upon its war crimes.

It is shown in German leaders' promises that Germany would take permanent responsibility for Nazi crimes, in its continued compensation for the victims and creation of Holocaust memorials, as well as in the country's laws that strictly forbid the promotion of Nazi ideology and its anti-Nazi education to the youth.

"Today, young people are learning from textbooks that millions of people were killed by the Nazis. But it is hard for them to imagine that a civilized country has such a history only by numbers," Demnig told reporters at the Shanghai World Expo.

He said he hoped the traces of the victims' lives could reappear with his Stolperstein project, and to help ensure that people wouldn't forget them due to the passage of time.

The stumbling blocks have become a popular Holocaust memorial project throughout Europe today. The blocks have been laid in over 1,000 cities and towns in Germany and other European countries.

Nowadays, it is deeply rooted in the mind of German people to reflect on their history and remember the lessons drawn from it, which is not only represented by the Holocaust memorial at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, or addresses made by politicians when marking war anniversaries.

It is also reflected in everyday scenes such as exhibitions on Nazi history held across Germany with the support from all sectors of society, as well as the thousands of brass blocks under people's feet.

All of these efforts have contributed to the way Germans reflect on Nazi war crimes, and formed an invisible Stolperstein in the heart of Germans which is a constant reminder not to forget the country's history. Endit