Each brass plaque commemorates a victim of the Holocaust at that person's last known address. The stone lists the victim's name, date of birth, deportation date, place sent, and death date (if known). Both the idea and the plaques are the work of artist Gunter Demnig, who says that “a person is only forgotten when his or her name is forgotten.” The first small memorial, embedded in the sidewalk, appeared in Berlin’s Kruezberg district in 1996. Today, the stones can be found in 916 places in Germany and more than 45,000 have been planted in more than 1,100 locations in 17 European countries.