Memorial for the Victims of National Socialism

Computer-coordinated audio.
1987-ongoing.

Some fifty million people died in the war and concentration camps perpetrated by the Nazis from 1933 to 1945. The horrendous magnitude of this crime escapes the imagination, and the people who suffered are gradually being lost to memory with each new generation.

To remember each person -- abstractly, yet individually -- I have developed a monument in the form of a computer program that counts from one to fifty million over a period of twelve years, starting over at the end of every twelfth year since 1945. The computer counts silently -- one count every 8 seconds -- until a person (a conscience, a memory) perceives it; then each number is counted aloud, in one of the many languages spoken by the victims, followed by a word of relationship, e.g. "our mother," "ma soeur," "mein Vater."