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Speech for my class about guilt and The Second world war

We're all Germans except for a few students, right? So, let's play a little game. Who can name me three keywords you bring in connection with Germany immediately? ... I suppose your answers are quite similar with my conjectures of other German people. Let's move beyond the borders of Germany then. Imagine what for example people in America would name . Maybe it's the word beer or they mention even the cars but in the end everyone would say something about our past, like Hitler or Nazi. Whether they mean it in a postive or negative way doesn't matter. Usually when German people are in other countries, people will say we are Nazis. First of all I want to say that I can't tolerate anything that happend in the Second World War or especially before. Last week I visited Sandbostel with my history class , a prisoner of war camp in the Second World War. I can't forget the pictures I saw in these few hours while I was there.a. Sure, I am already 16 years old. I know quite a lot about the terrible time from the past. Whether fromclass in school, from sundry? conversations with contemporary wittnesses or just from some visits to places like Sandbostel. It was different this time. It must be the point that this place isn't that far away from my home. As well as the point that I saw all of these pictures, all of these videos with suffering people that took place on the outside of the room where I saw the photographs. A Few moments later I stood on this field too. On the same ground where thousands of people died. It was cold. It was bitterly cold. No, it wasn't that typical April weather that gave us a lot of rain and even thunderstorm above our heads. It was the fault of the stories. Goosebumps were a constant companion while the historian showed and explained us everything. We walked over the green areas towards porous shacks. My eyes were constantly focused on the ground. the entire time I searched for physical proximity with my friends. I didn't want to get this feeling of loneliness. Likewise I wasn't able to face the place around me. It was too horrible. I am a 16 year old girl. I am ashamed of my origin, of my country in which I was born. I should actually love and honour it. But I don't. I can't. Just right after I was home in the early evening I sat in my room, was ashamed of everything that surrounded me. I felt bad for eating, for changing into more comfortable clothes, yes even for using the toilette. I know I can't change the past. As far as I know no one from my family was a member of the national socialists. Actually I am not bearing the blame... Now completely resolved, I sat on my bed. Before me my mirror, which in turn relfected my window. It was raining. It flashed and then a thunder. Louder than I had ever heard one before. Silent tears were rolling down my cheek without me having noticed. Still I felt guilty. After a few minutes my mother, a really clever and educated women, came into my room. She sat down beside me. Silent. There were entirely different moral values and beliefs in that time, she told me a few moments later. Is she right? In just a few years everything should have changed completely? Suddenly a human life is worth much more again? I hardly understand what she is trying to tell me. Even other countries have already done much evil in the human past. Probably it would follow more, so her further words. Sure, you will now consider the Krimean Crisis or Syria, just to name some current issuses in the world. But were these people gassed as well, just because they had a different nationality/Religion ? Probably not. So why the whole thing? Why did therehave to be these 60 million victims alone in one war? Perhaps the end of the beginning of right-wing parties at the forefront of politics, if you refer to Germany. But 60 Million people? Really? Was that really necessary to understand? All these people who came from many different countries survived rarely longer than a year in this camp. Starvation and frostbite were the most common cause of death. There ''lived“ up to 30 people at one time in a room. Among them certainly some already dead. The stench, so I heard from contemporary wittnesses, was probably something they never can forget. Own feces? and dead bodies piled up in the area. Human dignity? -Wasn't there. But how could it have burned into the minds of these people that strong that they tolerated and even desirable this handling? What would have happened if Hitler had not lost but won the war? Would Germany still living under the hands of a dictator? Or what would have happened if Hitler would never have come that strongly to power? Anti-Semitism was already anchored in the minds, but would there have been people who had lived it as well? Questions about questions torture me before bedtime. Pictures about pictures buzzing around in my head. Guilt but also gratitude that I live in today's time with this standard of living, is what I can clearly feel in my small and still young body. I will never be able to think differently about it. My questions will be left unanswered. My feelings will fade but never disappear completely... A country with a history that must be kept alive in our heads but that musn't be discharged to the present generation! Responsibility isn't the same as guilt. We are a nation, that I was born into, We have a common past and we take responsibility for what has happened, even if the ''guilty generation“ dies out. I accept the past. However, I am ashamed of it. That’s my opinion. Article 33 of Geneva Convention IV provides that any person guilty of a crime may be condemned whether or not he or has committed it. A punishment presupposes guilt! So, now let's get back to the beginning of my speech. Why are there still so many people that judge us for something that wasn't our fault? I showed how disgusting the situation during the Second World War was. I can totally understand people for being furious. I am too. More and more teenangers feel guilty, an article in the newspaper ''stern“stated. That isn't the right way and I know it as well. The memory of the crimes of national socialism is a permanent commitment. Only the one who remembers, even if he isn’t bearing the blame, can responsibly deal with the story. Even if memory is exhausting, we must not give in to the temptation to forget or to displace. We can't change the past. But we can learn from history: Anti-Semitism, racism and xenophibia must never again have a chance in Germany. We need to fight against it with convinced moral courage of the whole society and with the full force of the law. So the lesson of Sandbostel or Auschwitz and all the others remains alive: The dignity of man is inviolable! (11:36pm - 9th of may, 2014)