My name is Lisa Kavelage (video)

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1. My name is Lisa Kavelage, I was born in Nuremberg,

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and when the trials were held there ninteen years ago,

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it seemed to me ridiculous to hold a nation all to blame,

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for the horrors which the world did undergo.

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A short while later when I applied, for I was a G.I. bride,

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an American Consular Official questioned me.

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He refused my exit permit, said my answers did not show,

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I’d learned my lesson about responsibility.

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2. Thus suddenly, I was forced to start thinking on this theme,

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and when later I was permitted to emigrate,

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I must have been asked a hundred times where I was and what I did,

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in those years, when Hitler ruled our state.

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I said I was a child, or at most a teenager,

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but this always extended the questioning.

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They’d asked me, where were my parents, my father, my mother,

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and to this I could answer not a thing.

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3. The seed planted there in Nuremberg in 1947,

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started to sprout and to grow,

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Gradually, I understood what that verdict meant to me,

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when there are crimes that I can see and I can know.

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And now I also know what it is to be charged with mass guilt,

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once in a lifetime is enough for me.

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No, I could not take it for a second time,

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and that is why I am here today.

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4. The events of May 25th, the day of our protest,

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put a small balance weight on the other side.

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Hopefully, someday my contribution to peace

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will help just a bit to turn the tide.

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And perhaps I can tell my children six,

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and later on their own children,

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at least in the future they need not be silent,

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when they are asked : Where was your mother, when ?

(orig. = capo 3rd) (Pete Seeger)