My Name Is Lisa Kalvelage

My name is Lisa Kalvelage, I was born in Nuremberg
 And when the trials were held there nineteen years ago
 It seemed to me ridiculous to hold a nation all to blame
 For the horrors that the world did undergo
 A short while later when I applied to be a G. I. bride
 An American consular official questioned me
 He refused my exit permit, said my answers did not show
 I'd learned my lesson about responsibility.
 Thus suddenly I was forced to start thinking on this theme
 And when later I was permitted to emigrate
 I must have been asked a hundred times where I was and what I did
 In those years when Hitler ruled our state
 I said I was a child or at most a teen-ager
 But that only extended the questioning
 They'd ask, where were my parents, my father, my mother
 And to this I could answer not a thing.
 The seed planted there at Nuremberg in 1947
 Started to sprout and to grow
 Gradually I understood what that verdict meant to me
 When there are crimes that I can see and I can know
 And now I also know what it is to be charged with mass guilt
 Once in a lifetime is enough for me
 No, I could not take it for a second time
 And that is why I am here today.
 The events of May 25th, the day of our protest,
 Put a small balance weight on the other side
 Hopefully, someday my contribution to peace
 Will help just a bit to turn the tide
 And perhaps I can tell my children six
 And later on their own children
 That at least in the future they need not be silent
 When they are asked, "Where was your mother, when?"