80 years later the memories of this horrible part of our history are still alive.
But, how long will it take unto last eye-witness dies?
How long will it take until these memories are only pictures and texts in our history books?
Something unreal.
The holocaust will always be a part of our darkest history.
We can't erase what happened
but we can prevent it from happening again.
Even when all eyewitnesses are dead
they're knowledge will continue to live in us.
We will always have places like Auschwitz to remember the horrible past,
to remember the horrible things humans were capable of doing.
We only need to keep in mind
that all of this was reality
and not just a distant past.
For us, Monowitz was an impressive example
of a place where history took place
and nowadays you can see only a few traces.
On the area of Monowitz people used to live their normal lives.
But during World War II
the Nazis turned the area into a part of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp
and called it Auschwitz-Monowitz.
It was used as a first labor camp for IG Farben.
After the war,
Monowitz turned into a village again.
Today we can still see some remains
of the farmer camp
like bunkers or some barracks
which have been turned into houses.
The people are now living in a place
where prisoners used to work
under inhuman conditions and even died
because of exhaustion.
For us,
this was an unimaginable at first
and raised up questions
how people moved on
and what you can see from history
beside the memorial sites.
After the war,
society tried to draw consequences.
The biggest of them all:
the founding of the European Union.
At first there were only a few countries involved
but time after time
the union grew bigger and bigger.
This is a sign
that we should not live apart from each other
but in a connected community.
We should help each other out
instead of fighting against each other.
Today there are many traces
of connections between countries
that once fought against each other.
Coexist
is now a very important word
in our European vocabulary.
We need to continue to work together
to keep the balance alive.
For example,
in the current refugee crises
we have to help each other out
and not accuse other countries
of not doing enough.
Civil courage,
kindness
and humanity
should be key values to human kind.
These values cannot only be found in politics
but also in the relationships between civilians.
Today we live in a modern society
where people from different origins
or religions
live in houses next to each other.
A key to make such societies work
is a certain balance.
Another example of an institution
which developed further after the war,
after the holocaust,
is the United Nations.
The declaration of human rights
was written in 1948
even under the presence of
the former concentration camp prisoner Stéphane Hessel.
But does the past of our country define who we are?
Are we still responsible or guilty
for what another generation did 80 years ago?
We are not responsible
for what the generations of our great grandparents did.
But personally we strongly believe
we should always remember the past
and be aware that this terrible history happened
even if you cannot see traces first.
We have to make sure it never happens again.
We still can ask for reconciliation and peace.
Institutions like the European Union
or the United Nations
can help us to keep peace.
They were founded to prevent war.
Their main goals are global peace,
international security
and to remind us to respect the human rights in every action.
But we as individuals are responsible
for making these goals possible,
at least in our close surroundings.