My Name Is Liza Kalvelage

Pluck alternating bass between strums
A
My name is Liza Kalvelage
      E            A
I was born in Nuremberg
             D                                      A
And when the trials were held there nineteen years ago
                                     E             A
It seemed to me ridiculous to hold a nation all to blame
        D                                A
For the horrors which the world did undergo
              E
A short while later when I applied
      A
For I was a G.I. Bride
     D                                   A
An American consular official questioned me
     E                             A
He refused my exit permit, said my answers did not show
               D                        A
I’d learned my lesson about responsibility.

Thus suddenly I was forced
         E                A
To start thinking on this theme
         D                            A
And when later I was permitted to emigrate

I must’ve been asked a hundred times
        E              A
Where I was and what I did
         D                           A
In those years when Hitler ruled our state.
  E                         A
I said I was a child, or at most a teenager
         D                            A
But this always extended the questioning.
              E
They’d ask me where were my parents,
   A
My father, my mother,
       D                          A
And to this I could answer not a thing.
                                       E              A
The seed planted there in Nuremberg in Nineteen-Forty-Seven
D                        A
Started to sprout and to grow
                                 E                A
Gradually I understood what that verdict meant to me
               D                               A
When there are crimes that I can see and I can know.
    E                                A
And now I also know what it is to be charged with mass guilt,
D                                A
Once in a lifetime is enough for me.
E                       A
No, I could not take it

A second time
D                     A
That is why I am here today.

The events of May 25th,
    E          A
The day of our protest,
      D                                 A
Put a small balance weight on the other side.
                            E         A
Hopefully, someday my contribution to peace
     D                           A
Will help just a bit to turn the tide.
    E                     A
And perhaps I can tell my children six,
    D                      A
And later on their own children,
   E                   A
At least in the future they need not be silent
              D
When they are asked
                       A
“Where was your mother when?”