[Skybird]

Sometimes its the big numbers that leaves you speechless. Sometimes its the single case.

The following is about Kurt Keller, probably the last still living german witness of the events.

At the age of 92, the man once again traveled to the beach in France where he had to fight as a young man. Which his enemies of then called "Omaha Beach". Kurt K. Keller from Homburg in Saarland returns to the village on Omaha Beach, to Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, to Normandy.

In 2018 they raised the German flag in his honor. Right on the memorial of the Allies, on the beach of death. What an award! And this is where so far always only the British, American, Canadian and French flags had blown.

Five years ago Kurt Keller and I, the author of the book "Century Witnesses", set out on this journey of his life. And everything seemed so present then.

Hardly that he had arrived. all he had to do was close his eyes, and the journey through time began. He saw everyone again, the dead and the survivors. "I feel again how the earth shakes under my feet." When Kurt Keller closes his eyes today, he also sees this one soldier standing in front of him. This GI, who had made it almost all the way up Omaha Beach. "I can see him running towards the cliffs and directly to me," says Keller. On the hill Kurt Keller is crouching in his position with his carbine. The Wehrmacht soldier shoots the GI and hits him in the chest.

What happens now has taken root in Keller's soul. It is a picture that he carries throughout his life. "Then this American soldier sinks to his knees," Keller remembers. "He takes his submachine gun in both hands, his arms outstretched." It almost seems as if he wants to give his weapon to someone. Then he puts it in front of him in the sand. He takes off his helmet, puts it in the sand and folds his hands. Now he throws his head back and looks up to the sky. Until he collapses.

Keller's voice breaks. It's as if the American soldier had traveled with him into the past. He says, "When I saw this man praying to Heaven one last time, that was a turning point in my life for me, and I asked myself: How can one be so pious that one still prays in the last seconds of his life? ? " Keller had until then believed only in Adolf Hitler. But when he saw this soldier turning to God in dying, something in him changed.

It was not the thousands upon thousands of people who touched him like this. It was this one soldier. "He changed my life."




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Krieg ist immer Scheiße. Sein Pathos ist immer ein Verbrechen.

Sometimes we cannot escape it. But we must never allow to fall for the lies.