Born 34 years after #VEDay, I was a child when the then German President Von Weizsäcker described 8 May as “a day of liberation” in 1985. With this he set a new collective norm of remembrance that shaped my growing up: he had basically given Germans the task to never forget.

This was a marked departure from how Germans had seen VE Day for a long time: as capitulation day. That view was one that allowed forgetting and suppression. Von Weizsäcker felt this was wrong and while others before him had made similar points, his speech was a turning point.

Germany had perpetrated monstrous crimes in the Holocaust. There is never going to be a time to draw a line under this: doing so would be an insult to victims, disrespect the suffering, but also the sacrifices of our liberators who ended the Nazi regime and who we remember today.

For me, and I know many other Germans, the question of guilt has accompanied us all of our lives. I wasn’t alive during the war yet I have always felt a sense of collective guilt and a very strong sense of collective responsibility not only to never forget, but to see.

By that I mean consciously choosing to look, from visiting concentration camps to reading accounts of victims. To me this seeing is esp. important because my country of birth murdered millions not just by starting a war, but by developing an industrial-scale killing machinery.

The complete disregard for human life was monstrous. How this was possible, how Germans could choose to either participate in this system or to look away, I will never understand. But I see. I remember. And wherever I go, war monuments remind me of what my country of birth did.

And that is right because Von Weizsäcker was right: we have a duty never to forget. So today at #VE75, I want to say that I will never forget. But I also want to say how grateful I am to all those who came together, who stood side by side, to bring down the murderous Nazi regime.

Your sacrifices, of which there were so many, not only liberated Europe, saving many lives, you also specifically liberated Germany ... and saved us Germans from ourselves. So from this German spending #VEDayAtHome in her backyard in the UK: thank you!