Word: von
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Colleagues point to von Weizsaker's visit to Israel as illustrative of the especial sensitivity the president bears for the past...
...informal gathering with young Israeli students, von Weizsacker asked a young woman whether she had visited Germany. When she said that she would never visit Germany, the president extended a state invitation, and the Israeli woman spent 10 days in Germany...
Mayor of Berlin before he became president three years ago, von Weizsacker has become the most acclaimed commentator on the legacy of the Nazi years, a man whose speeches are carefully charted as indicators of Germany's evolving attitudes toward its past...
Even those who criticize the decision to award an honorary degree to the German president, saying that he has covered-up his father's war crimes as a Nazi foreign service officer, pose their complaints against the younger von Weizsacker in terms of the laudable standards he has held for his fellow countryman. Von Weizsacker's standard is one that demands personal reconcilation with the past, and a commitment to bear the consequences of Nazi attrocities...
...such thing as guilt or innocence of an entire nation. Guilt is, like innocence, not collective but personal. There is discovered, or concealed, individual guilt. There is guilt which people acknowledge or deny. Everyone who directly experienced that era should today quietly ask himself about his involvement then," von Weizsacker said in an oft-quoted speech he delivered on the 40th anniversary of Germany's unconditional surrender...