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When We Were 17 - Youth at the Crossroads

December 16, 2014

How does the world feel when you’re 17? To a young man who sees his best friend die in World War I? Or to a young German-Turkish woman who wants to become officer in the German armed forces today?

https://p.dw.com/p/1Dlhr

These are questions Deutsche Welle addresses in its documentary “At 17 ... A Century of Youth.” A hundred years of German and European history from 1914 to 2014 – told through the destinies of five young people and the conditions, opportunities and constraints they found on the threshold of adulthood. The film looks at five milestones in German and European history: 1914, 1945, 1968, 1989 and 2014. For one, it profiles a real person who at the time was 17-21 years old and full of hopes and dreams for a better future. But history caught up with them all and their lives were blown off course by events.

We meet Esther Bejarano, who was taken to Auschwitz as a teenager and lost her first love there. She talks about the fear there, about her encounter with the infamous concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele and why at the age of 89-year-old she still gets up on stage most weeks and sings songs against racism with the band “Microphone Mafia.”


Berliner Carsten Schatz tells us about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of East Germany.He talks about experiencing boundless freedom for the first time ever – and the shock that robbed him of the lightness of youth. During a routine hospital examination, he learnt he was HIV positive. At the age of 21, he didn’t know how long he would live – but he was sure he wouldn’t go without leaving a trace.

Finally, our documentary follows Sibel Ozkan through her Bundeswehr training and at the clinic where she works as a young intern. Some touching scenes bring us close to the protagonists. And they chart the way a nation that sent her youth into war has evolved into a multicultural society at the heart of a united Europe.

David Imper ("Mit 17")
David Imper at 17. He is now an actor and plays the young soldier Erich Krems, who saw his best friend die in the trenches in 1914.Image: privat
ACHTUNG: Nur für Projekt "Mit 17" verwenden: Videostartbild Carsten Schatz
The diagnosis that Carsten Schatz was HIV positive overshadowed his youth and has shaped his life to date.
ACHTUNG: Nur für Projekt "Mit 17" verwenden: Videostartbild Esther Bejarano
As a young girl, Esther Bejarano played accordion with trembling hands to survive in the Auschwitz concentration camp.




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