The students pictured here are looking at a memorial plaque at the former Buchenwald concentration camp. It is not clear what they are feeling: Curiosity? Shock? Apathy?
In the GDR, a school visit to a concentration camp memorial was compulsory and a prerequisite for participating in the Jugendweihe, the socialist coming-of-age ceremony. Today, the ministries of education in most German federal states let the schools decide whether their students should visit a memorial.