With EU elections coming up in June, the European Parliament is trying to mobilize voter turnout with a moving short film released on Monday.
The film shows elderly people highlighting the importance of democracy in conversations with a grandchild or another young person.
Among them is an almost 96-year-old French woman who recounts how invading German troops shot her mother during World War II as she lay protectively over her. The woman said she was 12 years old at the time.
Another narrator is a Dutch man whose father was murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp and other contemporary witnesses who experienced independence and democracy movements in Central and Eastern Europe at first hand in the decades that followed.
According to the EU legislature, the film is intended to inspire reflection on the importance of democracy and voting, with many participants in the video exercising their power to vote for perhaps the last time in their lives.
"If I could leave you with a message before I go: live democracy," the 96-year-old Frenchwoman said. Others warn: "Take good care of democracy when I'm gone."
The film, which is around four minutes long, can be viewed on a website dedicated to the European elections called Together.eu and YouTube. TV stations will also broadcast extracts.