Download PDF - Gedenkort für die im Nationalsozialismus ...

Jan Feddersen: That sounds like ‘Hitler’s willing executioners’. Is that theimpression you get from researching your father’s story?The things that were done to these captives, I’ll give you one detail, therewere even worse examples: this boat, in which they were shipped to northernNorway, cramped into the hold by the hundreds with no bed and noother facilities. The sea was rough, everyone was sea-sick, they spewedtheir guts up and were given nothing to eat. A couple of hundred men werecooped up in this soup of vomit and somehow tried to survive. And the officersof the German Wehrmacht would stand there above them and throwchunks of bread down at them. They would laugh at these half-starved peoplescrambling for the crumbs.These are stories that have to be told. These people were given theopportunity to maltreat people so horribly. I am absolutely convinced that ifthere were jobs like that to be done today, that you could find people willingto do them, hundreds of them, within a day.Jan Feddersen: Is that your view too, Ms Hörig?Petra Hörig:I think so, yes, there will always be people who are willing to do thesekinds of jobs, especially when they are told that they’re superior to the peoplethey are guarding. That was the widespread ideology at the time.But there is also something else I wanted to say about this. Peoplealways assume that the homosexuals were a small minority. But if you doyour research, you find this kind of small minority in every family. It’s justthat nobody talks about it. That’s why I thought it was important to go publicabout it and to say: I had a bisexual father, who still had seven children.Jan Feddersen: Can you remember when it got easier to talk about theseissues, including your father’s story? It must have changed with the times?If my mother were still alive, I couldn’t be doing this now, I know that forsure. Her whole bourgeois world would have collapsed. Her husbandwasn’t gay, for God’s sake.Jan Feddersen: Not even after all these years?No, no, definitely not. It wouldn’t have been possible. I wouldn’t havewanted to hurt my mother. I would have tried to reach some sort of consensuswith my family. And if my family had been against my public appearance,then I would have gone along with their wishes.130