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Jan Feddersen: Mr. Zimmer, what are your expectations now of a memorial,one which we have been talking about for some time now? What would bea dignified reminder of what your father suffered?Dieter Zimmer:I’m not expecting much in the way of information about the issue, that’snot what memorials are for. But it should awaken people’s interest in theissue. It should stimulate them to find out what really happened. We arecurrently realizing to our horror that young people in particular have no ideaand know nothing about what we’re discussing here. If my own children arerelatively well informed about this topic, then it’s because I have beentelling them their grandfather’s story for years. By the way, they don’t considerhis homosexuality in any way special. For them, homosexuality is aperfectly normal matter. But the torture and abuse in the Third Reich, theyhave absorbed that information. That becomes clear when they argue withtheir classmates or friends, who might see it all as a joke, or maybe like toquote a right-wing slogan. The task of a memorial is to raise awarenessand interest in this context. And I’m sure there will be a large amount ofpeople who will be upset at us for doing it – but we have to do it!Petra Hörig:I think it’s a good thing that there’s going to be a memorial. I also think itwill meet a lot of resistance. People have asked me, even within my owncircle of friends, ‘why are you doing this?’, or ‘let sleeping dogs lie’ or ‘itwon’t do you any good’. What’s important to me is that we remember thefates of people who live among us, and that we remember them with amemorial.Jan Feddersen: Can you imagine what your father would say about thisdebate?Dieter Zimmer:I never got to know my father and in that sense I had no relationship withhim. You know, in my book, I call him ‘Hans’. I grew up without a father, althoughI had a step-father for a short while, who also fell during the secondworld war. That’s the way things were those days. And shortly after the warI had a third father, we needed someone to feed us. So at the age of sevenI had my third father, who divorced my mother when I was eleven years old.That’s my father-son resumee, it can only be explained by the times.Jan Feddersen: What if your father were still alive, if he had survived theterror?My father would not be alive any more but he probably would have wantedto be here if he had the chance. At least, that’s my impression. He wasno resistance fighter, but he hated the Nazis. In those days it was normalfor the ‘head of the house’ to lay down the rules. He forbade my motherfrom joining any kind of National Socialist organization. But I also had a132