No forgiveness, no forgetting – with Günther and Marianne Wilke

Last night I was at the second Event in the series "No Forgiveness, No Forgetting" in the fan rooms of FC St. Pauli. This time the guests were Marianne and Günther Wilke. Marianne Wilke was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit in 2013 for her "outstanding services to remembrance work over decades". This is how Schleswig-Holstein's Prime Minister Albig put it at the award ceremony. She herself said yesterday that she accepted the award even though so many ex-Nazis before her had received the "Cross of Merit on Ribbon of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany". Not so much for herself, but for her many fellow campaigners who were not given this honour. "But between you and me," the 85-year-old admitted with a grin, "now the thing is just lying around somewhere."

Günther Wilke grew up in a socialist household in Hamburg during the National Socialist era. One of his relatives once responded to his neighbors' "Heil Hitler": "His name isn't Hein Hitler, his name is Adolf." That was very brave at the time, since there were "education camps" for people who "couldn't greet properly in German."

For me, the Wilke couple's statements were particularly interesting because they highlighted everyday racism under Nazi rule. The changes, especially for Marianne Wilke as the daughter of a German mother and a German father of Jewish faith, who was awarded the "Iron Cross" in World War I, were enormous in the middle of Hamburg. The stigma of the Star of David, which she had to wear even as a half-Jew, was only the most obvious. In 1935, her parents' marriage was declared annulled by law, after 14 years of marriage. She was often turned away with her food ration cards because they were marked with a "J" and some merchants did not want to sell to Jews. They had to move out of their three-room apartment and the family of four was assigned a one-room apartment. They were no longer allowed to go out on the street in the evenings. Her father was no longer allowed to take the tram to work and lost his job, although his boss did not want him to. From 1943, Marianne Wilke was no longer allowed to go to school. In February 1945, her father had to report for deportation to the concentration camp - by then the Russians had already liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Marianne Wilke addressed the almost 100 people present with powerful words. The distinction between people during the Nazi regime into two classes must never happen again. Unfortunately, the current discussion about refugee policy is again shaped by exactly this distinction. At the end of her remarks, she quoted a line from the music group "Die Ärzte":

It's not your fault that the world is the way it is, it would only be your fault if it stays that way!