blue Sport expert Marcel Reif "I didn't want to speak as the son of a Holocaust survivor"
How does someone who lost almost his entire family in the Nazi Holocaust view the rise of right-wing extremists? blue Sport expert Marcel Reif spoke about this on the WDR talk show "Kölner Treff".
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- On January 31, 2024, blue Sport expert Marcel Reif moved the German Bundestag to tears. His speech at the memorial service for the victims of National Socialism got under your skin.
- He didn't actually want to speak there. That's what the 75-year-old told the WDR talk show "Kölner Treff" yesterday evening.
- "I didn't want to speak as the son of a Holocaust survivor. My father didn't want to talk about his time. And I thought, how could I come to that," said Reif.
He is a living legend. Marcel Reif lives and breathes football. Even as a teenager, he played for Kaiserslautern.
But he only became a star when he had been in television for a long time. It actually all started with politics, at ZDF. In 1984, he switched to the sports department at Zweite.
He became so well known that RTL hired him twelve years later. His reports from the Champions League are a hit. He later moved on to Sky, Sat1 and Sport1. And for some time now, Reif has also been analyzing football matches as an expert for blue Sport.
Marcel Reif is also a political man
But Marcel Reif has not only made a name for himself as a sports reporter. He is also a political person. Marcel Reif's father, whose real name is Nathan, is a Holocaust survivor.
A year ago, Reif told his family story at an event to mark the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp in the Bundestag. He did not actually want to speak there, Reif told the WDR talk show "Kölner Treff" on Friday evening.
"I didn't want to speak as the son of a Holocaust survivor. My father didn't want to talk about his time. And I thought, how could I do that?"
But then he changed his mind, "because at some point I realized that it was about passing things on".
He continues: "There are these absolutely right and necessary hours of remembrance: Everyone puts on dark clothes, then there's a string quartet, serious music, everyone looks embarrassed, two people talk, and then everyone goes their separate ways again. And then at some point it's just a date. But it is something different, especially in this country and especially for the next generations."
Reif: "My father was a witty, funny bon vivant"
At the event, Marcel Reif said that his father had repeatedly told him a phrase that had shaped him: "Be human". "He was a witty, funny bon vivant who liked to eat, drink and have fun in life," he said about his father on the WDR talk show "Kölner Treff".
But his father never spoke about his experiences during the Nazi era. "He tried to protect us from that so that we had a different childhood to him and so that we wouldn't see every tram driver, teacher or baker as the supposed murderer of our grandparents and other relatives."
Today, he considers his father's behavior heroic. He never told him.
Marcel Reif knew that most of his family had been murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust. "I had no grandparents. I had an uncle, a cousin and an aunt. The rest didn't exist."
Reif only found out how his father survived the concentration camp after his death
Reif only learns how his father survived the concentration camp and that he only escaped the extermination camp by chance and with the help of a Krupp manager after his father's death. His mother tells him about it.
"My father didn't make an issue of it, and we children left it where he wanted it." As a teenager, Marcel Reif is not unhappy about it. He has other worries, such as his first car, a Fiat. Today he talks about the history of his family. That is important to him.
The liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp by the Red Army was commemorated again this week, 80 years ago on January 27. And on Wednesday of all days, two days later, a CDU/CSU resolution was passed in the Bundestag with the votes of the AfD.
A breach of taboo? No, says Reif.
"I didn't experience this breach of taboo as a breach of taboo because the AfD voted in favor. For me, the breach of taboo is that such a large parliamentary group from a party that is certainly right-wing extremist and racist sits in the Bundestag."
In view of the 30% voter support for the AfD in some cases, he believes it is too short-sighted to talk in general terms about "neo-Nazis": "That means we will have to get these voters back."
Reif's demand: "Put the AfD on the spot"
Marcel Reif is disturbed by "what happened this week, how the centrist parties dealt with each other and how many insults and injuries there were. But they will have to form a coalition after the election. I don't know how that will work."
His demand: to take on the AfD thematically.
"Firewall is a nice word, but it's not a policy. You have to take voters away from the AfD, but you can only do that by offering things."
The centrist parties have not succeeded in doing this in recent years. Reif: "The AfD didn't land on a UFO, it has spread because people who are worried have followed it. Worries turn into fears, and this is the basis for making money. That's what the AfD has done."
But only a good twenty percent vote for the AfD. That gives him hope: "We are more than the AfD," summarizes Marcel Reif.