A Tale of Heroism During the Norwegian MassacreThe man who had suddenly become a hero pours himself a beer and lights a cigarette. He only managed one or two hours of sleep the night before and he looks tired. It is the day after the massacre at the Norwegian youth camp on Utøya Island. The suspected perpetrator, Anders Behring B. cold-bloodedly shot down 85 people on the previous day -- but dozens were able to flee by jumping into the water and swimming towards the mainland.
It is 24 hours since Marcel Gleffe became a key figure in pulling many of these young camp goers out of the water. Thirty-two years old, Gleffe is a roofer from Germany who has worked in Norway for the past two-and-a-half years. Currently, he is vacationing at a campground in Utvika together with his parents Walter and Heidrun. The campground is directly across from the island where the massacre took place.
He takes a deep drag on his cigarette and begins to tell his story. It was a chilly late afternoon on Friday and the Gleffe family had just sat down for coffee at the table in front of their RV. They were talking about the attack that had just taken place in Oslo , about the bomb and the several people it had killed. A neighbor at the campground had told them of the shocking attack .
Suddenly, they heard a hollow bang. First just one or two, "but then it was an entire salvo," says Heidrun, 53. They saw dark smoke rise up from the island. "I said to my husband, 'come on, lets go down to the jetty, we have to see what happened." Maybe it was some fireworks, they thought, or some sort of exercise.
Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 10:38 am
