A German cinema has offered the free tickets to members of the far-right Alternative for Germany. The theater said it only wants to spur discussion about the Holocaust among a party that has trivialized the event.
Image: picture alliance/United Archives
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A cinema in western Germany has caused something of a stir with an offer of free entry to showings of Schindler's List to members of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
The Cinexx movie theater in the town of Hachenburg is set to show the 1993 epic, which depicts some of the horrors suffered by European Jews during the Nazi era, on January 27 – International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Although the cinema would normally charge an entry fee of €7 ($8) to customers, it extended an offer of free admission to members of the AfD.
That caused a stir, with party members complaining that they felt insulted that their party should be linked to the Holocaust.
The party is best known for its anti-immigration, anti-Islam stance, becoming particularly critical of Chancellor Angela Merkel over Germany's 2015 refugee influx. Leading members of the AfD have repeatedly drawn criticism for comments that appear to play down or trivialize the Holocaust.
Criticism from AfD
The offer was met with disdain by the AfD in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, where Hachenburg is located.
"We find the fact that the AfD is being linked to the Holocaust, the industrial mass extermination of people of the Jewish faith, to be an unspeakable mistake," the state party told German public broadcaster SWR.
AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks
Leading members of the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party have often made provocative, if not outright offensive, remarks — targeting refugees or evoking Nazi terminology.
Image: Britta Pedersen/dpa/picture alliance
Björn Höcke
The head of the AfD in the state of Thuringia first made headlines in 2017 for referring to Berlin's Holocaust memorial as a "monument of shame" and calling on the country to stop atoning for its Nazi past. In July 2023, he echoed Nazi rhetoric by declaring that "This EU must die so that the true Europe may live." In 2019, a court ruled that it was not slanderous to describe Höcke as a fascist.
Image: picture-alliance/Arifoto Ug/Candy Welz
Alice Weidel
One of the best-known public faces of the AfD, party co-chair Alice Weidel rarely shies away from causing a row. Her belligerent rhetoric caused particular controversy in a Bundestag speech in 2018, when she declared, "burqas, headscarf girls, publicly-supported knife men, and other good-for-nothings will not secure our prosperity, economic growth, and the social state."
Image: Sebastian Kahnert/dpa/picture-alliance
Maximilian Krah
Maximilian Krah, the AfD's top candidate in the 2024 European Parliament election, has called the EU a "vassal" of the US and wants to replace it with a "confederacy of fatherlands." He also wants to end support for Ukraine, and has warned on Twitter that immigration will lead to an "Umvolkung" of the German people — a Nazi-era term similar to the far-right's "great replacement" conspiracy theory.
Image: Ronny Hartmann/AFP/Getty Images
Alexander Gauland
Former parliamentary party leader Gauland was roundly criticized for a speech he made to the AfD's youth wing in June 2018. He said Germany had a "glorious history and one that lasted a lot longer than those damned 12 years. Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German history."
Christian Lüth
Ex-press officer Christian Lüth had already faced demotion for past contentious comments before being caught on camera talking to a right-wing YouTube video blogger. "The worse things get for Germany, the better they are for the AfD," Lüth allegedly said, before turning his focus to migrants. "We can always shoot them later, that's not an issue. Or gas them, as you wish. It doesn't matter to me."
Image: Soeren Stache/dpa/picture-alliance
Beatrix von Storch
Initially, the AfD campaigned against the euro and bailouts — but that quickly turned into anti-immigrant rhetoric. "People who won't accept STOP at our borders are attackers," the European lawmaker said in 2016. "And we have to defend ourselves against attackers," she said — even if this meant shooting at women and children.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Murat
Harald Weyel
Not all of the AfD's scandals are about racism: Sometimes they are just revealing. Bundestag member Harald Weyel was caught in a scandal in September 2022 when a microphone he clearly didn't know was on caught him expressing his hope that Germany would suffer a "dramatic winter" of high energy prices or else "things will just go on as ever."
Image: Christoph Hardt /Future Image/imago images
Andre Poggenburg
Poggenburg, former head of the AfD in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, has also raised eyebrows with extreme remarks. In February 2017, he urged other lawmakers in the state parliament to join measures against the extreme left-wing in order to "get rid of, once and for all, this rank growth on the German racial corpus" — the latter term clearly derived from Nazi terminology.
Image: picture alliance/dpa/J. Wolf
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In a statement, the cinema said it had received numerous messages of support, as well as some that were critical of its actions and even threats.
The theater said its aim was not to exclude or defame the AfD, but rather to spur discussion about the Holocaust among members of a party that has trivialized the extermination that occurred under Nazi rule.
"That so many feel so powerfully attacked is not our intention and is incomprehensible to us. We are not saying AfD voters are Nazis. Whether or not you need historical enlightenment is at your own discretion," its statement read.
"In our opinion, however, the AfD's party program strongly suggests a trivialization of the events of that time."
The cinema added that it regularly offers free entry to similar events for different groups of people, such as women, migrants, youth, and church members, among others.
Another leading AfD figure, Björn Höcke, who heads the party in the state of Thuringia, told supporters last year that Berlin's memorial to the victims of the Holocaust was a "memorial of shame." He said Germany's World War II remembrance culture needed a "180-degree" turnaround to concentrate more on the German victims.
Schindler's List, which won seven Academy Awards, is currently being celebrated on the 25th anniversary of its release.
The film tells the story of Oskar Schindler, who helped save the lives of some 12,000 Jews from the overcrowded Krakow Ghetto who worked in his ammunition factory. However, in more harrowing scenes it also shows some of the atrocities suffered by those who were among 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis.
