Only employees of Buchenwald's memorial site attended the anniversary event due to Germany's coronavirus lockdown measures. Authorities called out increasing right-wing extremism in a "Thuringian declaration."
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Schoening
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With the coronavirus lockdown still in force across Germany, authorities in the state of Thuringia were forced to cancel multiple commemoration events dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Instead of survivors meeting at the site, only employees of the camp's present-day museum marked the occasion by laying wreaths at the memorial on Saturday.
Around 56,000 people were killed at Buchenwald and the nearby satellite installation Dora before it was freed by US soldiers in April 1945.
Leaders, survivors unite against far right
On Saturday, authorities published the "Thuringian Declaration," describing it as a centerpiece of this year's memorial events and urging members of the public to sign it. The document was initially signed by top officials including Thuringian State Premier Bodo Ramelow and the Buchenwald memorial site head Volkhard Knigge, as well Buchenwald survivors Ivan Ivanji, Eva Fahidi-Pusztei and Naftali Fürst.
"We know and seriously appreciate that Germany did not free itself from National Socialism by dint of its own efforts; that a large number of crimes went unpunished; and that too many perpetrators and criminals could continue their lives after 1945 as though nothing had happened," the declaration states.
Individual visitors have come to the gates of Buchenwald to pay their respects, but the camp remains closed as part of Germany's COVID-19 pandemic mitigation measuresImage: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Gentzel
Yesterday's 'poisons' touted as 'universal remedy'
The signatories warn that today "right-wing radicalism and authoritarianism are on the rise, as are a form of populism emboldened by a racially motivated superiority complex, nationalism."
"Racism and anti-Semitism are openly propagated and have led to acts of violence in Germany that would have been inconceivable even several years ago," the document reads, adding that "yesterday's destructive poisons are once again being touted as a universal remedy for society's ills."
Germany has seen several deadly right-wing attacks in recent years, including the racist killing spree in February in Hanau, in which a far-right gunman killed nine people in two shisha bars, and an attempted mass shooting at a synagogue in Halle last October on Judaism's holiest day. In January, it was reported that groups of neo-Nazis have been disrupting the tours in Buchenwald, and a package with explosive materials was found at the site.
State premier targets far-right AfD party's rhetoric
In a separate video address, Thuringian State Premier Ramelow slammed those who seek to downplay the Nazi era with a direct reference to a statement made by Alexander Gauland from the right-wing populist AfD party. In 2018, Gauland characterized the Nazi era and the Holocaust as "only a bird shit on over 1,000 years of German history."
"The curse of Buchenwald still applies," Ramelow said, noting that "bird shit" was "not the right expression to explain the [Buchenwald] crimes."
Addressing the public, Ramelow urged people to fight against normalization of crimes such as the ones committed in Buchenwald. "The curse of Buchenwald is our daily work."
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.
