At the Buchenwald Memorial, the triumph of the extreme right is seen as a threat

Death threats no longer surprise the director of the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial. With the unprecedented victory of the German far right in a regional election, he expects even more difficult days ahead.

“My colleagues and I have been upset and depressed since Sunday evening,” Jens-Christian Wagner, head of the foundation that administers the former Nazi camp, told AFP.

The region of Thuringia, where the site is located, saw the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party triumph in Sunday's election. For the first time, far-right MPs will dominate the parliament of this small eastern German state.

“The opinions directed against our memorial will grow stronger and it will be increasingly difficult to change people's minds,” grimaces Jens-Christian Wagner.

The AfD's leader in Thuringia is a former history teacher, Björn Höcke, and one of the party's most radical figures, arguing for a break with the culture of repentance for Nazi crimes, a long-undisputed post-war legacy.

In 2017, he called the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin a “monument of shame.”

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Death threats

Next year, the foundation will commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Buchenwald camp, the first one that American troops entered on April 11, 1945.

“Maybe nothing will go as planned, maybe we will have to re-establish a police station,” the historian considers.

This was already the case in the 1990s because of repeated incursions by neo-Nazi groups.

Jens-Christian Wagner recently received four death threats after sending a letter to 350,000 residents of the state to convince them not to vote AfD.

And the attacks have been increasing in recent years, on the foundation's social networks, “flooded with revisionist content”, as well as on the memorial site.

Trees planted in tribute to survivors have been cut down, swastikas carved in the camp.

The visitors' guestbook, filled with anti-Semitic provocations, has even been removed.

Those responsible for these acts “are idiots with no political motivation and do not represent the AfD”, assures Uwe Baumann, 63, who came to visit the camp with Hungarian friends.

The man, “horrified” by the Nazi crimes, crosses a vast plain surrounded by barbed wire, near the old crematorium.

Between 1937 and 1945, 56,000 people died in Buchenwald. Thousands of Jews were among the victims, but also Roma, political opponents of Hitler's regime, homosexuals and prisoners of the Soviet Union.

“The AfD is seen as a black sheep, but it has no problem with the Nazi past,” assures the pensioner.

Memorial culture

“The AfD does not only minimise Nazi crimes, but also spreads positive references to Nazism,” retorts Jens-Christian Wagner.

Last example: Björn Höcke inserted a song by the poet Franz Langheinrich, one of the architects of Nazi cultural policy in the 1930s, in his election program, assures Mr. Wagner.

This year, the courts fined him twice for knowingly using a slogan from a Nazi paramilitary group at rallies.

“By relativizing the Holocaust, Björn Höcke is also denying the foundations of German democracy,” notes Lorenz Blumenthaler of the Amadeu Antonio Foundation.

The culture of remembrance was not “imposed by the government,” but “comes from civil society,” recalls the spokesperson for this NGO committed to fighting the far right.

“There are political forces that today are once again contesting (Nazi crimes), relativizing them or minimizing them […] We are deeply ashamed of this,” denounced German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier Monday.

In Thuringia, all other parties refused to ally with the AfD to form a government.

But the far right could still influence the funding of the memorial, 50% of which is provided by the region, fears Mr. Wagner.

How to counter the “cultural hegemony” of the AfD ? The memorial wants to strengthen its presence on social networks and is considering investing in TikTok.

A space saturated by the AfD and disinformation, but where “certain influencers explain the work of remembrance very well to the youngest,” notes Lorenz Blumenthaler.