Germany marked the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazis’ Buchenwald concentration camp on Sunday as one of the country’s former presidents warned against “radicalisation and a worldwide shift to the right.”
The governor of the state of Thuringia, Mario Voigt, and former German President Christian Wulff spoke at a ceremony in the city of Weimar, near Buchenwald, attended by scores of people, including several Holocaust survivors from across Europe.
Voigt – whose state includes Buchenwald – called it a “place of systematic dehumanisation” and said that everything that happened at the death camp was “designed to break the human spirit and dignity.”
The Buchenwald concentration camp was established in 1937. More than 55,000 of the almost 300,000 inmates held at the camp and its satellites were killed by Nazis or died as a result of hunger or medical experiments before the camp’s liberation on 11 April, 1945.
In the run-up to the memorial event, Israeli officials objected to a planned commemoration speech by philosopher Omri Boehm, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor and a known critic of the Israeli government and its actions in Gaza, prompting organisers to withdraw the invitation.
Wulff issued a stark warning about the current global political situation and the rightward shift in politics that has been taking Europe and much of the world by storm, likening it to the Nazi era.
“Due to the brutalisation and radicalisation and a worldwide shift to the right, I can now — and this makes me uneasy — imagine more clearly how this could have happened back then,” said Wulff referring to the developments leading up to Nazi power consolidation.
He called for active commitment to democracy and the preservation of humanity. “We bear a permanent, ongoing, eternal responsibility from this because evil must never be allowed to prevail again.”
The former German president criticised the rise in anti-immigration sentiment, championed by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
He said those who “trivialise” the party “are ignoring the fact that the Alternative for Germany’s ideology is creating a breeding ground for people to feel uncomfortable in Germany and that they are actually in real danger.”
92-year-old Holocaust survivor Naftali Fürst spoke at the wreath-laying ceremony held at the camp’s former roll call area. He spent ages 9-12 in four different concentration camps, including the infamous Auschwitz.
“There are by now only very few of us left. Soon, we will pass the baton of remembrance on to you for good. In doing so, we are entrusting you with a historic responsibility,” said Fürst addressing the dwindling number of Holocaust survivors.
“Remember on our behalf what you have learned from us. Because you are the witnesses of the witnesses,” he added.
“Keep coming back to this place, to Buchenwald, where civilization was reduced to zero. Remain vigilant in our name, and in memory of us,” he said.
