The attitude of the AfD to the millionfold murder of Jews by the Nazis - the Holocaust - and to commemorate it criticized the ambassador of Israel in Germany sharply. According to their own information, Jeremy Issacharoff therefore avoids any contact with the party. "Several times her leadership has said things that I find highly offensive to Jews, to Israel, and to the whole subject of the Holocaust," Issacharoff told dpa.
Many Germans have developed a very respectful culture of remembrance over the years, the ambassador said. "I would not attribute this quality to the AfD."
It was only a week ago that he thought of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis in the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Memorial near Berlin. "I find it very difficult to imagine any kind of conversation with elements that feel some kind of nostalgia for that past," the ambassador added, referring to the AfD.
Substantial threat to Germany as a tolerant society
Issacharoff complained about a "disturbing" trend towards anti-Semitism in Germany. "Everyone has to do what they can to minimize this trend as much as possible." The past has shown what antisemitism can do. Today, it is not just a threat to Jews or Israelis, but a substantial threat to Germany as a tolerant and democratic society.
The Thuringian AFD state chairman Björn Höcke had triggered a heated debate in 2017 with the demand for a "remembrance policy change by 180 degrees". Previously Höcke had said in a speech with a view to the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin: "We Germans, so our people, are the only people in the world who has planted a monument of shame in the heart of his capital."
Even AfD federal party chief Alexander Gauland made with a statement at the time of the National Socialist reign of terror for indignation, as he had said: "Hitler and the Nazis are just a scary bird in over a thousand years of successful German history." Gauland had later described his statement as "misinterpretable and thus politically unwise."