The International Committee Buchenwald-Dora and Kommados expresses its deepest dismay at the result of the parliamentary elections of 1 September 2024. The unthinkable has happened: The far-right AfD, with its neo-Nazi undertones, wins in Thuringia and finishes in second place in Saxony, just behind the CDU.
The election campaign for these parliamentary elections was already conducted with some brutality. The worst means of deterrence were used to intimidate and silence pro-democracy voices. The ICBD thanks all the people in politics and civil society who fought fiercely in Thuringia and Saxony to defend our values - the values of the Buchenwald Oath, spoken on 19 April 1945, for which tens of thousands of concentration camp inmates from Buchenwald, Dora and their commandos died or survived under the worst conditions.
The ICBD would particularly like to thank the persistent and courageous actions of the Director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation, Prof. Dr Jens-Christian Wagner, who was the victim of death threats in the performance of his duties and because of his democratic convictions. We continue to give him our full support. His and our fight for a pluralistic and respectful society must continue. Values such as peace, humanity, fraternity and openness are the core of this society; a society that fights hatred, anti-Semitism, antiziganism and marginalisation; a society that remembers, not out of masochism, but out of love for the values that make living together possible.
The AfD, led in Thuringia by Björn Höcke, is fighting against Germany's current remembrance policy and is thus also threatening the efforts of former concentration camp prisoners who are still alive today.
The AfD is playing on identity fears. It forgets that in the Nazi camps numerous identities, first Germans, soon followed by all the nations of Europe, were gagged and martyred by a common enemy, National Socialism. It accepts the fact that the last survivors and their families, now spread around the world in large numbers - mutilated and devastated by National Socialism - can hardly recognise this reminiscent Germany that they had learned to love again.
These are very serious times. Europe and especially Germany, which was originally designed to realise the slogan ‘Never again’, are now in danger. The AfD in Thuringia is a secure right-wing extremist party that is paving the way for fascism to enter parliaments.
In the name of the Buchenwald Oath and its values, the ICBD calls for a joint fight against fascism and the AfD. We owe this to the concentration camp inmates. We also owe it to our children.
Our struggle is more relevant than ever.
The ICBD, 2 September 2024
cibd@buchenwald-dora.fr
