Mayoral election in Nordhausen: Historian warns of AfD success near concentration camp memorial: “We are experiencing a climate change in the culture of remembrance”

In Nordhausen, AfD member Jörg Prophet could be elected mayor. The Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial is just five kilometers from the town hall. How do people there think about the most promising candidate?

Professor Wagner, as director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation, you have made a decision: If Jörg Prophet becomes mayor, you do not want to invite him to your events. There was also criticism of this, for example that a memorial director had to be politically neutral. Can you understand that?

Our neutrality ends exactly where human dignity and our foundation’s mission are violated. And when someone questions the suffering of the victims, we cannot be neutral. Jörg Prophet has made historical revisionist statements several times – that is, he has tried to downplay the proven crimes of the Nazi era. I am obliged by our foundation law to protect the places of these crimes and their victims from exactly such positions.

Prophet writes, for example: “There was just as little sense of morale among the victors as there was among the National Socialists.”

The lack of morality that the Americans are said to have shown during the liberation of Central Europe – this is a reversal of guilt that we know from classic historical-political right-wing extremism.

Prophet also writes on the AfD website that “the true face of the liberators” was shown in Nordhausen: the American soldiers only came to the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp to take over the underground armaments production.

This is completely absurd. In Nordhausen, the Americans were actually only able to free relatively few local survivors because most had been sent on death marches. But the remaining approximately 500 prisoners were cared for with devotion by the Americans, who immediately called in medical units and thus saved most of their lives. To speak of lack of morality here is ultimately a slap in the face to those who had to suffer this.

AfD Sonneberg

Prophet calls for “after 75 years a change from the cult of guilt to the cult of democracy.” How do you classify that?

The term “guilt cult” is a fighting term of the extreme right, which we have known for a long time from the NPD and which was then adopted by the AfD in order to discredit the culture of remembrance and the work of memorial sites. Mr. Prophet repeatedly throws in catchphrases that refer to right-wing extremist, historical revisionist historical legends without explicitly saying them. But the relevant recipients already understand that. I have read many of his pamphlets and see in him a crude mixture of the historical revisionist right-wing extremism of the FRG in the 1950s – for example, he equates the industrial mass murder in Auschwitz with the British air raids on German cities or whispers about the Morgenthau Plan. At the same time, he spreads a strong anti-Americanism that is strongly influenced by GDR historical images.

In the first round of voting, the AfD candidate received by far the most votes. It is at least likely that he will be elected on Sunday. Even if you forbid him from coming to your events, you will probably still meet him at work.

Even if we are not financially dependent on the city, there is still a common working level. And things will be much more difficult with an AfD mayor. For example, there is a large honorary cemetery in Nordhausen where almost 2,500 dead concentration camp prisoners and forced laborers were buried. A cemetery that is currently being redesigned by the city. The AfD has already announced that it wants to stop this restructuring. We are currently in the process of redeveloping the tunnel system in Mittelbau-Dora, where the prisoners had to live under appalling conditions for months, from a didactic perspective. And part of this facility belongs to the city of Nordhausen. Theoretically, the mayor could say tomorrow: “It’s over now.”

So far you have also cooperated closely with the city of Nordhausen in remembrance work. What is at stake there?

There have always been joint events. Especially on the anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp, there were sometimes hundreds of survivors in the city who were then invited to the theater, which is run by the city. If Mr. Prophet were to become mayor, this trust that had been built up over years between the city and the survivors would be destroyed in one fell swoop. We are currently receiving extremely concerned letters, including from the French Association of Concentration Camp Survivors, saying: If a historical revisionist becomes mayor of the city, they will no longer be able to come to Nordhausen to mourn their dead relatives there.

How can it be that the Nordhäuser are flirting with such a candidate? They welcome citizens of the city at the memorial and have school classes visiting. Do you also observe such a trivialization of the Nazi era there?

Yes,but that is definitely not a phenomenon of this city. We are currently experiencing a climate change in the culture of memory. Things that couldn’t be said years ago have become sayable. The discourse has clearly shifted to the right. And many in Germany no longer see historical revisionism as a fact that makes someone unelectable. A good example of this is the Aiwanger debate in Bavaria: Ten years ago someone like Aiwanger would not have been able to hold his own with such incriminating evidence. And what happens now? He also emerges from the affair even stronger.

Paid Weidel

A new study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation has just come out, which shows that more and more citizens agree with right-wing extremist views. The number of people who trivialize the crimes of the National Socialists has almost quadrupled.

The investigation provesempirically what we have noticed very strongly in the memorial sites for some time. It is a nationwide phenomenon that worries me greatly. This also has to do with the rise of the AfD. When such right-wing extremist positions are represented in parliament by a party that is polling at 20 percent, then some feel emboldened to spread them aggressively. At the same time, there is a normalization effect: that such positions are no longer perceived as a scandal, but as one opinion among many that could be respected. And that, in my opinion, is the biggest danger in the success of the AfD.

Some say that only direct dialogue can help against these developments. Wouldn’t it make sense to invite Jörg Prophet to the memorial to argue with him about his statements?

Inviting Prophet to work with him as mayor would normalize precisely these extreme right-wing discourses. And we don’t want to expect survivors and their families to sit next to someone at memorial events who downplays their suffering. Nevertheless, Prophet as a private individual is welcome to come to the memorial, look at our permanent exhibition and see for yourself what these crimes really meant. However, I think he actually knows that very well. But since it doesn’t fit into his world view and contradicts the AfD propaganda about pride in our ancestors, he deliberately distorts the story.

Prof. Dr. Jens-Christian Wagner already dealt with the history of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in his doctoral thesis in 1999. Today he is director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation and professor of history in media and public at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena.