Culture of remembrance: Wulff criticizes AfD when memory of Buchenwald exemption

Together with concentration camp survivors, several hundred guests thought of the liberation of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp 80 years ago. At the memorial in Weimar in Thuringia – near Buchenwald – music and texts were also presented that had secretly created prisoners in the concentration camp.

In his speech, former Federal President Christian Wulff made the bow from National Socialism to today. “Due to the brutalization and radicalization and a global background, I can now – and worries me – more clearly how it could be done at the time,” said Wulff, referring to the Nazi terror and the development. He asked for active commitment to democracy and to preserve humanity. With a view to the Nazi era, Wulf said: “We carry this a permanent, constant, eternal responsibility, because evil must never win again.”

Wulff: Do not trivialize afd and do not integrate

He criticized significant criticism of the AfD classified as secured as a secured right -wing extremist. “The trivialization of the AfD ignore that the AfD, with its ideology, prepares the breeding ground that people in Germany feel uncomfortable and are actually actually at risk.” Those who believed that the AfD could be disenchanted by integration.

Debate about painted speech by Omri Boehm

Wulff also referred to the controversy about a speech by the German-Israeli philosopher Omri Boehm, which was actually planned and then shifted on the memorial: “I see him as a lawyer of universal human dignity with the aim of justice, understanding and reconciliation.” However, he and Boehm understand “the sensitivity in the face of the unthinkable suffering of the Israeli hostages that are still in the hands of the terrorist organization”. Previously, in the speech, Wulff had expressed thanks to Israel for the fact that the state was ready to shake hands with the Germans after the Nazi crimes.

A few days earlier, the foundation behind the Buchenwald memorial had taken an original planned speech from Boehm from the program of the commemoration and wanted to invite him to another appointment. The background is a sharp rejection from the Israeli message against Boehm – the grandson of a Holocaust survivor has critically commented on the culture of remembrance, the Israeli memorial Yad Vashem and Israeli politics. Foundation director Jens-Christian Wagner had stated that by postponing the speech, he wanted to prevent the survivors from moving further into the conflict. The survivors should be the focus, not the debate about the speech.

Since the summer of 1937, the National Socialists had abducted around 280,000 people to the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar and its 139 outer camps. 56,000 people were murdered or died of hunger, diseases, through forced labor or medical experiments. On April 11, 1945, US troops reached the camp.