Culture of memory: Buchenwald commemoration with controversy and scandal

Together with concentration camp survivors, several hundred people thought of the liberation of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp 80 years ago. After a memorial in neighboring Weimar with a speech by old Federal President Christian Wulff, wreaths were laid down on the former appeal site of the Buchenwald camp. There was also a scandal about the word “genocide”.

Surviving NAFTALI Fürst: remains human

Previously, the 92-year-old Naftali Prince, survivor of the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camp, spoke there. In his speech, which was held to Hebrew and translated into German, he described a daily picture that burned him into the Buchenwald concentration camp: carted carts pushed by prisoners, loaded with corks collected from the barracks that were brought to the crematorium.

“We are very few, soon we will finally pass on the staff of the memory and we will give them a historical responsibility,” Fürst told the listeners. He appealed: “stay – each, each of you – a person.” Prime Minister Mario Voigt (CDU) had awarded the Thuringian Order of Merit on Saturday evening.

Eklat about youth project speaker

There was a contribution to a youth project. A young participant spoke in English of a “genocide” in Palestine. Memorial director Jens -Christian Wagner intervened: It must be able to mourn the innocently killed there – but to speak of a “genocide”, especially in a place like Buchenwald.

Controversy about speech by Omri Boehm

Before the memorial events, a conflict between the message of Israel and the foundation, which is behind the memorial, had become public. The foundation had taken a planned speech by the German-Israeli philosopher Omri Boehm from the commemorative program and announced that it would invite Boehm to another appointment. In the past, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor had critically commented on the Israeli memorial Yad Vashem and Israeli politics.

The Israeli embassy in Berlin had written on X that it was outrageous and a “blatant insult to memory to the victims”. In the posting, the message accused him of relativizing the Holocaust. Ambassador Ron Prosor also came to laying the wreath.

Foundation director 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.

Old Federal President of Boehm and AfD

In his speech, old Federal President Christian Wulff described Boehm as a “lawyer of universal human dignity”. However, he understands “the sensitivity in the face of the unthinkable suffering of the Israeli hostages still in the hands of the terrorist organization”.

Wulff had a clear criticism on 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.”

Tens of thousands of deaths in Buchenwald

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.

When US troops reached the camp on April 11, 1945, SS commanders and guards had already fled and armed resistance groups from prisoners had taken control. 21,000 prisoners experienced the liberation, including more than 900 children and adolescents. Tens of thousands of prisoners had been driven to so -called death marches by the SS shortly before.