2024-04-19 06:51:50
On Hitler’s birthday and near a former concentration camp site – that’s where the AfD Lower Saxony wants to hold its next party conference. A historian sharply criticizes the party’s plan.
The AfD Lower Saxony wants to hold its party conference on April 20th in Unterlüß near Celle – a former concentration camp site and on Adolf Hitler’s birthday. There is a hail of criticism for this. From 1944 onwards, there was a subcamp of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Unterlüß near Celle. The chosen date – Hitler’s birthday – is considered a holiday among right-wing extremists.
The Lower Saxony AfD itself sees nothing objectionable in this. Accordingly, the AfD selects the locations of its party conferences “according to practical criteria,” as a spokesman for the “Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung” said. However, this contradicts the right-wing party’s past party conferences. In the past, the AfD has often been forced to sue in city halls in order to be able to hold its party conferences. However, the AfD spokesman attributes this to “agitation against the AfD, but also sometimes massive threats against the operators”. Protests have also been announced at the start of this party conference.
“It’s a day like any other”
This time, however, the AfD did not have to sue. The principle of equal treatment obliges the municipality of Südheide to treat all political parties equally, as the HAZ reports, citing Mayor Katharina Ebeling (CDU). Nevertheless, the AfD was not dependent on the date. “The AfD has expressly decided on April 20th,” said the CDU politician. Like the Greens, FDP, SPD and CDU again and again, said the AfD spokesman.
Although there was a “brief discussion” within the AfD about the date, they decided against postponing the party conference. “This is a day like any other,” said the AfD’s parliamentary manager in the state parliament, Jens Brockmann, to the “Cellesche Zeitung”.
The SPD sub-district of Hanover will also meet on the same date. “The date had no political or historical background for the selection of the date,” said a spokesman for the Social Democrats.
“Forgetful of history and historically insensitive”
The director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora memorials, Jens-Christian Wagner, contradicts the objection of the AfD spokesman, who refers to the other parties. “These parties are not right-wing extremist parties either,” said the historian.
According to Wagner, the choice of location and date could be attributed to different motivations. If the historical statement of the factors actually played no role, this would simply be “historically forgotten and historically insensitive”.
However, the AfD could also have acted consciously. “That would be a historical-political provocation. And then there is the location,” said Wagner. “Of all places, Unterlüß with its branch of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp – a place where the National Socialists committed serious crimes. This is an attack on the memory of those who had to suffer there.” The historian himself thinks that the AfD chose the date consciously: “Historical revisionism is part of this party’s DNA.”