Commenting on the political situation in Thuringia and the upcoming run-off election for the office of mayor in Nordhausen, Christoph Heubner, Executive Vice President of the International Auschwitz Committee said:

"Survivors of the German concentration and extermination camps are watching developments in Thuringia very closely and with deep concern. Meanwhile, many of them have come to know and love this region. Especially those survivors who, after their liberation from Buchenwald or Mittelbau-Dora, have developed relationships with people in these areas and have trusted in a new beginning, are now following current developments in Thuringia with disbelief and sadness. They are horrified by the fact that in Nordhausen, of all places, a city where they felt welcome, an AfD candidate has good chances of becoming mayor. This is a candidate who, despite his seemingly harmless image, has made numerous statements exposing himself as a far-right extremist through to the core. And this is reminding the survivors of those darkest days of suffering that they had to endure close by Nordhausen. It is also undermining the paths to trust and confidence that have been built over the many intervening years. If that evil ideology should once again manage to re-enter Nordhausen town hall, the brutal effects of which the survivors experienced first-hand, it will seem as if their liberation and their lives afterwards are simply being pushed aside and their existence questioned yet again.

What’s more, the fact that the CDU is joining forces with the AfD in this critical situation when voting in Thuringia’s state parliament, is seen by the survivors as blind-eyed and irresponsible. For many citizens in Thuringia this must seem like open recognition of the AfD in Thuringia as current and future partners, thus unmasking the CDU’s supposed ‘firewall’ as nothing but an empty hypocritical phrase. There is a great deal at stake both in and around Nordhausen."