Concentration camp memorial sites are being defaced with swastikas and other antisemitic graffiti almost daily as the rise of the hard right in Germany emboldens extremists, the director of Buchenwald said.
Jens-Christian Wagner, who heads the memorial at the former concentration camp near Weimar, said Germany was undergoing a shift in attitudes towards its Nazi history and that attacks were becoming more frequent. Antisemitism, conspiracy theories and the ideology of so-called “Reich Citizens”, bent on dismantling the postwar state and restoring the borders of the German empire, were on the rise, Wagner said.
“This can basically be summed up in three letters: AfD,” he told the public broadcaster ARD. “It unites precisely these currents in its ranks, which gives the emerging right-wing extremists the tailwind