Ex-president hits out at German right at Buchenwald anniversary event
A memorial service was held on Sunday to commemorate the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp near the central German city of Weimar 80 years ago.
Music and documents produced in secrecy by its inmates were presented at the service.
In his address, former German president Christian Wulff drew a comparison between the Nazis and today's right-wing radicalism.
"Based on the coarsening and radicalization, and a global shift to the right, I can now – and this makes me uneasy – imagine more clearly how this it could happen at the time," he said.
Wulff called for active engagement in favour of democracy. The current generation bore permanent responsibility for ensuring that evil should never again be victorious, he said.
The former president expressed direct criticism of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the far-right party that came second in recent elections and continues to surge in opinion polls.
"Those who play down the AfD are ignoring the fact that the AfD is preparing the ground through its ideology for people in Germany to feel uncertain and are in fact concretely in danger," he said.
Survivors of the camp were invited to attend the service at the Weimarhalle, along with relatives and descendants.
In the afternoon, a wreath-laying ceremony is planned at the former roll call square of the camp.
Naftali Fürst, the president of the International Committee of Buchenwald-Dora and Commandos, was also scheduled to speak at the memorial.
Fürst, 92, survived the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps as a child.
In the run-up to the memorial service, a dispute came to light between the memorial site and the Israeli embassy over a planned speech by a philosopher who is viewed critically by the embassy.
Starting in the summer of 1937, the Nazis deported more than 280,000 people to the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar and its 139 subcamps. Some 56,000 people were murdered or died of hunger, disease, forced labour or medical experiments.
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