"Where are peace and freedom in the world 80 years later, and what has happened to the destruction of Nazism?"

BarcelonaMargot Friedländer is 103 years old and one of the few Holocaust survivors still able to offer her testimony. This Friday, she received recognition for all the work she has done to explain what that hell was like, especially in schools. "I'm not speaking only for the six million innocent people murdered, but for all the people who have been murdered because they have not been respected as human beings," she said at the Westphalian Peace Conference. Today, Sunday, at the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the Liberation of BuchenwaldFormer German President Christian Wulff recalled that Friedländer, during his weekly visits, warned that things are not very different today from the Germany that voted for Hitler. "When Margot Friedländer says this is how it all began, we should be concerned," Wulff asserted.

Buchenwald held 278,000 prisoners, including more than 600 Spanish Republicans, and more than 56,000 people died. Jorge Semprún explained the horror he experienced there The long journey (Empúries/Tusquets) and Writing or life (Tusquets), in 1994. Wulff recalled that the survivors of Buchenwald took an oath on April 19, 1945. They promised "the absolute destruction of Nazism and its roots and the construction of a new world of peace and freedom": "Where are the peace and freedom in the world 80, after?" Different German leaders warned of the return of the extreme right and authoritarianism, racism and hatred. Wulff explained that in the German lower house there are deputies of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) who use the term neo-Nazi umvolkung or re-emigration, claim that enough is enough talking about German guilt for the Second World War and defend "compulsory labor" to limit minimum aid. "From here to the labor camps there is not much distance," he asserted, arguing that anyone who is not aware of the analogies with the past and does not distance themselves from the claims of parties like the AfD is guilty of not upholding the Buchenwald oath.

Popular support for Hitler

The former German president recalled that the National Socialists did not emerge from nowhere, but rather enjoyed broad support. Mario Voigt, prime minister of the state of Thuringia, where the AfD is the leading party after the 2023 regional elections, emphasized that the Buchenwald oath is currently gaining considerable importance: "We are living in a time when antisemitism, nationalist ideology, and authoritarian thinking are becoming increasingly vocal and intrusive." Voigt warned that these are worrying times: "Antisemitism does not come only with boots (like those worn by the SS). When terror is celebrated in the German streets, when anti-Semitic slogans are chanted, when intellectuals draw iron, when we must protect Jewish institutions, then we are not only talking about the failure of our present, but also about the failure of our historical responsibility.".