Attacks on memorial sites: Chronicle of hatred

Memorials to the victims of the National Socialists are regularly damaged in Germany. NDR and SZ have collected attacks since 2016. The number of unreported cases is high.

Right-wing extremists rabble in concentration camp memorials, deny the Holocaust, take pictures of themselves in former concentration camps with the Hitler salute. They daub information boards with swastikas, memorial stones with hate slogans or break stumbling blocks out of the sidewalk.

For Jens-Christian Wagner, director of the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial, right-wing extremist attacks are nothing unusual. He regularly reports criminal offenses, but many things do not go public. “If we made a press release out of every attack at the memorial, we would probably have to publish a press release every two or three weeks.”

NDR and “Süddeutsche Zeitung” have compiled a chronicle of attacks on memorial sites over the past six years that commemorate the Nazi mass murder of Jews, but also the murder of forced labourers, Sinti and Roma, social democrats, homosexuals, communists and Christians.

Such attacks are not recorded centrally in Germany. NDR and SZ have therefore compiled the attacks from newspapers, minutes of state parliament and city council meetings and discussions with memorial site employees. The chronicle does not claim to be complete and specifically documents attacks on memorial sites. However, it does not record any cases of Holocaust denials at demonstrations or swastika graffiti on house walls.

No central registration

The Buchenwald Memorial keeps its own statistics and reports anti-Semitic attacks to the Anti-Semitism Research and Information Center. But these have only been around for a few years and not yet in all federal states. Many incidents probably remain in the dark because they are not reported centrally. The head of the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial, Jens-Christian Wagner, therefore wishes that right-wing extremist attacks on memorials be recorded centrally. “Also so that we can make valid statements about whether something is increasing or decreasing or whether there are qualitative changes.”

Right-wing extremist attacks are a common thread running through the work at the memorials, says Wagner. In the 1990s in particular, there were many attacks by neo-Nazis. In the recent past he has observed another phenomenon: “What is increasing is that historical revisionism, anti-Semitism and racism have become much more socially acceptable.” He observes this above all on social media, but also among the visitors to the memorial. “A small minority are louder and more aggressive than they were five or ten years ago.”

Memorial sites of great importance to Jews

It’s not just him that’s concerned. Meron Mendel heads the Anne Frank educational center in Frankfurt. For Jews like him, the memorial sites are particularly important and emotional places. “Many don’t have a burial ground, you don’t know where the victims of the Holocaust are buried.” Memorial sites and plaques are therefore of great importance for Holocaust survivors and their families. “That’s why it’s particularly devastating when there are anti-Semitic attacks on such places.”

For years, memorial sites have felt compelled to prepare their employees for bullying and right-wing extremist attacks. For example, they train their staff to recognize right-wing extremist symbols on visitors’ clothing, as well as numerical codes and neo-Nazi fashion brands. Time and again it happens that individual right-wing extremists deny or downplay the Holocaust when they visit memorial sites, or insult groups of visitors for allowing themselves to be inoculated with a “cult of guilt”.

Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth regards every attack on the memorial sites as deeply shameful. “In times of cynical historical revisionism by right-wing extremists, conspiracy theorists and Putin’s clique, the politics of remembrance is an elementary contribution to a vibrant democracy.” The chronology is extremely alarming and shows once again that Germany has a responsibility to keep alive the memory of National Socialist crimes throughout Europe.