The Thuringian top candidates Voigt (CDU) and Höcke (AfD) want to debate each other in a TV duel – on the anniversary of the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp. The Auschwitz Committee calls the plan macabre. Criticism also comes from the left and the SPD.
The International Auschwitz Committee has sharply criticized a planned TV duel between the Thuringian top candidates from the CDU and AfD, Mario Voigt and Björn Höcke. The discussion between the two politicians is currently scheduled for April 11th, the day of the liberation of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora concentration camps, on the news channel “Welt”.
“The decision of the Thuringian CDU chairman to allow one of the most well-known figureheads of right-wing extremist agitation in Europe to make a widely noticed appearance on this day of remembrance seems politically completely devoid of instinct and macabre to survivors of the Holocaust,” said the Executive Vice President of the International Auschwitz Committee, Christoph Heubner, in Berlin.
“Damage to the culture of remembrance”
This is perceived “as a damage to the culture of remembrance in Germany, which is promoted and demanded by all democratic parties, and also as a damage to the trust that has developed between survivors of the German concentration and extermination camps and Thuringia and Germany over the past decades,” said Heubner.
The CDU parliamentary group in the Thuringian state parliament rejected criticism of the date for the planned speech duel. April 11th, the anniversary of the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, is exactly the right day for this duel, said the parliamentary managing director of the Union faction in the Thuringian state parliament, Andreas Bühl, to the Evangelical Press Service (epd). This date is a reminder of where right-wing extremist ideas lead.
Thuringia’s Interior Minister Georg Maier (SPD) and the state chairman of the Left Party, Christian Schaft, had previously asked Voigt to cancel the duel at the weekend. For decades it was clear among democratic parties that Nazis would not be offered a platform, wrote Maier on the platform X, formerly Twitter, on Saturday.
CDU calls criticism from the SPD, Greens and Left Party “small-minded”
The Thuringian CDU politician Bühl replied that it was about the future of the country. “That’s why the small-minded, partisan criticism of the red-red-green coalition does not do justice to the importance of the common task of all democrats.”
The goal must remain to beat Höcke. He is a risk to prosperity and democracy. To do this, it is necessary to bring Höcke into the light and provide the AfD with content. Avoiding any factual discussion obviously didn’t work. That’s why a tough debate is needed on the matter, Bühl told the epd.
The date was probably not chosen consciously
The speech duel is designed as a television debate. It is broadcast by the private television station Welt-TV. A spokeswoman for the broadcaster said that the top candidates from the AfD and CDU had been invited because their parties were ahead in the polls. According to epd, editorial circles also stated that the date of April 11th was not deliberately chosen.
A new state parliament will be elected in Thuringia on September 1st. The AfD in Thuringia is classified as right-wing extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.