Jewish leader warns AfD result is reviving fears in Germany

Charlotte Knobloch told DW that the AfD’s strong performance in Saxony-Anhalt had unsettled Jewish people and led some to consider leaving Germany. She urged established parties to oppose the party together, after receiving death threats reportedly linked to the election result.

Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, has warned that the Alternative for Germany’s electoral success in Saxony-Anhalt is reviving fears among Jewish people in Germany. In an interview with DW, she said some were again considering leaving the country after decades spent rebuilding trust following the Holocaust.

The AfD received almost 44% of the vote in the state election on September 6, according to the supplied report. The party is classified as “confirmed right-wing extremist” by Saxony-Anhalt’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Its lead candidate, Ulrich Siegmund, did not win an absolute majority but could still become state premier, which would make him the first head of a German state government from a right-wing extremist party since World War II, the report said.

Knobloch described that possibility as dangerous and called on other parties to prevent it. She said established political forces needed to confront the AfD jointly rather than separately, and argued that politicians should engage young people more directly about their fears and concerns.

The Jewish leader told DW that memories of the Nazi era had become a constant presence in her daily life. She said she now sometimes woke up thinking about that period and went to bed thinking about it, contrasting this with earlier years when it was recalled less frequently.

Knobloch, who is almost 94, is one of Germany’s best-known Jewish representatives and one of the last surviving witnesses of the Nazi dictatorship. The source says her grandmother was deported to Theresienstadt in 1942 and died there, while a family acquaintance hid Knobloch by presenting her as her own child. Knobloch later served as vice president of the World Jewish Congress and president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany.

The warning came after death threats were found on a park bench and a rubbish bin in Munich’s English Garden, according to a police headquarters statement cited in the report. Knobloch canceled an event, and a spokeswoman told dpa that the threats were directly connected to the AfD’s election victory.