Volkhard Knigge, the director of the memorial foundation which organizes remembrance services, sent a letter to the local chapter of the AfD informing them of the ban. The services at the Buchenwald Concentration Camp were organized to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Björn Höcke, the AfD’s leader in Thuringia, was previously banned from attending memorial services after a 2017 speech in Dresden where he criticised Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial, saying “we Germans are the only ones in the world who have planted a memorial of shame in the heart of their capital” while urging Germany to “make a 180-degree change in their commemoration policy”. "Anyone within the AfD who does not credibly oppose such positions and the trivialising, relativizing view of history associated with them, supports them,” wrote Mr Knigge. Traditionally, representatives of Thuringia’s state parliament attend remembrance ceremonies each year to lay a wreath in commemoration of the victims of the Holocaust.

Source: The Local January 25, 2019 16:52 UTC