Far-Right Alternative for Germany Party makes Large Gains in Two State Elections

[additional-authors]

Toby Axelrod, JTA

September 2, 2019

FRANKFURT AM MAIN, GERMANY – SEPTEMBER 26: Josef Schuster, president council of Jews in Germany, during the ordination ceremony of Nosson Kaplan, Benjamin Kochan, Jochanan Guggenheim, to become Orthodox rabbis at the Westend synagogue, on September 26, 2016 in Frankfurt, Germany. The three men, who completed their rabbinical studies at the Rabbiner Seminar zu Berlin and are the first Orthodox rabbis to be ordained in Frankfurt since World War II, will serve Jewish communities across Germany. (Photo by Hannelore Foerster/Getty Images/JTA)

(JTA) — The head of Germany’s Jewish community is urging democratic political parties to clearly distance themselves from the right-populist Alternative for Germany Party, which made large gains in two state elections.

The anti-immigrant party, with some politicians who also have suggested that Germany is too obsessed with the Holocaust, achieved
second place in elections Sunday in the former east German states of Brandenburg and Saxony, with 23.5 and 27.5 percent respectively. In Saxony, the Christian Democratic Union of Chancellor Angela Merkel won the largest percentage of votes, while in Brandenburg the Social Democratic Party came out on top.

“It would be devastating to sit back and relax” just because the right-wing party did not gain first place, Josef Schuster, head of the
Central Council of Jews in Germany, told the German-Jewish weekly newspaper Juedische Allgemeine on Monday.

He urged voters not to be complacent, and not to be taken in by AfD leader Alexander Gauland’s recent attempts to whitewash the party by calling it “bourgeois.” Last month, Schuster said in an interview that the AfD is closely interwoven with right-wing extremism, inciting fears and promoting an anti-minority atmosphere. Despite concerns about anti-Semitism among the many Muslims in Germany, the far right remains the greatest threat to Jews, he said.

Speaking to the Jewish weekly in the hours following the weekend’s election, Schuster said he was relieved that the worst-case scenario – a bigger win for the AfD – had not come to pass.