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‘We have to be here fighting’: Deborah Lipstadt opens up on her Poland-Germany trip with Douglas Emhoff
BERLIN (JTA) — Second gentleman Douglas Emhoff made headlines late last month during a trip to Europe, where he met with other foreign leaders working to combat antisemitism and returned to his ancestors’ town in Poland.
But the trip was originally Deborah Lipstadt’s mission.
The historian, an authority on Holocaust issues and now the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, had planned to go to Krakow and Berlin on behalf of the Biden-Harris administration. The trip included a visit to the memorial and museum at Auschwitz-Birkenau on the 78th anniversary of the death camp’s liberation by Soviet troops and, in Berlin, a meeting with special envoys and coordinators who, like Lipstadt, are charged with the task of countering hatred against Jews.
The itinerary fit perfectly with Emhoff’s own anti-antisemitism campaign, so he asked Lipstadt late last year if he could come along.
As she reflected in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency after returning home, Emhoff was not the only one to get emotional on the trip.
This interview has been lightly condensed and edited for clarity.
JTA: You met with special envoys on antisemitism from other countries, as you and Emhoff continue to work on a national plan to fight antisemitism at home. Did any concrete policy suggestions come out of those meetings?
DL: The meeting with the special envoys on antisemitism now is the third meeting we have had together.
But I think it was very important to send the message that we are all government appointees, and we speak government to government. So we have already gotten into that rhythm, and it was a very useful meeting. It was also a useful meeting because there were people there from the White House, from my staff, who are involved in this interagency process, and they got to hear from the people who are composing, writing, who have written national plans. And I think that was very helpful. So it was one of the most productive meetings.
You also attended an interfaith meeting with Jewish, Catholic, Protestant and Muslim participants, hosted by the Central Council of Jews in Germany in Berlin. What came out of that?
That actually went very well. The groups tended to talk about what they do together. …One of the things I urged the group, and it may have been bringing coals to Newcastle, but it is a sort of a new effort on their part… is that [talking about things that affect multiple faiths] is a good way of building relations. For instance, [my office had] a meeting in October, convened by the EU but with very strong support from the State Department, from my office, on ritual slaughter. Which of course affects both Jews and Muslims, kashrut and halal. So here is a tachles [goal], a brass tacks area which we could work on together. And that was an excellent meeting, a whole day at the EU.
What do you see as the main challenges in fighting antisemitism and hate today?
You know, some people say this is just like the 1930s. It is not. Back then, you had government-sponsored antisemitism. Whether it was Germany, whether it was other countries, even in the United States. We didn’t have government sponsored antisemitism, but there was a failure of the [U.S.] government [to respond].
On Monday morning, we were sitting in Topography of Terror [Berlin’s museum and archive on the history of the Gestapo], and it was government officials discussing “how do we fight antisemitism?” And everybody around that table is paid by the government. They are government officials, officially appointed. That’s a big difference. That is a humongous difference. That is a sea change.
And then we had the second gentleman there who could easily have said, “We came into office, we put a mezuzah up at our residence. We had a Chanukah party, a Rosh Hashanah party, we had a seder…” [Instead, it] is really clear that he has taken to this issue. He has really said it a number of times… and his wife [Vice President Kamala Harris] says, “He didn’t find this issue. This issue found him.”
RELATED: We’re visiting Auschwitz because the fight against antisemitism didn’t end with liberation
On the first day I met him, which was before I was sworn into office, he said he wanted to meet me and I spent some time with him. He said, “I want to work with you.” And then in October, we had a sukkah event at Blair House [the state guest house], where the State Department brought a sukkah, and we invited ambassadors and deputy chiefs of mission from Middle Eastern and Muslim-majority countries. So sitting around the table were the Israeli ambassador, the Turkish ambassador, the Pakistan ambassador, the deputy chief of mission from Qatar, the deputy chief of mission from Saudi Arabia… And [the Second Gentleman] and I were standing in the kitchen waiting to be escorted into the room, when people took their seats. And he said to me, “Deborah, where are you traveling, where are you going?” I said “Well, in January I am going to Auschwitz-Birkenau for the 27th.” And he said “I’m in.” And that’s how it happened.
You have been to Auschwitz many times…
Dozens of times, I can’t keep count. You know I have been many times, but I work very hard so that it never becomes de rigeur. That it becomes “min haminyan” as you would say in Hebrew. … All you have to do is remind yourself of what happened there. And so it doesn’t matter if it’s your first time or your 15th time. If you are cognizant of what happened there, it sits with you.
…When I go to Auschwitz, especially when it was around my trial [after being sued by British writer David Irving for calling him a Holocaust denier], I had to look at things in a very forensic way, you know: How do we prove this, how do we show that. And that of course sits with me still. But I was well aware that this was [Emhoff’s] first time and what an emotional impact this was having on him. … The thing that always strikes me about Auschwitz, the thing that you hear resounding in your ears in a thunderous way, is the silence. The absence. The little kid that would have worn the shoes that you saw in the display. The people who wore the eyeglasses. The men who shaved with that shaving stuff.
So that is always there. And it hits me at moments and then I become the historian. Analyzing. But it was very powerful, and what was also powerful was, in a way, though this seems counterintuitive, going to Poland first, which was just laden with emotion, especially for him, he went to the town where his family comes from, and got a lot of information. And then going to Germany. One would have thought, go to Germany first and then go to Poland, but in a way the emotional part became the backdrop for the business meetings in Germany.
[Emhoff] very kindly at one point described me as his mentor. Well, if I am his mentor, he is an A1 student. He is really intent on showing not just his passion about the issue but in learning about the issue. He is an accomplished lawyer, an experienced lawyer, and he knows that feeling is not enough, you’ve got to have information, and he gathered that every place he went.
Do you really have the feeling that antisemitism is on the rise or is it just more acceptable to express it?
I think both. I am not out there crunching the numbers statistically, but certainly it is more acceptable. Certainly, it is increasingly normalized. Whether it’s among comedians, whether it is articles in the newspaper, whether it is at demonstrations, it is increasingly normal. And even becomes fodder for entertainers. So whether those same people felt the same before and didn’t say anything or they now suddenly feel that, I don’t know. But many people who might otherwise have been more reticent about expressing certain things previously seem to feel freer to say antisemitic things now.
If antisemitism keeps coming back, what gives you hope?
First of all, what gives me hope, what gives me strength, is I know what I am fighting for, I am not just fighting against. I have a very strong sense of my Jewish identity, I have a very strong sense of who I am, Jewishly. I am lucky, I had a great education, etc.
Earlier this year, I guess it was September, the president did a phone call, it was his practice during the vice presidency, before Rosh Hashanah, or between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, to do a phone call with — this time I think it was 1,200 rabbis. And I came along after he spoke with them to answer questions. And one of the questions was what gives me joy and what gives me strength. And what I said to the rabbis was that I never want to become a “because of antisemitism Jew.” Driving me out of the woodwork because everyone dislikes me, hates me, or wants to harm me. Not everyone — but there are people who want to harm me.
On Monday when I was at all those meetings [in Berlin], it was Jan. 30, 90 years after Hitler came to power, right there where we were standing. Not far from there people were marching in the streets with tiki torches! Championing among other things “death to the Jews.”
And here we were, back: Yes, the good news is here we are back, openly talking about fighting [antisemitism], here we are back, government officials tasked with fighting it, someone at the ambassadorial level from my country, the second gentleman, anxious to help in this effort, but nonetheless we were back there fighting. So on one hand, you can say, “Great, we have the special envoy, great we have the second gentleman who was so open to taking this on. This is unbelievable.” But we are here fighting. We have to be here fighting.
What was your most memorable experience from the recent trip?
On Saturday night [in Poland], one of the members of the White House staff that was with us after Shabbos had hired a car to go to the little village, shtetl, whatever, that her family came from. She wanted to go to the cemetery to see if she could find any names. Now the chances of her finding the names, in the daylight, when it is 70 degrees out and comfortable [would be hard enough]. Here it was below freezing, snow was falling, the ground was icy, and it was pitch black. We were with a genealogist, but the cemetery was locked. So we thought we would have to climb the fences. I thought, “Oh my God, we are going to have an international incident!” But our driver got the key to the cemetery from the people across the street, and I asked, “How did you know?” And he said, “The people across the street always have the key.”
So we didn’t have to break in. She wanted to say a prayer, and she was totally capable of saying the prayer herself but obviously she was deeply moved, and she asked me to recite the “El Maleh Rachamim” [prayer for the soul of a person who has died] for her. And when I stopped, she gave all the names of the people, many of whom were buried there but we couldn’t find the exact places. And then I said “shenikberu” [“who is buried here”], and the person holding the flashlight for me, I couldn’t see, it was tiny print, and he’s Israeli, he said, “po.” Here, here, here! I had never said an “El Maleh Rachamim” for people who were caught up in this tragedy, here. In situ. It was very powerful.
And then on the 30th [in Berlin] after our special envoy meeting, we all walked over to the [city’s] Holocaust memorial. And Felix [Klein, Germany’s special commissioner on antisemitism and Jewish life] had brought stones. And we were standing there, and to borrow a phrase from Herman Wouk’s “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” there was this pregnant pause. And I said, “Would you like me to recite a prayer?” And I recited the prayer, another “El Maleh Rachamim,” and I became totally verklempt [overcome with emotion]. Because I was just a 12-minute walk, if that long, from where it was planned and carried out, and that was very powerful as well.
So the trip was pregnant with meaning, but I think more than just meaning, hopefully also impact.
—
The post ‘We have to be here fighting’: Deborah Lipstadt opens up on her Poland-Germany trip with Douglas Emhoff appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Ed Sheeran urged to toss Macklemore from tour after criticizing Israel onstage
(JTA) — The Israeli-American Council is calling for the rapper Macklemore to be dropped from the opening slot on pop star Ed Sheeran’s U.S. tour for chanting “Free Palestine” and accusing Israel of apartheid and genocide during his performances at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on Friday and Saturday nights.
Known for such hits as “Thrift Shop” and “Same Love,” the rapper’s anti-Israel monologue at the performances preceded his 2024 song, “Hind’s Hall,” referring to Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall, which pro-Palestinian protesters occupied and unofficially renamed for Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed during the war in Gaza.
“I had wanted to stand up here on stages and stadiums across America and say two words that are very near and dear to my heart, ‘Free Palestine’,” he said at the show he opened for Ed Sheeran Saturday night, according to videos posted from the concerts. “I want those words to be loud and clear so the people from Gaza all the way to the occupied West Bank know that we have their back and that we have not forgotten them.”
He went on to dedicate the song to “the bravery of Columbia University students, the encampment movement that mobilized the entire world.”
“Ed Sheeran – do not allow your stage to be used to divide people or spread one-sided political propaganda,” IAC said, circulating a petition demanding Macklemore be taken off the bill for his remaining nine dates of the tour.
Messages left for representatives of Macklemore, Ed Sheeran and the concert promoters AEG and the Messina Group were not returned.
Macklemore addressed the Jewish community directly during his appearances, saying, “To all of my Jewish brothers and sisters: Criticism of Israel, criticism of apartheid, being against genocide in no way is criticism of you. My message is for peace, love and for all human beings to be treated with dignity, respect and equality.”
The reactions to Macklemore’s remarks were far from unanimous. Some fans took to social media to praise him.
Macklemore has been speaking out against Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza since late October 2023. He was one of the first of 55 performers to sign the Artists4CeaseFire open letter to then-President Joe Biden calling for a permanent ceasefire, the release of all hostages and the delivery of lifesaving aid to civilians in Gaza.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Ed Sheeran urged to toss Macklemore from tour after criticizing Israel onstage appeared first on The Forward.
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Israeli ministers unveil plans to encourage voluntary Palestinian emigration from Gaza
(JTA) — TEL AVIV — The Oct. 27 elections have brought the concept of Palestinian emigration from Gaza to the forefront of Israeli political discourse. The once-taboo topic has become an increasingly popular position among right-wing politicians, even as it repels many in the American Jewish community and elicits condemnation from world leaders.
Several prominent politicians on the Israeli right, including some who currently hold key government positions, have raised the idea in recent weeks and pledged to advance it if they sit in the next coalition. Most starkly, ultra-nationalist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir unveiled a seven-year plan Thursday to encourage Palestinians in Gaza “voluntarily” leave the embattled enclave where the IDF and Hamas have been fighting for almost three years.
“This is a free choice; we are not forcing anyone to leave, but there is encouragement for this,” Ben-Gvir said in a statement to the media after he announced his program during a virtual press conference in Lod, a working-class city southeast of Tel Aviv that was the scene of mass displacement of Arab residents during the 1948 War of Independence.
The American liberal pro-Israel group J Street was among those to condemn the proposal, stating on Friday that “It should horrify us to see a state, built in the aftermath of Jewish death and destruction, entertaining the ethnic cleansing of another people.”
The organization urged people not to dismiss Ben-Gvir’s plan as “fantasy or fringe,” adding, “this vision is now in the political mainstream, and that must be unequivocally rejected.”
Indeed, while few Israeli political observers expect such a plan to become government policy even if Israel continues to be ruled by a right-wing government, critics worry that the promotion of such measures throughout the election are already normalizing the concept in Israeli society and harming Israel’s international standing. Yair Golan, leader of the left-wing “Democratim” party, has previously described government calls to encourage the “voluntary emigration” of Gazans as “unacceptable.”
On Thursday, Ben-Gvir was careful to underscore that any departure of Palestinians from Gaza would be voluntary under his plan, which he has dubbed “Disengagement 710.” The name refers to the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 known as “disengagement” that included the forced evacuation of around 8,000 Israeli settlers and the demolition of their 21 settlements in the enclave. The number “710” refers to the day and month of the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel in which 1,200 people were killed and another 251 taken hostage.
Under Ben-Gvir’s proposal, a government ministry with a dedicated minister would be established to oversee Palestinian emigration efforts. Incentives would be offered to Gazans who agreed to emigrate, and those countries that receive them would receive monetary benefits as well.
The program has a target goal of 250,000 Gazans leaving in the first year of the program and 1.86 million within seven years — nearly the entire 2.1 million population of the strip, Ben-Gvir said. There would be an absorption plan in another country for every Palestinian that left, according to Ben-Gvir, who maintained that there are countries willing to take in Palestinians in exchange for financial incentives.
Ben-Gvir sits on the far right of the Israeli political map, but earlier in the week, a leader in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s mainstream Likud Party endorsed a plan for Palestinian relocation from the coastal strip as well. Defense Minister Israel Katz said that “there is no real solution for Gaza without emigration.”
Already in February 2025, Katz announced the establishment of an agency tasked with encouraging emigration from Gaza, and said this week that it was “fully prepared” for the moment when conditions would allow Israel to encourage Gazans to leave.
In a public interview at a conference on Wednesday sponsored by the Hebrew media group Ynet and the think tank the Israel Democracy Institute, Katz said that President Donald Trump had “frozen” the initiative under pressure from Arab countries. Katz stressed, however, that the initiative had not been canceled and that discussions on the issue were ongoing.
In response to Katz’s statement, Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland on Wednesday called to end complicity with Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. ”After our trip to the Gaza-Egypt border last year, Senator Jeff Merkle & I released a report entitled, ‘The Netanyahu Government is Implementing a Plan to Ethnically Cleanse Gaza of Palestinians’. Now the Israeli Min of Defense confirmed that’s the goal,” Van Hollen wrote on X.
But days later, on Saturday, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee told reporters that “nobody is suggesting that there will be forced displacement – the Israelis are not, the Americans are certainly not, I know of no one who supports that.”
In January 2025, just days after taking office, President Donald Trump himself first floated the idea of Palestinians emigrating from Gaza as a possible solution to the conflict between Israel and Hamas and a way for them to escape the devastation surrounding them in the wake of the war.
There were some signs at that time that the idea of a pathway to voluntary emigration was not anathema to Palestinians who live in Gaza. A poll by the British-based Gallup International in March of 2025 showed that 52% of those in Gaza would leave for another country if given the choice, out of which 38% wanted a temporary exit and another 14% wanted a permanent one.
The idea was strongly condemned by international figures, however, particularly America’s Arab allies. Ultimately it was abandoned by the president and superseded by his 20-point plan to end the war, which specifically stated that there would be no encouragement of Gazans to leave.
But many on Israel’s right took the statement by Trump as encouragement to publicly advocate for a measure that had long been considered off-limits. Netanyahu himself expressed support for the idea soon after Trump broached the topic in early 2025, saying: “The door has also been opened to the vision of President Trump for Gazans to leave Gaza of their own free will. I think this is a very important idea. We are working on it continuously with the Americans, and I tell you that it is possible.”
Weeks later, in March 2025, a poll by The Jewish People Policy Institute in Jerusalem found that 52% of Jewish Israelis supported the relocation of Palestinians in Gaza along the outlines of Trump’s plan. The idea of voluntary emigration has also received support from some figures in Israel’s opposition. In 2025, opposition leader Yair Lapid said Israel should “develop a long-term plan to eliminate Hamas and encourage voluntary emigration.” The major parties in the opposition bloc, however, did not publicly endorse Ben Gvir’s proposal or put forward their own plans to encourage emigration.
More recently, some Israeli political figures have gone so far as to float scenarios in which the departure of Gazans would not be voluntary. A senior member of the ultra-nationalist Religious Zionist Party, led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, has spoken of forced migration.
Last month, before joining the party, right-wing firebrand Moshe Feiglin said, “We need, in one way or another, to make sure that there will be no Gazan left there,” including forcing them to leave “by any means possible.”
Retired Brig.-Gen. Ofer Winter, a new political candidate whose right-wing party Amcha Yisrael has been gaining momentum, said at the party’s launch conference in August that “the solution for Gaza is one — emigration,” later stressing that “these are not just slogans.”
But despite the wave of support on the right, there is no indication that such a scenario is in the offing. A senior Israeli official told reporters this week that no countries have agreed to accept Gazans, while Defense Minister Katz said that potential receiving countries want U.S. support. In the past, countries including Somaliland, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo have reportedly been floated in internal discussion in Israel as possible destinations for Gazans.
Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza first published in September 2025, to which Israel has committed itself, explicitly contradicts the possibility of encouraging emigration from the strip, however. Article 12 of the plan states: “No one will be forced to leave Gaza,” and that “We will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza.”
Trump had originally raised the idea of relocating Gazans in part because of the dire circumstances they faced. “I think they should get a good, fresh, beautiful piece of land, and we get some people to put up the money to build it,” Trump said in the first weeks of his second presidential term, adding, “I don’t know how they could want to stay.”
The war’s devastation has left most of the Palestinian population internally displaced within Gaza, according to United Nations data, with 60% of homes destroyed. The U.N. has warned that reconstruction could cost $71.4 billion and take years.
But U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk warned that plans to relocate Gazans were tantamount to ethnic cleansing, a charge repeated by Palestinians and critics of Israel in the international community.
International opposition has been particularly fierce from Palestinian officials, Arab countries and key American allies in the West. Germany’s foreign minister said in 2025 that “the Gaza Strip belongs to the Palestinians. Expelling them would be unacceptable and contrary to international law.”
The United Arab Emirates along with foreign ministers from seven other countries — Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt — issued a statement Sunday condemning the proposals by Ben-Gvir and Katz. They urged the international community including the United Nations Security Council, to halt any attempt to change the demographic reality in the Palestinian territories including Gaza.
“Such inflammatory statements and proposals flagrantly violate principles of international law, including international humanitarian law, and pose a direct threat to the legitimate and inalienable rights of the Palestinian people,” they stated.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israeli ministers unveil plans to encourage voluntary Palestinian emigration from Gaza appeared first on The Forward.
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AfD is predicted to win 40% in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. Should Jews be worried?
(JTA) — BERLIN – Why are so many Germans wringing their hands over Sunday’s election in Saxony-Anhalt?
After all, what impact could 1.7 million registered voters in this former East German state have on a nation with 16 Laender (federal states) and some 60 million voters?
Here’s why Sunday’s election matters:
As it turns out, German voters in Saxony-Anhalt could give the right-wing extremist political party — the Alternative for Germany, or AfD — its most significant achievement since its founding in 2013.
Although the AfD is predicted to win only 40 percent of the vote, that would be enough to affect upcoming general local elections in Lower Saxony on Sept. 13, and elections in the state of Mecklenburg-Pomerania and the city-state of Berlin on Sept. 20.
There is also an outside chance it could open the door to an AfD-led government in Saxony-Anhalt, a first for the far right since the end of World War II. Although that is considered unlikely, the party’s state website proclaims: “Everything is possible.”
Voters in this economically depressed state are, pundits say, drawn to the AfD’s anti-immigrant and anti-European Union rhetoric; its promise to expel non-citizens; its focus on German national pride rather than on the dark side of its past; and its ambition to repair relations with Putin’s Russia. Their drumbeat resonates particularly in former east German states, which have suffered since unification with the closing of factories and flight of younger workers to western states.
The AfD has also done well in elections in other former east German states, and increasingly in western ones. Last March, for example, it earned 19% of the popular vote in elections in Baden-Wuerttemburg, nearly doubling its previous tally there. In the 2025 federal election, it leapt to second place next to the conservative Christian Democratic Union led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2005-2021. Opinion polls show the AfD is the leading party, if there were to be federal elections today.
While some observers note that the party’s agenda on national issues could not be implemented, they are troubled by the party’s goals on the state level.
Stephan Kramer, president of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency in the state of Thuringia, and former general secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told the JTA that the main concern is with the power the party could wield “over the interior ministry, police, the state intelligence service, education, appointments and the handling of sensitive information.”
“For the first time, the party could use the machinery of a state government and thereby gain substantially greater political and institutional influence at the federal level,” he said.
Banning the AfD would be a painstaking process, thanks to post-war protections of free speech. Former West Germany banned only two political parties: a neo-Nazi one in 1952, and a far-left Communist party in 1956. Later attempts to ban neo-Nazi parties stumbled on legal hurdles, and many politicians fear to try again, lest the AfD make hay of a failure.
Support for the AfD fits right in with trends on the European and UK level: According to the latest survey of European far-left, far-right and populist parties published by the PopuList research group, nearly a quarter of European and UK voters back far-right parties today, up from 5% in 1995. According to the Guardian newspaper, the biggest surge in support came in national elections in France and the UK in 2024, and Germany in 2025.
Here’s why AfD votes might not matter, yet:
A key difference from U.S. state elections is that “voters do not directly elect the equivalent of a governor,” Paulina Fröhlich, senior expert for democracy at the Gütersloh-based Bertelsmann Foundation, told the JTA. “Instead, the state parliament elects a state premier after the parties have built a coalition or secured enough support. So, the party that wins the most votes does not necessarily lead the government.”
In 1980, the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), won 44.5% of the vote, but the Social Democratic Party (SPD) with 42.9% and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) with 10.6% support built a coalition government.
Two years ago in the state of Thuringia, the AfD became the first far-right party to get the most votes in a state election since World War II, but was blocked from forming a coalition.
Similarly, the likely outcome of Sunday’s Saxony-Anhalt election will be a coalition of minority parties that together exceed 50% of the vote; the AfD, despite a significant electoral achievement, will not be able to pull together the needed majority to take power.
It can take days, weeks, even months before a state or federal government is formed, including appointment of the minister-president or chancellor, and ministers dealing with education, policing and culture (and foreign policy, on the federal level). After the CDU and CSU won Germany’s federal election in February 2025 with only 28.5 percent of the vote, it took until early April for them to form a government with the SPD, as they argued over policy differences. But neither party would work with the AfD, which actually came in second
Most Germans still reject the AfD’s message. Several states have classified the party as right-wing extremist, a designation that its leaders have opposed in court. And there are calls to ban the party, including by prominent Jews such as Charlotte Knobloch, 93-year-old former chairwoman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany and head of the Jewish community of Munich and Upper Bavaria.
There has been much media buzz over an interview that Knobloch, who survived the Holocaust in hiding with a German Christian family, gave to Stern magazine. “Even the Nazi Party started small and tried out what was possible,” and now AfD politicians “are testing the limits of what is acceptable,” said Knobloch, arguing for a ban: “Everything that could help should be tried.”
Unlike in the United States, German elections include many political parties – from the large, mainstream ones to those on the fringes, which usually fail to meet the 5% vote threshold required to have seats in the parliament.
Even if the AfD receives a plurality this time, it is highly unlikely that it will rule the state. That’s because virtually no one else will work with them. Mainstream democratic parties have set up a “firewall” to that end. So the probable outcome will be a government built through a coalition of the remaining parties.
But this year, even some of the previous top parties are teetering on the edge of the 5% threshold, polls say.
Should the past winners – the CDU, and possibly the center-left Social Democratic Party, the center-right Free Democratic Party, and the progressive Green Party – make it past the threshold, they are expected to build that minority coalition, even holding their noses to do so: The CDU is even expected to seek informal support from the communist Left Party.
Thus the procedure in Saxony-Anhalt is likely to echo what happened in the neighboring state of Thuringia two years ago. While the AfD got the biggest piece of the electoral pie, it did not gain a majority of seats in the parliament. So the mainstream democratic parties were able to form a coalition government.
What do the AfD stand for? Why are they so popular?
Its appeal “comes from a mixture of protest, distrust of established parties, concerns about migration and social change, and a sense among some voters that [AfD] articulates grievances others avoid,” said Kramer of Thuringia’s domestic intelligence agency.
“The AfD officially presents itself as supportive of Jewish life and Israel,” he added. But the platform “explicitly demands a complete ban on ritual slaughter without exception, which would directly affect Jewish religious practice. AfD leaders also use world conspiracy arguments and antisemitic language, we should not forget.”
It’s illegal in Germany to celebrate the crimes of National Socialism, to repeat Nazi slogans and other propaganda. But AfD leaders “do not always stay on the safe side of the law,” Kramer added. For example, Björn Höcke, who heads the party’s parliamentary faction in the neighboring state of Thuringia, “was convicted for repeating the banned Nazi stormtrooper slogan ‘Alles für Deutschland’ [everything for Germany], and the Federal Court of Justice rejected his appeal in August 2025, making that conviction final.”
Höcke “is a certified history teacher, so he knows what he is doing,” Kramer added. “I would not describe the AfD simply as a party that carefully stays legal. Rather, parts of it repeatedly test those boundaries, and in some cases demonstrably cross them, [moving the] boundaries of what is acceptable to say in public and what is not.”
In Saxony-Anhalt, the party is “classified as definitely right-wing extremist” and is under observation by the domestic intelligence service, Maik Reichel, director of Saxony-Anhalt’s State Agency for Civic Education, told JTA. “And I think we also have the most extreme AfD state branch.”
The party wants to “restrict state-sponsored [school] trips to memorial sites, which they say turn young people into ‘memorial zombies,’ ” Reichel added.
“Our mission is to provide pluralistic civic education” and the AfD is against diversity, Reichel said. The AfD also takes a nationalist perspective, “which means we leave out important dictatorial, anti-democratic periods that were truly terrible in Germany,” he explained.
The main architect of the AfD’s platform in Saxony-Anhalt, Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, is known for wanting “more Bismarck, less Hitler.” Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), who served as Germany’s first chancellor from 1871-1890, is seen as a hero by some German nationalists.
Despite such concerns, the AfD gained in the polls. At the EU parliament level, the AfD has 15 members, the largest contingent in the far-right Europe of Sovereign Nations group.
Should the AfD win an absolute majority on Sunday, they would most certainly appoint their state party leader Ulrich Siegmund, age 35, as minister president. He is described as personable, even affable.
But his messages are not so friendly, critics say. Siegmund says his “100-day immediate action plan” includes a promise to “deport from minute one” many foreign nationals, including professional specialists; to cut funding to pro-democracy NGOs; to crack down on diversity programs in the state; and to cut taxes that support such programs.
Whatever the final tally, the lead-up to tomorrow’s election has made it clear: A ballot cast for the AfD is no longer dismissible as a “protest vote.” Other mainstream parties are taking a plunge, while the AfD’s star continues to rise.
Ultimately, the other parties have to regain the people’s trust, said Reichel. In Saxony-Anhalt that means “solving the problems that concern people in a way that they actually notice a difference.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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