“We couldn’t stop it at the time. But you can do it today’: Holocaust survivors on Tuesday called on young voters to stop the rise of the far right in this week’s European elections.
“For millions of you, the European elections are the first of your life. For many of us, it could be the last,” wrote the eight men and women aged 81 to 102 in an open letter unveiled at a press conference in Berlin.
This election, which is being held from June 6 to 9 in the various countries of the bloc, is expected to be marked by a significant shift to the right in many countries, with radical right-wing populist parties gaining votes and seats across the bloc. European Union according to polls.
In Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is credited with around 15% of the vote.
Despite an erosion linked to a series of scandals, such a score would mean progress for the formation compared to the 2019 election (11%).
“Points in common” with the Nazis
Ruth Winkelmann, 95, says she signed the letter “because the AfD is becoming too strong”.
This party has “a lot in common” with the Nazis of the 1930s, who were also “against other people, who are different”, she told AFP.
Born to a Jewish father and a Protestant mother who converted to Judaism to marry him, Mme Winkelmann remembers seeing the broken windows of Jewish stores on her way to school as a child in 1930s Berlin.
After her father’s deportation to Auschwitz in 1943, she hid with her mother and sister in a garden shed.
“When the war finally ended, I fell into my mother’s arms and we shouted with joy: We survived, now we are free! “.
Walter Frankenstein, 99, also draws a parallel between the current political climate and that of the 1930s, with “a weak democratic government and a party which rallied the discontented”.
A mason by training, he was conscripted into forced labor. He and his wife Léonie were able to go underground with their two young children and survived the last days of the war, at the end of April 1945, in a public bunker.
Defend democracy, again and again
Young people today should not just say, “I don’t know who to vote for, so I won’t go at all,” he said in a pre-recorded video message.
“It’s the worst thing to do. Our democracy must be defended again and again,” he insisted.
The call also comes as the Alternative for Germany enjoys growing popularity among young people, who will be able to vote from the age of 16 in Germany for this election.
A survey published in April revealed that it was now the favorite party of 14-29 year olds with 22% voting intentions, double the number two years ago.
Eva Umlauf, 81, was two years old when she and her mother were liberated from Auschwitz.
They arrived at the camp in November 1944 from Slovakia, just days after the Nazis stopped gassing prisoners to death.
“I wear the number that was engraved on my forearm at Auschwitz as a souvenir, as a memory of another time. A time that must not happen again,” she said.
Leon Weintraub, 98, who spent most of his youth in several concentration camps, also warned of the risk of history repeating itself.
“Four out of five of my close relatives were murdered. This is the consequence… of these radical thoughts, of contempt for others, of xenophobia,” he said.
A January study by the Claims Conference, an organization that seeks compensation for Holocaust survivors, found that their number worldwide had shrunk to 245,000, with a median age of 86 years.