The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has not yet decided whether to expel one of its state leaders for criticising Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial, its co-leader said on Tuesday.
Bjoern Hoecke, AfD head in the eastern state of Thuringia, described the memorial as a “monument of shame” in a speech in Dresden last week.
The comment stirred anger across Germany but was cheered by some far-right AfD supporters.
Hoecke said on Monday the party had dropped plans to throw him out, but co-leader Frauke Petry told German broadcaster MDR on Tuesday that was not the case, adding the comment had damaged the party’s reputation.
The AfD’s anti-immigrant rhetoric has won support among Germans worried about the influx of more than a million migrants in the past two years, though other major parties have rejected it as a potential coalition partner. Petry told MDR the party’s executive committee viewed disciplinary action against Hoecke as necessary, but officials were still assessing his speech and how it compared to the party’s views.
Petry said that, while the AfD wanted to see a more “differentiated approach to history”, nothing in its programme called for a radical change in Germany’s approach to commemorating the genocide of Jews and others during the Nazi era.
The Holocaust Memorial, located near the Brandenburg Gate in the heart of Berlin, comprises 2,711 tombstone-like slabs of granite of varying heights, arranged in a grid pattern.
