On Saturday, at a rally of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Elon Musk called on Germany to “move on” from its “past guilt”, provoking controversial reactions. The statement, made just days before the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, drew enthusiastic applause from AfD rally participants but raised new concerns about historical memory and far-right rhetoric in Germany, on Tuesday, the 28th of January, writes Politico.
Germany’s far-right has long denounced the country’s praised “Erinnerungskultur” or “remembrance culture” as creating a society rooted in guilt over crimes committed by the Nazis and argued that it only undermines the German spirit. The extreme right often refers to this as the “guilt cult” of the state.
For years, people on the fringes have opposed the commemoration of these historical events. But now the idea is gaining momentum, with the support of influential figures such as billionaire Elon Musk, who is also an ally of Donald Trump.
“Children should not be guilty for the sins of their parents, let alone their great-grandparents,” said Musk at an AfD rally, seemingly referring to the country’s history with the Nazi party.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that “the words we heard from the main participants in the AfD rally about “Great Germany” and “the need to forget Germany’s guilt for Nazi crimes” sounded all too familiar and threatening”.
Jewish groups inside and outside Germany also expressed their outrage.
“Remembering and acknowledging the dark past of the country and its people must be central in shaping German society,” Dani Dayan, head of Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial centre, said on the Musk-owned social media site X. “Failure to do so is an insult to the victims of the Nazis and a clear threat to Germany’s democratic future.”
Musk’s comments support the AfD’s long-standing efforts to challenge the core ideas of Erinnerungskultur. AfD leaders have in the past downplayed Nazi crimes and criticised commemorative events.
In 2018, former AfD co-chair Alexander Gauland called the Nazi era a mere “bird poo blob” in Germany’s millennial history and said Germans can and should be proud of their soldiers in both world wars.
Björn Höcke, party leader in the eastern German state of Thuringia, once called for a “180-degree turn” in the country’s memory policy and strongly criticised the building of a Holocaust memorial in Berlin. “We Germans are the only people in the world who have erected a monument to shame in the heart of our capital,” he said.
Contrary to the harsh terms in which Musk described the situation, hardly anyone in Germany believes that children should feel guilty for the crimes of their ancestors.
“Nobody makes children feel guilty for Nazi crimes,” said Steffen Seibert, the German ambassador to Israel. “We want them to grow up informed and responsible and to learn from the lessons of Germany’s past.”
However, studies show that knowledge of the Holocaust in Germany has weakened and there is a growing belief in misinformation. A recent study found that almost 20% of Germans believe that the Nazis and their allies killed only two million or fewer Jews. Across the countries surveyed in the study, a large proportion of the population did not know that six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, and many believe that the figures are inaccurate or exaggerated.
The study found that knowledge of the Holocaust is declining in several countries, especially among younger people.
On Monday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, together with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Britain’s King Charles, French President Emmanuel Macron, Polish President Andrzej Duda and many other leaders, visited the Nazi death camp Auschwitz in Poland to mark the 80th anniversary of its liberation.
“We must be concerned about the number of young people in Germany who know almost nothing about the Holocaust,” Scholz told several German newspapers before the visit, adding that we must uphold memories when there are literally no more witnesses to these events.
“Parties like the AfD and apparently also Elon Musk have an interest in people forgetting or not remembering,” Scholz’s SPD parliamentarian Carmen Wegge said in an interview with Politico. Because if they did, “they would realise that our democracy is once again under threat”.