Toby Axelrod

The move has inspired debate how to preserve Nazi history without glorifying it.

Toby Axelrod Jul 24, 2026 Posted 40 mins ago at 11: 34 AM How do you stop neo-Nazis from meeting up at Adolf Hitler's birthplace? Station officers there around the clock, of course. That is just what the small town of Braunau in Austria has done — but the officers are not providing surveillance. Instead, they will be on site as part of their regular duties, because Hitler's first home has become a police station. After years of discussion, planning and construction, the new police station on a corner near Braunau's town square opened July 22, in the house where the future Nazi dictator was born in 1889 and spent the first few months of his life. The building looks different, and there will now be surveillance cameras out front. The city's aim was “to prevent any association with Adolf Hitler, so as to strip it of that mystique,” the head of the Austrian interior ministry's history department, Stephan Mlczoch, told reporters on a recent tour. At Wednesday's opening ceremony, Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner emphasized that today's police are “the exact opposite of the symbolism tied to this place. Our police stand … for democracy and the rule of law,” The Associated Press reported. Some 50 local and district police officers will be stationed at the new site. And there will also reportedly be a police training program on issues related to human rights. “They will probably also do antisemitism training. And I think that's a good thing,” Hannah Lessing, who was on the expert commission to decide what should be done with the property, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview. Lessing, who co-chairs the Austrian delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, was opposed to tearing down the building: How do you feel about this article? Choose from the options below. (0 Ratings)

JTA – How do you stop neo-Nazis from meeting up at Adolf Hitler's birthplace? Station officers there around the clock, of course.

Here’s what you need to know about the rise of Germany’s far-right political party.

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.

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“Jews get even more worked up than others,” says one Berliner. “They immediately start packing their bags again.”

Toby Axelrod Sep 7, 2026 Posted Sep 7, 2026 at 7: 29 PM Updated 5 mins ago at 10: 00 PM BERLIN – Munich resident Marian Offman, born in Germany to Holocaust survivors in 1948, is sitting on the proverbial packed suitcase. Offman, his city's Commissioner for Interfaith Dialogue, is worried about what an AfD leadership would mean for Jews and other minorities. “To me it is a pure Nazi party,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “They are completely anti-religious, just like the Nazis were.” Offman was among a number of Jews in Germany who expressed alarm at the plurality of 43.8% of the vote the Alternative for Germany party (AfD) received in Sunday's election in the former East German state of Saxony-Anhalt. The prospect of an AfD-ruled state has many Germans, not only Jews, fearful of a resurgence of fascism in a country that has worked for decades to confront its Nazi past. Critics point to the party's platform , which includes such points as expelling unwanted migrants; building pride in notions of German tradition and ethnicity; and stopping funding for “anti-German” art and culture. The 13-year old AfD – with its anti-EU, anti-foreigner and nationalist stances – trounced the older established parties on Sunday, opening the door to the possibility that it could lead the government in that state. If it succeeds, it would mark the first time since World War II that a far-right party is poised to govern a German state. Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, expressed shock at the election results. The party could do “immense damage” if it forms a government, particularly in the educational realm, Schuster told the German Jewish newspaper Juedische Allgemeine, the Central Council's media organ. The AfD has expressed the goal of refocusing education on German pride. “Germany has been known as a country that is democratic, that comes to terms with its history, very, very intensively, more than any other country,” Offman said. “And now suddenly a far-right party is in all state parliaments and in the Bundestag,” or federal parliament. There are about 200,000 Jews in Germany. Fewer than half are members of Jewish communities. About 90% of them came since 1990 from the former Soviet Union; a small number have moved here from Israel, as well. Very few are descended from pre-war German Jewish families. “I'm very much afraid that the atmosphere would change, and I don't know how to cope with it,” said Flora, who was born in Hungary and has lived in Berlin with her husband for 50 years. She asked that her last name not be used out of concern for her safety. “I'm afraid of a kind of chain reaction,” she said. “If the mood in Germany is turning, and we don't have anything to offer to counter this, then all Germany will slide downhill.” But not all Jews in Germany are that concerned. “Jews get even more worked up than others,” said Hella Schapiro an 84-year-old Berliner who dislikes the AfD but is unruffled by their victory. “They immediately start packing their bags again, and of course that's completely wrong,” said Schapiro, who was forced to flee her home with her family as a child by the Soviets, first from East Prussia in 1944 and then from the state of Saxony in 1946. Schapiro said it wasn't clear that the AfD was a party to be feared. “The AfD makes pie-in-the-sky plans,” she said, adding, “It's a party where the dullest, most base elements really have the say. …They'll only change things in terms of the general mood, and otherwise nothing at all.” People should stop panicking, and let the AfD show what it can, or cannot, do, she advised. “People have to experience what such an AfD government actually does in practice.” Author Mirna Funk, whose latest non-fiction book is “Learning from Jews” and who divides her time between the German capital and Tel Aviv, said she felt one had to be worried about antisemitism on both the right and left-wing camps in Germany. “The AfD is a completely fascist, crazy party,” but the Left Party “is much, much more anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish,” she said. A win for the AfD would be “a horrible situation, but the same horrible situation is in Berlin when it comes to Die Linke,” Funk said, speaking of Germany's left-wing party. “People simply do not trust the center parties, and they're going for either radical right or radical left,” she said. The AfD wants to be done with atonement for the Holocaust, but it's not the only voice for change on that topic, she noted. “This is a huge, huge urge within the German society for a long time. It comes from deep inside academia and deep inside the left and deep inside even normal people in the society. They are f–king sick of the Holocaust.” How do you feel about this article? Choose from the options below. (0 Ratings)

Alternative for Germany's plurality in Saxony-Anhalt election leads some of nation's 200,000 Jews to fear throwback to fascism, amid backlash against culture of Holocaust memory

Alternative for Germany’s plurality in Saxony-Anhalt election leads some of nation’s 200,000 Jews to fear throwback to fascism, amid backlash against culture of Holocaust memory