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We have observed for some time now how the Buchenwald Memorial, a former German fascist concentration camp, has increasingly become a place of historical revisionism and genocide denial.
Instead of honoring the persecuted and resolutely opposing all genocides, the memorial site has consistently spread Israeli propaganda and provided ideological support for the ongoing genocide in Palestine.
Repression instead of remembrance: specific incidents in Buchenwald
The state-funded memorial site is part of the massively intensified repression against solidarity with Palestine.
Ban on Palestinian symbols:
Kufiya, olive branch, watermelon – symbols of Palestinian identity and solidarity – are criminalized and banned. This is stated by the memorial in its guidelines, which were made public in July 2025.[1] Even the demand for a ceasefire is constructed and criminalized as part of a supposed ‘anti-Jewish mobilization’ – even though the liberation of Buchenwald is so closely linked to the desire for an end to war and genocide.
At Buchenwald, the Kufiya has been cynically linked to German fascism and anti-Semitism, therefore relativizing and whitewashing German responsibility for the genocide of European Jews by shifting it onto the Palestinians.
For example, bans on entering buildings due to solidarity with Palestine and wearing the Kufiya were imposed in April 2025. The memorial site also reinforced the weaponized equation of solidarity with Palestine with anti-Semitism in the urgent court proceedings against the bans.[2]
Disinvitation and speech bans:
At the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Buchenwald in April 2025, Jewish philosopher Omri Böhm was disinvited under pressure from the Israeli embassy for having criticized Zionism[3] and the genocide in Gaza. When a Spanish representative of a youth delegation called for an end to the genocide in her speech, she was publicly rebuked by the director of the Memorial Foundation, Jens-Christian Wagner, who said that such statements ‘are not appropriate’ at Buchenwald.
In contrast to announcements of general flag bans and the proclaimed desire for ‘apolitical’ commemoration, the memorial management often refers to topics around German foreign policy and ‘reasons of state’ and accordingly allows certain flags and symbols, including the Israeli flag.
Instrumentalization of remembrance
All these measures have a single aim: to ideologically justify Germany’s renewed participation in genocide – and to do so in a place where genocide was committed 81 years ago. To this end, the internationalist and anti-fascist history of camp resistance is increasingly denied and non-Jewish victim groups are ignored, while Jews are politically instrumentalized and exceptionalized: as legitimation for the continued genocide in Palestine, combined with the false assumption of a Zionist allegiance on the part of Jews in general.
Betrayal of the Buchenwald Oath
This behavior is a betrayal of the legacy of those who were imprisoned, tortured and murdered in Buchenwald; not only Jews were imprisoned in Buchenwald, but also Sinti and Roma, queer people, communists, and international anti-fascists. Many belonged to several groups, and many of them were Soviet citizens. The prisoners of Buchenwald organized anti-fascist resistance groups that were responsible for liberating the camp even before the arrival of foreign troops, thus saving prisoners from certain extermination by the fascists. In the Buchenwald Oath, the survivors formulated the demand to destroy fascism at its roots and build a world of ‘peace and freedom’. Many of them remained active in this spirit throughout their lives.
Denying the genocide in Palestine and providing ideological support for the German war machine financing it betrays the Buchenwald Oath. Anti-fascism is inextricably linked to internationalism. Any commemoration that relativizes today’s genocide or suppresses criticism of it fundamentally contradicts this claim.
Who we are and what we demand
We are an initiative of individuals and groups who relate to Buchenwald from different perspectives. As Jews, queer people, and anti-fascists who have been actively commemorating the anti-fascist legacy of Buchenwald for years and decades, we are united in our determination not to let this place of living memory be taken away from us. With the campaign ‘Kufiyas in Buchenwald,’ we oppose and strongly denounce the instrumentalization and co-opting of remembrance.
Our demands to the management of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation represent the minimum required to do justice to Buchenwald’s legacy:
- Openly addressing the genocide in Gaza at the Buchenwald Memorial.
- No ban on Palestinian symbols at the Buchenwald Memorial and no denigration of them as anti-Semitic.
- No entry- or speaking bans on the premises due to solidarity with Palestine or criticism of the apartheid state of Israel.
Buchenwald reminds us not to be loyal to Germany and Israel, but to be anti-fascist and internationalist, and to resist genocide and oppression wherever they take place:
‘We will not cease the struggle until the last guilty party stands before the judges of the peoples. The destruction of Nazism with its roots is our slogan. The construction of a new world of peace and freedom is our goal. We owe this to our murdered comrades and their families.’
– Oath of the survivors of Buchenwald, 1945
[1] https://archive.org/details/handreichung-buchenwald; https://www.nd-aktuell.de/artikel/1192452.israel-und-gaza-waffenstillstandsforderung-soll-antisemitisch-sein.html
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/20/buchenwald-can-refuse-admission-to-people-wearing-palestinian-keffiyeh-german-court-rules
[3] The ethno-nationalist ideology and political movement for the establishment of a purely Jewish state (in Palestine).
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