A far-right German party member was reprimanded by Israel’s ambassador to Berlin for showing up at a dance at a Holocaust memorial in the capital.
Ambassador Ron Prosor said Alternative for Germany (AfD) politician Holger Winterstein “dishonours him and his party”.
“Enjoy your shameful moment of glory, because your name will soon be forgotten. The sanctified souls immortalized on the memorial will never be forgotten,” he said.
Winterstein was photographed posing with outstretched arms on one of the stone slabs that form a memorial in Berlin to more than 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II.
In a social media post accompanying the image, he wrote: “The zeitgeist is only a momentary phenomenon,” a clear allusion to his party’s opposition to the mainstream German view of remorse for the shameful parts of the past.
German media reported that the photo was taken after a protest against the government’s energy policy by the AfD on Saturday.
The party, known by its German acronym AfD, said it would take action against Winterstein for his “grossly disrespectful behavior”.
When asked about the incident by German broadcaster MDR, Winterstein said, “It was very stupid of me,” but added that he thought the photo was just noise because he was in the AfD.
Winterstein is an adviser in Thuringia, a state in the center of Germany that received a strong vote from the AfD in the last election.
State party leader Bjorn Höcke called the Holocaust memorial a “monument of shame” in 2017 and called on Germany to “turn 180 degrees” on how it remembers its past.
The party court at the time rejected an attempt to expel him.
Party members have been banned indefinitely from Holocaust memorial services at the Buchenwald concentration camp in Thuringia, according to local reports, as their position “simplifies” the story.
