This outcry was inevitable: AfD politician Holger Winterstein posed after a demonstration at the Berlin Holocaust Memorial. Health Minister Karl Lauterbach calls the action “repulsive”, and Winterstein’s party also wants to draw consequences.
After a demonstration against the federal government’s energy policy in Berlin, the Thuringian AfD politician Holger Winterstein posed at the Holocaust memorial. A photo circulating on Twitter shows Winterstein dancing on one of the concrete pillars that make up the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.
The criticism of the action followed immediately when the photo spread on the Internet. Health Minister Karl Lauterbach commented: “How repulsive. A shame, especially for Parliament.” The AfD Thuringia also described Winterstein’s pose as “unacceptable”. After internal processing, the necessary consequences would be drawn, the party said.
Even Winterstein himself was faint-hearted: “That was really stupid of me,” the district councilor from Sonneberg told MDR. However, he also said that there was only such a fuss about the picture because he was a member of the AfD. Winterstein’s party colleague Björn Höcke described the memorial near the Brandenburg Gate as a “monument of shame” and in 2017 promoted a “180-degree turnaround in memory policy”.
Winterstein has since deleted the photo from his Facebook page.
