East German town bans future Holocaust memorial plaques

An East German ​town has approved a motion by the ​far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and ruling ‌centre-right ​Christian Democratic Union (CDU) to reject future installation of brass plaques commemorating victims of Nazi persecution.

The "Stolpersteine" are a prominent feature of ‌Germany's Holocaust remembrance culture. Thursday's decision in Heidenau, a town near Dresden in the eastern state of Saxony, comes as the AfD tops national polls ahead of Chancellor Friedrich Merz's CDU.

The AfD has ‌frequently challenged Germany's Holocaust remembrance, with co-founder Alexander Gauland once describing the Nazi era as ‌merely "bird shit" in an otherwise successful 1,000 years of German history. The Heidenau council voted to stop further plaques and for future commemorations to be concentrated at a memorial site on the town's northern cemetery.

The move has ⁠fuelled ​debate over the CDU's ⁠adherence to the "Brandmauer", an informal firewall by which Germany's mainstream parties rule out formal cooperation with the AfD. Local ⁠branches of the AfD and the CDU did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment.

"I ​am appalled that a democratic party has chosen to support such a transparent manoeuvre ⁠by the extremist AfD," Charlotte Knobloch, the head of a Jewish regional association in Bavaria, told the Funke group ⁠of ​newspapers. The approval of the motion ran counter to a recommendation from the city administration. "A blanket ban on future Stolpersteine is neither necessary for the creation of a central ⁠memorial nor justified by the proposal itself," the city administration said in a statement ahead ⁠of the decision.

Supporters ⁠of the motion argued that many residents regarded the cobblestone-shaped Stolpersteine as inappropriate because they are embedded in the ground and can be ‌walked on.