AfD's Projected Saxony-Anhalt Win Alarms German Jews — SkimNews
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- Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD's lead candidate in Saxony-Anhalt, has made the Simson moped — originally produced by a Jewish family later expropriated by the Nazis — the central symbol of his campaign, drawing large crowds at vintage moped rallies across the state.
- Polls show the AfD with a commanding lead of around 40% in Saxony-Anhalt ahead of Sunday's vote, with the governing CDU trailing at just over 20%; if smaller parties fail to clear the 5% threshold, that share could give the AfD an outright majority.
- Dennis Baum, the US-based heir of the Simson family, called the AfD "antisemitic" in a Tagesspiegel interview, saying the party's appropriation of the Simson name was "repulsive and an insult to our family name."
- Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, called the election a "litmus test for the democratic center" and labeled Siegmund a "declared enemy of our open society," urging other parties to maintain their refusal to cooperate with the AfD.
- The AfD's 250-page Saxony-Anhalt manifesto contains no explicit reference to the Holocaust or Nazi crimes; its main author Hans-Thomas Tillschneider told The Times of Israel the Nazi era "happened a long time ago and no longer affects us in the here and now."
- Media investigations found four former members of a banned neo-Nazi organization among Siegmund's close political associates; he defended them to Die Welt as "outstanding people" and did not respond to a request for comment from The Times of Israel.
- Artur Abramovych, chairman of Jews in the AfD — a group claiming about 25 members — publicly backs the party, arguing Jews would benefit from ending "state funding of left-wing extremist nonsense," including anti-Israel actions by left-wing students.
Why it matters: If the AfD's 40% lead holds, Siegmund could become Germany's first postwar far-right state premier, putting state control of police funding, school curricula, and cultural institutions in the hands of a party Germany's domestic intelligence agency classified as right-wing extremist in 2025 — directly reshaping security and education for Saxony-Anhalt's 1,100-member Jewish community while testing the federal 'firewall' against mainstream cooperation with the far right.
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