(JTA) Electoral gains by Germany’s strongest far-right party has Jews and Muslims here worried.
Winning 23.4 percent of the vote in Sunday’s parliamentary election, the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany, or AfD party — propelled by male voters and those under the age of 60 — is now the second strongest party in the former east German state of Thuringia.
“Something has fundamentally gone off the rails in our political system,” former president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Charlotte Knobloch, told reporters on Sunday.
AfD politicians have “trivialized the Nazi era, [expressed] open nationalism and fomented hatred against minorities, including the Jewish community,” Knobloch said, accusing the party of “preparing the ground for exclusion and right-wing extremist violence.”
