Erfurt (dpa/th) – Hate, hate speech, anti-Semitism and violence should have no place in Thuringia from the point of view of the Thuringian state parliament president Birgit Pommer. “84 years after the attacks on synagogues, places of worship, shops, cemeteries and Jewish homes, we have to realize that anti-Semitism, racism and many other forms of group-focused enmity have not disappeared,” said Pommer on the occasion of the 84th anniversary of the pogrom night on November 9 November 1938. “There are still people in this country who deny, relativize and downplay the Shoah.”
Anti-Semitism is “an attack on all of us – on everyone who feels committed to democracy and a free society,” said the President of the Landtag, who will take part in the commemoration event for the victims of the pogroms and give a greeting.
The wave of violence known as the Pogrom Night is considered the prelude to the systematic annihilation of the Jewish population. In the night from November 9th to 10th, 1938, the National Socialists devastated around 7,500 Jewish businesses and institutions in Germany. Historians assume that more than 1,300 people died as a result of the pogrom. More than 30,000 Jews were deported to concentration camps.
