Visitors who are not welcome ...
Today, Buchenwald is a place of remembrance and an educational institution where people reflect on how what happened here will never happen again.
Nevertheless, the former camp is also visited by people who deliberately disregard the place's dignity. This is not a frequent phenomenon, but it does happen time and again: they behave seemingly thoughtlessly, deliberately disturb the peace of the dead or try to exploit the memorial site for their own political goals, which are not based on humanism and human rights.
These attempts to instrumentalise the historical site primarily come from the far-right scene, but not exclusively. In recent years, there have also been several attempts by completely different groups, such as the MLPD or the Communist Organisation/Party, to abuse the site for their own current agenda.
Rules of conduct for visiting the memorial
In order to preserve the dignity of the site – as stipulated in the house rules – 'the wearing of clothing and symbols whose production or distribution is associated with the far-right scene, as well as the wearing of clothing or symbols that, when viewed objectively, contradict the fundamental values and purpose of the foundation' is not permitted on the premises.
Codes and symbols that promote racism, anti-Semitism or other misanthropic ideologies have no place at the Buchenwald Memorial. Memorial staff and authorised persons – in this case, security personnel – are required to enforce these rules.
Training and internal communication
For the memorial's employees, this means that they are frequently confronted with complex and highly specific codes, symbols and slogans in their everyday work.
But what are the current codes of the far-right scene? What is punishable by law? What is the background to the individual symbols and what do they express? Employees discuss these issues in training courses, and joint workshops are held to work on the current state of knowledge and to practise appropriate responses and de-escalating behaviour.
In-house handbook
In the context of the training courses, memorial site employees have therefore compiled a handbook, which now runs to 57 pages and attempts to explain the codes concisely for internal use. Ten pages of the handbook deal with potentially anti-Semitic codes that are used beyond the far-right spectrum. The list is continuously updated with the latest findings, and codes and symbols that are no longer in use are removed.
How is the booklet used?
Such a booklet cannot and is not intended to be a scientific work. Nor is it distributed to visitors or made available online, nor is it used in our own educational work. It serves exclusively as an initial guide for employees in the education department and security staff to help them better classify codes and symbols they encounter on site. Knowledge of the punishability or possible meaning of codes and symbols is necessary in order to be able to decide appropriately what is tolerated or not on the memorial's grounds.
It is clear that codes are often ambiguous; it is also part of the game of hide-and-seek played by the various scenes to use codes that do not reveal their misanthropic potential at first glance.(hier fände ich - auch im Deutschen - discriminatory besser, denn die Feindlichkeit richtet sich ja nicht gegen alle Menschen, sondern bestimmte Gruppen)
An example: clothing brands such as Fred Perry or Lonsdale are no products of the far-right scene, but are nevertheless worn by some of its members as a recognition code. Knowledge of this possible background is important in order to be able to act appropriately in certain situations.
On the current discussion in social media
The memorial site's employees in particular are aware that codes and symbols must always be interpreted in the context of their use.
Similarly, this guidance document cannot be understood and should not be interpretated in isolation from the context in which it was created: to protect the historic site of Buchenwald from current instrumentalisation and deliberate provocation, in order to preserve the victims' dignity.
The guidance document is a working draft not intended for publication. It therefore does not represent for example a political position in relation to the war in the Middle East. The fact that the document was apparently distributed to another recipient – in this case, the judiciary in Schleswig-Holstein – should definitely not have happened.
Foundation Director Jens-Christian Wagner comments: "We take the critical feedback seriously and regret that some of the wording was misleading or inaccurate. At the same time, we ask that - despite all justified criticism - personal attacks on our colleagues be refrained from.
Our fundamental position is that criticism of the Israeli government's policies, its settlement policy or its actions in the Gaza Strip is legitimate. However, it becomes anti-Semitic when it is used to relativise the Shoah and discredit its victims as offenders. We do not and will not tolerate this at the Buchenwald Memorial."
