At Sunday’s memorial service at the former Buchenwald concentration camp on the Ettersberg near Weimar, actor and author Hape Kerkeling spoke not as a public figure but as the grandson of a survivor. He recalled his grandfather Hermann Kerkeling — a carpenter from Recklinghausen, a Catholic and a communist — who was arrested after distributing anti‑Nazi leaflets in 1933 and spent twelve years in the camp. Kerkeling described his grandfather’s postwar silence as a “leaden silence” surrounding his soul and warned against forgetting and the rise of right‑wing populism.
Buchenwald operated from 1937 to 1945 and imprisoned political opponents, communists, homosexuals, foreign laborers, Jews, Roma and Sinti, Jehovah’s Witnesses and clergy who defied the regime. The complex included the main camp on the Ettersberg and more than 50 satellite camps tied to wartime production; over 250,000 people were held there, and by April 1945 around 56,000 prisoners had been killed or had died from murder, torture, exhaustion or despair.
When US forces neared the camp on April 11, 1945, prisoners — who had organized an effective resistance inside — rose up and captured fleeing SS soldiers, a fact commemorated as both liberation and self‑liberation. The camp’s entrance clock is set to 3:15, the hour the camp was liberated; the hands forever mark that moment.
The service marked the 81st anniversary of the liberation. Two former inmates attended: Alojzy Maciak, 98, from Poland, and Andrej Moiseenko, 99, from Belarus, both still wearing their prisoner caps. The number of survivors able to attend such commemorations has dwindled sharply — from about 80 at the 70th anniversary in 2015 to 15 at the 80th in 2025, and now only two present.
Jens‑Christian Wagner, director of the Buchenwald Memorial, said the event was overshadowed by contemporary political tensions. He warned that, with fewer survivors left to bear witness, memorial sites and the culture of remembrance are being misused as stages for current political conflicts and self‑promotion. Wagner also pointed to growing right‑wing extremism in Thuringia, where the Alternative for Germany (AfD) commands unusually strong support and some regional actors have been classified as right‑wing extremist by domestic intelligence.
Conflicts in the Middle East also cast a shadow over the commemoration. Organizers said some groups tried to use the day to draw attention to current conflicts; an organization called “Kufiyas in Buchenwald” had planned a vigil for victims of genocide and fascism with a focus on Palestine, but judicial authorities banned the event days earlier.
Security concerns were visible: more than 15 police vans lined the area around Weimar’s train station early Sunday, officers monitored shuttle buses to the memorial, and police vehicles were frequently present on the grounds. Wagner appealed to attendees not to disrupt the commemoration.
Tensions surfaced publicly around the appearance of Wolfram Weimer, the federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media, whose remit includes supporting memorial sites. Chairs of two associations representing relatives of former political prisoners opposed his participation, criticizing a recent decision in which Weimer had excluded three left‑wing bookshops from awards, citing intelligence findings. Wagner had supported Weimer’s right to speak.
When Weimer took the lectern, parts of the crowd — including a left‑wing bloc and members of victims’ associations — booed and chanted. Calls of “Alerta antifascista” and accusations of “Fascist” interrupted much of his twelve‑minute address. He appealed for respect for the site’s dignity, lamented rising disruptions and threats at memorials and noted that more than 10% of the Buchenwald Memorial’s budget now goes on security and protective measures.
Hecklers repeatedly interrupted with solidarity songs and camp songs, including lines from a 1938 composition created inside Buchenwald. Wagner later called the disruptions “shabby” and “unbearable,” particularly because they occurred while survivors were present. He defended the legitimacy of a federal representative speaking at the site and described the interruptions as a misguided political gesture.
Weimer concluded by thanking Hape Kerkeling, who then delivered his remembrance speech. The ceremony moved into a minute of silence and the traditional recitation of the “Buchenwald Oath,” the survivors’ pledge to destroy fascism at its roots and to build a new world of peace and freedom. Fifty wreaths were placed by officials and victims’ associations, and smaller groups and individuals lingered afterward to lay roses and remember particular victim groups.
The memorial’s symbolic 3:15 clock and the survivors who still attend keep the memory of what happened at Buchenwald alive. But organizers and attendees alike noted that the site now faces new battles: the fading of firsthand witnesses, political appropriation of remembrance, and pressure from extremist forces. The camp’s liberation marked the end of that particular hell on April 11, 1945 — yet its lessons and the duty to remember remain contested and urgently relevant.
