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Sunday, February 22, 2026
Far-left protest planned at Buchenwald memorial sparks outrage
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleZev Stub is the Times of Israel's Diaspora Affairs correspondent.
A far-left anti-Zionist group plans to stage a protest at the annual commemoration of the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp, drawing sharp criticism across Germany.
The group, Kufiyas in Buchenwald, says it will demonstrate outside the memorial grounds on April 11 after the site banned pro-Palestinian symbols, including the keffiyeh scarf. The campaign, which includes several pro-Palestinian organizations, describes itself as an anti-fascist international movement, and accuses the memorial of “historical revisionism and genocide denial” and of promoting what it calls Israeli propaganda.
Organizers are protesting a 2025 court ruling that upheld the memorial’s right to deny entry to visitors wearing the Palestinian keffiyeh. Participants include activists from Germany’s Left Party youth wing, the German Communist Party and Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East.
Germany’s commissioner for combating antisemitism, Felix Klein, denounces the planned demonstration as “a new low in the reversal of roles between victim and perpetrator.”
Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps established within Germany’s borders, and has become one of the country’s central Holocaust memorial sites.
The Times of Israel Community.