CC MLPD, 25 July 2019
Protest against the ban of the antifascist memorial event on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the execution of Ernst Thälmann
Dear colleagues and comrades, We are writing to you because of an outrageous incident: the Internationalist Alliance, a formation of 38 organizations in which the MLPD also works, has registered a memorial event for Ernst Thälmann, the chairman of the Communist Party of Germany on 17 August in the concentration camp Buchenwald. 75 years ago, he was executed there by the henchmen of Hitlerite fascism.
Some of you have already visited the concentration camp Buchenwald. Last week a letter came from the foundation that manages the memorial, signed by Mr. Rikola-Gunnar Lüttgenau: The event in remembrance of Ernst Thälmann is banned – and this, although it had already been approved! Members or supporters of the MLPD are even threatened with „being denied access to the memorial“. Something like this has never happened before!
More and more letters of protest are coming from a broad spectrum of people, among them descendants of former, also Jewish prisoners. They express their consternation and declare their solidarity!
In a letter of those who registered the event, Tassilo Timm and Klaus Dimler (himself a son of a concentration camp prisoner and resistance fighter in Buchenwald), the incident is rightly qualified as an “excess of anti-communism“.
In the attempt of the foundation to give a reason for the ban, false allegations are being made, as for example the allegation that the Internationalist Alliance, in which also Palestinian groups cooperate, are supposedly antisemitic - because of their completely justifiable criticism of the policies of the Israeli government. This is all in line with the rightward development of the government in Germany and the anti-communist defamation campaign, which is steered by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, and the paradigm change of bourgeois anti-fascism it initiated. More and more, the great number of victims and sacrifices of the Soviet Union, the Red Army and the communists are being completely ignored and only the Jewish victims and sacrifices being honored.
Of course, the Internationalist Alliance will not bow to this ban! Buchenwald is a symbol of the most brutal terror of the Hitlerite fascists in the service of German monopoly capital. In the concentration camp Buchenwald were especially political prisoners, communists, social-democrats, trade-unionists and other antifascists of many nationalities. Buchenwald stands for the unique self-liberation of a concentration camp in Germany, under the leadership of an international camp committee led by communists, among them the father of the notifier Klaus Dimler. Ernst Thälmann was a role model for the unbroken resistance, even under the most brutal conditions.
Dear friends, colleagues and comrades,
we request that you support the protest against the ban of the memorial event!
Write declarations of protest to the foundation of the concentration camp Buchenwald (address below)
Request especially well-known persons to send short letters of protest to the foundation!
Write to us. We would be happy to forward letters to the foundation and the Internationalist Alliance or organize translation!
Thank you already today and sincere greetings,
Monika Gärtner-Engel
CC MLPD, responsible person for internationalism
Addresses:
Protest letters to the board of the memorial site:
Stiftung „Gedenkstätte Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora“, Mail: sekretariat@Buchenwald.de
Mail address MLPD: info@mlpd.de
Mail address Internationalist Alliance: info@inter-liste.de
Address concentration camp Buchenwald: Buchenwald 2, 99427 Weimar
Address of the event of the Internationalist List/MLPD in 99084 Erfurt, Anger (the name of the big square in the city center where the event is taking place).