Nazi contemporary witness about the Saxony-Anhalt election: “They realize that they made the wrong choice”

As a Jewish girl in Poland, Henriette Kretz survived persecution by the National Socialists. Today she is 92 years old, lives in Belgium and often speaks to young people about the Third Reich and the Shoah. Now, for the first time since the end of the Second World War, a right-wing extremist party has become the strongest force in state elections in Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD. Henriette Kretz spoke to the taz about the election in the Roncalli House of the Magdeburg diocese.

taz: Ms. Kretz, in the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD received almost 44 percent of the votes of all voters. What does the result do to you?

Henriette Kretz: Unfortunately, you can see that many people no longer know that very similar voting decisions led to the rise of National Socialism. They may not and may not want to remember. But if a party like the AfD comes to power, those who voted for them will realize that they actually have no authority at all and that their representatives only sow hatred. And they will realize that they made the wrong decision with this choice.

born on October 26, 1934 in Stanisławów, Poland, now Ukraine, is a Holocaust survivor who reports on her fate as a contemporary witness in lectures and books. She survived the German persecution of Jews in various hiding places.

Kretz: If the people who have come here and are already working as doctors or nurses in a hospital, if they are teachers or employed in a company - if these people should leave, as the AfD says, then who will stay? The AfD wants to keep to itself and only associate with Germans. I'm not from here, I live in Belgium. Should I also just stay among Belgians?

taz: What do you say to the people who vote for right-wing extremists?

Kretz: If the people in Saxony-Anhalt want the past and National Socialism back - haven't they seen how it ended the last time? Haven't they counted how many German children, women and innocent people died in the war? Berlin and Dresden were completely destroyed... Maybe they didn't see it, but their parents and grandparents did.

taz: You came to Germany especially from Antwerp and have already discussed things in a youth center, today in Magdeburg. Why are you still talking?

Kretz: Why speak? Look, I'm not a person of great influence. I'm just an old woman. But I lived quite a long time and experienced a lot. And the way I see it, we're going down a very dangerous path at the moment. As a Jew, my story is closely linked to the genocide.

Kretz: I was born in 1934 as the only child of my parents in Opatów, then Poland. I was five years old when the war began. We fled east and after spending time in prison we stayed and hid in different places for a long time, in a coal cellar, in an attic. However, in 1944 we were betrayed to the Germans - and my parents were shot in front of me. I escaped and was taken into a Catholic orphanage. There the nuns were able to hide and protect me from the Germans.

Kretz: After the end of the Second World War, my last surviving family member, an uncle, adopted me. All others were killed by the National Socialists. I later lived and studied in Antwerp, Belgium. Then I lived in Israel for a while, but I moved back to Antwerp.

taz: What lessons do you draw from the National Socialist era?

Kretz: What I was supposed to learn as a small child under the Nazi occupation was that there were different races. But I only know one race, and that is that of humans. We all have the same characteristics – we have two feet, two hands, we have a nose in the middle of our face. We have a language that, although different for all peoples, always says the same thing. To say that one people is worse than another is, to me, downright stupid. Nobody is better than anyone else. I say that hate destroys. Hate has never built anything or done any good.

Kretz: It gives me hope that people will vote and that there are people who want good things. That there are people who take responsibility for others and do not rule for the sake of power. And there is no such thing as better or worse people, as the AfD propagates. We are all the same. I say without hope we have no future. I believe in humanity.