A 99-year-old German Holocaust survivor said on Thursday he wants to return his Order of Merit – Germany’s highest honour – after a controversial motion demanding reforms to migration policy passed in parliament due to far-right votes.
Albrecht Weinberg, who survived the Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, said the award had been a great honour but he was outraged by the vote.
“It has become too heavy to bear when you have news like this. Terrible,” Weinberg told dpa.
The centre-right CDU/CSU bloc relied on support from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) to push through the non-binding measure on Wednesday, the first time that the party has been involved in a majority vote in the Bundestag, Germany’s lower house of parliament.
Weinberg lost most of his family to the Nazis and survived several death marches.
Along with his sister, Weinberg moved back to Germany from the United States in 2012 and has since regularly spoken with German schoolchildren about his experiences.
“I’ve been going to schools for the last 10 years and talking to pupils about what could and would happen if they were to take power again,” said Weinberg, referring to the far right. “They have no idea what it was like in 1945 Germany.”
The Mannheim photographer Luigi Toscano, a friend of Weinberg who has devoted his work to commemorating victims of the Nazis, said he also wants to return his Medal of Merit.
The pair plan to give the awards back to German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier as soon as possible.
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