Germany’s Jewish community has said the huge gains for the far-Right in state elections are a “sucker punch of historic dimensions”.
“Germany is reeling,” Josef Schuster, head of the Central Council of Jews said in response to the far-Right Alternative for Germany (AfD) achieving landmark results in state elections in Thuringia and Saxony on Sunday.
“Can we recover from this hit? Our free society must not fall, especially in the face of Islamist terror,” he wrote in an article for Bild newspaper.
“Anyone who has ever seen a boxing match knows this moment: a fighter’s fist hits with full force and time seems to stand still for a brief moment... The state elections in Saxony and Thuringia were such a moment for Germany - an impact punch/sucker punch of historic dimensions,” he added.
In Thuringia, where the AfD is led by extremist figure Björn Höcke, the party won the most votes (33 per cent) at a state election for the first time since being founded eleven years ago.
In Saxony, the AfD came a close second to the centre-Right Christian Democrats (CDU).
Mr Höcke was recently found guilty in court of using banned Nazi slogans during his speeches and has openly advocated cutting the country’s population by 20 million by pushing out migrants.