Albrecht Weinberg, a 99-year-old Holocaust survivor, joined one of the many protests against the far-right held in Germany on Saturday, just two weeks before the parliamentary elections.
Weinberg, a survivor of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, participated in the demonstration in the northwestern town of Leer in a wheelchair.
He had announced his intention to return his Order of Merit in Germany, in protest against the unprecedented alliance between conservatives and the far-right, formed to toughen migration policy.
Weinberg received this honour, the highest in the country, in 2017 for regularly visiting schools to share his family’s persecution during the Third Reich.
“That all this could happen to me again when I am almost 100 years old is incredible,” he told the German press agency DPA.
Weinberg lost most of his family in the Nazi extermination camps.
On Saturday, 200,000 people protested against the far-right on the streets of Munich, according to Bavarian police. In Bremen, 25,000 people gathered, and in Hanover, 24,000 people demonstrated against the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
