Disturbance prevails in Bavaria after the complaint of antisemitism against a party leader. Senior German political officials on Saturday (26/08) ordered the second-in-command of the Bavarian government to “give an explanation” after the uproar caused by press reports that when he was a high school student he had written an antisemitic pamphlet.
“Anyone who mocks the victims of Auschwitz is prohibited from having any responsibilities in our country“, Secretary of the Interior Nancy Feser wrote on her X platform account. “It is imperative that ample light be shed on these weighty charges“.
The content of the text, published by the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, is “inhuman, utterly despicable“, Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Zender reacted in the same newspaper, in the middle of the campaign for the October 8 regional elections.
Hubert Ivanger, second in command of the regional government and Minister of Economyhe should “just clear things up and explain them publicly,” Zender said.
In an investigation published on Saturday, the newspaper said that Hubert Ivanger, 52, and leader of the Free Voters party, which has allied with the Bavarian CSU conservatives, wrote an anti-Semitic pamphlet at the high school in the 1987-88 school year, which and distributed at school.
According to the publication, the pamphlet he was joking about the Auschwitz death campwhere historians estimate that the Nazis exterminated 1.1 million people, the vast majority of whom were Jews.
The text, published by the newspaper, was apparently a reaction to a competition organized on German history.
The editor calls for participation in a contest to determine “Who is the greatest traitor to the country”.v
