A memorial ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the "Buchenwald" concentration camp in the German province of Thuringia took place today near the city of Weimar, DPA reported, quoted by BTA.
The ceremony featured music and documents secretly created and written by prisoners were shown.
In his speech, former German President Christian Wulff made a comparison between the Nazis and today's right-wing extremism.
"Based on the coarsening and radicalization, as well as the global shift to the right, I can now - and this disturbs me - imagine more clearly how this could have happened at that time," Wulff said. He called on people to take an active civic stance in favor of democracy. The current generation has a permanent responsibility to ensure that evil never triumphs again, Wulff stressed.
The former Christian Democratic president made direct criticism of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the far-right party that came second in the last federal elections in February and continues to gain support according to opinion polls.
"Those who belittle the AfD ignore the fact that, with its ideology, it is paving the way for people in Germany to feel insecure and that they themselves are actually threatened," he said.
Survivors of the Nazi concentration camp were invited to attend the service in Weimarhalle, along with their relatives and descendants. A wreath-laying ceremony is planned for the afternoon on the square at the former concentration camp.
Naftali Furst, chairman of the International Committee of Buchenwald-Dora and the Commandos, is also scheduled to give a speech at the memorial. Furst, 92, survived the "Auschwitz" and "Buchenwald" concentration camps as a child.
On the eve of the memorial service, a dispute arose between the memorial complex and the Israeli embassy over a planned speech by a philosopher who was viewed critically by the embassy.
Since the summer of 1937, the Nazis have deported more than 280,000 people to the "Buchenwald" concentration camp near the city of Weimar and its 139 subcamps. About 56,000 people were killed or died from starvation, disease, forced labor or medical experiments, DPA said.