BERLIN (JTA) – Munich resident Marian Offman, born in Germany to Holocaust survivors in 1948, is sitting on the proverbial packed suitcase. Offman, his city’s commissioner for interfaith dialogue, is worried about what an AfD leadership would mean for Jews and other minorities.

“To me it is a pure Nazi party,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “They are completely anti-religious, just like the Nazis were.”

Offman was among a number of Jews in Germany who expressed alarm at the plurality of 43.8% of the vote the Alternative for Germany party (AfD) received in Sunday’s election in the former East German state of Saxony-Anhalt.

The prospect of an AfD-ruled state has many Germans, not only Jews, fearful of a resurgence of fascism in a country that has worked for decades to confront its Nazi past. Critics point to the party’s platform, which includes such points as expelling unwanted migrants; building pride in notions of German tradition and ethnicity; and stopping funding for “anti-German” art and culture.

The 13-year old AfD – with its anti-EU, anti-foreigner and nationalist stances – trounced the older established parties on Sunday, opening the door to the possibility that it could lead the government in that state.

If it succeeds, it would mark the first time since World War II that a far-right party is poised to govern a German state.

Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, expressed shock at the election results. The party could do “immense damage” if it forms a government, particularly in the educational realm, Schuster told the German Jewish newspaper Juedische Allgemeine, the Central Council’s media organ. The AfD has expressed the goal of refocusing education on German pride.

“Germany has been known as a country that is democratic, that comes to terms with its history, very, very intensively, more than any other country,” Offman said. “And now suddenly a far-right party is in all state parliaments and in the Bundestag,” the federal parliament.

There are about 200,000 Jews in Germany. Fewer than half are members of Jewish communities. About 90% of them came since 1990 from the former Soviet Union; a small number have moved here from Israel, as well. Very few are descended from prewar German Jewish families.

“I’m very much afraid that the atmosphere would change, and I don’t know how to cope with it,” said Flora, who was born in Hungary........

© The Times of Israel