He Said Berlin Didn’t Need A Shoah Memorial. So They Built One In His Backyard.

Image by Getty Image
Activists have built a model of Berlin’s Holocaust memorial outside the home of far-right German politician Björn Höcke after he said the country shouldn’t have a World War II museum in its capital.
At a rally in Dresden in January, Höcke called on Germans to make a “180 degree” turn in the way they viewed their history and role in the Holocaust.
“We Germans… are the only nation in the world that has planted a monument to shame in the heart of its capital,” said Höcke, a leader in the far-right Alternative for Germany party.
His comments caused a national uproar. In response, an artist collective known as the Center for Political Beauty rented the house next door to his in the town of Bornhagen. Last month, they erected on that land a smaller replica of the Berlin memorial to the European Jews murdered by the Nazis.
There are 24 rectangular concrete blocks, made to look like the original monument and rebuilt to scale — with each slab rotated 180 degrees as a response to Hocke’s statement.
“We wanted to remind Mr. Höcke that he can turn German history however much he likes, it doesn’t change,” the co-founder of the Center for Political Beauty, Philipp Ruch, told the New York Times. The protest group even runs a live video stream of the slabs.
Since the artwork was unveiled last month, the town has become the site of protest. Some locals think the activists have gone too far and are invading Höcke’s privacy by taking photos of the politician’s house and turning the town into a media hotspot. The controversy has also highlighted the rise of Alternative for Germany, which won 34 percent of the vote in Bornhagen during the most recent elections, more than twice the national average.
Email Sam Kestenbaum at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Culture Cardinals are Catholic, not Jewish — so why do they all wear yarmulkes?
- 2
Fast Forward Ye debuts ‘Heil Hitler’ music video that includes a sample of a Hitler speech
- 3
News School Israel trip turns ‘terrifying’ for LA students attacked by Israeli teens
- 4
Fast Forward Student suspended for ‘F— the Jews’ video defends himself on antisemitic podcast
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion This week proved it: Trump’s approach to antisemitism at Columbia is horribly ineffective
-
Yiddish קאָנצערט לכּבֿוד דעם ייִדישן שרײַבער און רעדאַקטאָר באָריס סאַנדלערConcert honoring Yiddish writer and editor Boris Sandler
דער בעל־שׂימחה האָט יאָרן לאַנג געדינט ווי דער רעדאַקטאָר פֿונעם ייִדישן פֿאָרווערטס.
-
Fast Forward Trump’s new pick for surgeon general blames the Nazis for pesticides on our food
-
Fast Forward Jewish feud over Trump escalates with open letter in The New York Times
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.