'Devastating': What Germany's election results mean for Jews

Germany’s election on Sunday sent a clear, unsettling message with record turnout and a clear anti-immigration pitch. While the center-right Christian Democrats secured victory, it was the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party that delivered the biggest shock, capturing around 20% of the vote — double its support from 2021, though not as high as some had feared.

“It could’ve been worse,” Meron Mendel, an Israeli-German historian and director of the Anne Frank Education Center in Frankfurt, said in an interview. “But it’s still devastating.”

The AfD’s rise isn’t just another ripple in Europe’s growing nationalist tide — it carries deeper echoes of Germany’s past. Some of the party’s leaders have ties to neo-Nazi rhetoric and have downplayed the Holocaust. Perhaps most alarming is the party’s growing support among younger voters, many of whom are increasingly disconnected from the country’s reckoning with its role in World War II.

And it isn’t only in Europe where AfD’s rise echoes, Vice President JD Vance and Elon Musk have both expressed support for the party.

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