The head of the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial site has said Germany has a “virulent” neo-Nazi problem after nine memorial trees were sawn down in the past week.
Jens-Christian Wagner said he was appalled at the vandalism to the trees planted along the former railway line that took prisoners from Weimar to the camp in Thuringia, eastern Germany. The police have begun an investigation.
An estimated 56,000 people were killed in Buchenwald by torture, medical experiments, starvation, disease and exhaustion. Plaques dedicated the trees to groups of victims or individuals. One of those chopped down last week commemorated the 1,600 children who were killed at Buchenwald.
Concentration camps across Germany were routinely vandalised, Wagner said. “We can’t put a police officer or a surveillance camera
