At a Georgetown College Republicans event, member of Germany’s far-right party tells students the Holocaust is ‘used as a weapon’

Marc Bernhard, a member of Germany’s far-right AfD party, told Georgetown students Monday night at an event hosted by the university’s College Republicans that the Holocaust is “used as a weapon against Germany.”

The Forward obtained recordings of parts of the event, which was billed as Bernhard presenting about “mass migration and the future of the West.”

The event followed the AfD’s historic victory in a German state election last month, with party leaders campaigning on the promise of mass deportations and a rejection of the country’s culture of Holocaust remembrance.

During the Q&A period, an audience member asked Bernhard about the AfD’s “opinion on the Holocaust.”

“Our opinion? It’s a very, very large party,” Bernhard responded.

“Do you think German education overcompensates or you know, like, overapologizes?” the audience member followed up.

Bernhard said that over the last decade, accusations of Nazism had become “inflationary, because everyone who does not have the opinion of the government is a Nazi. So nobody takes this serious anymore, because it’s a joke.”

The “Holocaust is also used as a weapon against Germany,” Bernhard told the crowd of about 40. “Why is Poland telling us we need to pay reparations and things like this?”

He blamed anti-Jewish sentiment on “anti-fascists,” saying left-wing antisemitism was “why a lot of Jews leave Germany or a lot of Jews leave France, because they don’t feel secure anymore, especially in Berlin.”

Bernhard, meanwhile, has faced an antisemitism controversy of his own. Last January, he led a campaign to place tens of thousands of fake deportation plane tickets in voters’ mailboxes. The fake tickets read “ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT” in place of a passenger’s name.

The campaign drew comparisons to Nazi-era propaganda that used mock travel documents to encourage Jews to leave Germany, including one that read “free ticket to Jerusalem … never to return.”

Asked about the parallels by PBS FRONTLINE in November 2025, Bernhard said he was unaware of that history.

“Yeah, well, I’m not familiar with these actions,” Bernhard told FRONTLINE at the time. “To be honest, I don’t know them, nor was I aware of them.”

In a statement provided to the Forward, Georgetown College Republicans stood by its invitation to Bernhard, writing that “The AfD is currently leading national polls, and its growing support deserves serious engagement. Just as Republicans reject the American left’s efforts to dismiss our positions as extreme, we too reject the German Socialist Government’s labelling of AfD as extremist.”

The club added that “allegations of antisemitism are totally baseless.”

This wasn’t the first time Georgetown College Republicans hosted a member of the AfD: In 2025, the club hosted the party’s deputy leader, Markus Frohnmai.

The club also drew controversy in March for an X post from the club’s account saying “Let’s Be Honest: Muslims have no place in American society. Their religion is incompatible with our Christian Nation.” Georgetown Republicans said on Instagram that  the post was “inconsistent with the values of our organization” and “promptly deleted.”

At Georgetown, Bernhard also engaged in anti-Muslim rhetoric: “We have this problem with people who are not with our culture or with our tradition,” Bernhard said. “Always, where you see problems it’s with Muslims. We don’t have problems with Ukrainians. We don’t have problems with Polish.”

Bernhard’s remarks drew frequent interruptions. The Georgetown Voice, the campus student-run magazine, reported that members of The Georgetown Heckler, Georgetown’s satirical publication, staged a coordinated ringtone prank, with 15 people each setting their ringtones to “funny noises” that went off as Bernhard spoke.

The Jewish Caucus of the College Democrats of America and Georgetown College Democrats also issued a joint statement condemning the College Republican’s decision to host Bernhard.

“We want Georgetown to put the safety of Jewish students above a platform for a foreign politician whose ideology is steeped in antisemitism and Holocaust revisionism,” Leo Auerbach, a senior at Georgetown and vice chair of the Jewish Caucus of College Democrats, told the Forward. “I think that antisemitism has to be called out, no matter who it comes from, whether it’s politically convenient or not.”

Hannah Feuer joined the Forward as a general assignment reporter in May 2025 after two years as a culture reporter at Seven Days, an independent weekly in Burlington, Vermont. Read full bio →

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