Last week, the German chancellor Olaf Scholz, was campaigning in Thuringia, an eastern German state near the border with the Czech Republic. He was seeking to shore up support before the regional elections.
At an event in the city of Jena, people started screaming “Volksverräter” at Scholz. The German word Volksverräter means “traitor of the people.”
Volksverräter was also a term the Nazis used to lob at their political enemies.
This is what the leader of Germany was met with before elections. It is hard to pinpoint what is more shocking. The fact that the German populace was calling their own leader a traitor to his face? Or that they were invoking a term from one of the most painful eras of the 20th century?
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