A leading European rabbi has said the first victory for the far right in a German state parliament election since the Second World War should be a “wake-up call” for centrists.

Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, the exiled chief rabbi of Moscow who is now based in Munich, warned that extremism could grow stronger if voters concerns over immigration were ignored.

His prediction came after Alternative for Germany, an anti-immigration party founded just over a decade ago that has flirted with Holocaust denial and Nazi apologism, celebrated a “historic success” in the eastern state of Thuringia.

Beating the governing SPD into fifth place, the far right party took 33 per cent of the vote. 

In neighbouring Saxony, they came a close second with 32.

“The election results in the German federal states of Thuringia and Saxony are a clear wake-up call to the centrist parties in Germany to listen to the real concerns and fears of the people,” Rabbi Goldschmidt said.

"When half the population votes for parties on the extreme fringes, their problems must be addressed openly and honestly.

"Uppermost on the electorates’ mind are the issues of migration and internal security. If the political centre will continue to ignore those issues, those political parties will disappear and the threatening, extreme ones will only grow stronger.”

Describing the results as “bitter,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said: "The AfD is damaging Germany. It is weakening the economy, dividing society and ruining our country's reputation.”

The east of Germany has long been a hotbed for the country’s far right.

The AfD’s leader in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, is a former teacher who has widely condemned for extremist comments and alleged ties to neo-Nazis.

In 2017, in reference to Berlin’s Holocaust memorial, he said: “We Germans are the only people in the world who have planted a memorial of shame in the heart of their capital.”

The country should have a “180-degree change” in its attitude to rememberance, he added.

Three years later the wing of the AfD run by Höcke was classified as extremist by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency.

Charlotte Knobloch, a Holocaust survivor who previously lead the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said the regional election had taken place 85 years to the day after the start of the Second World War.

The result, she said, would make her country, "more unstable, colder and poorer, less safe and less worth living in.”