A politician from the rightwing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has broken with the country’s postwar political consensus by calling for a “180-degree turn” from the tradition of remembering and atoning for the Nazi era.

In a speech in a beer hall in Dresden, Björn Höcke, who leads the party in the eastern state of Thuringia, railed against Germany’s decade-long tradition of acknowledging the crimes of the National Socialist era, describing the Holocaust memorial in Berlin as a “monument of shame”.

“They wanted to cut off our roots and with the re-education that began in 1945, they nearly managed,” Höcke said. “Until now, our mental state continues to be that of a totally defeated people. We Germans are the only people in the world that have planted a monument of shame in the heart of their capital.”

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a large sloping field covered in austere slabs of concrete, was unveiled in 2005 and is located close to the German parliament and the Brandenburg Gate.

During the second world war Germany was responsible for the murder of more than 6 million Jews and other minorities.

Höcke, a former history teacher, also complained that German schoolchildren were supposedly not taught about the country’s scientific and artistic achievements, and that German history was made to look “mean and ridiculous”. “That cannot and must not continue,” he added, which was greeted with a standing ovation and chants of “Germany, Germany” from his audience.

The event was organised by his party’s youth organisation, but a video shows the audience was filled with elderly supporters.

The provocation comes before a meeting of European far-right parties in Koblenz on Satuday, organised by the European parliament’s Europe of Nations and Freedom group.

Though the AfD leader, Frauke Petry, threatened to resign in the case of a rightward lurch before its party conference last year, she has continued to tolerate Höcke, seen as the figurehead of the party’s nationalist wing.

An AfD strategy paper leaked to the press last December called for “carefully planned provocations” in the run-up to elections in September, leading to rushed retaliations from other parties. The more the AfD was stigmatised as a result, the paper suggested, “the more positive for the party’s profile”.

Current polls have the rightwing populists on 11-15%, behind Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic party and the Social Democratic party. In his speech, Höcke said he was aiming for the party to get “51% in this country”, or a senior role in a coalition with “one of the establishment parties after it has gone through a cathartic purgatory”.

The Central Council of Jews in Germany condemned the speech. Its president, Josef Schuster, said: “With these antisemitic and highly misanthropic comments, the AfD is showing its true face. I would have never dared to imagine that it would be possible for a politician to say such things 70 years after the Shoah.”

The German vice chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, said: “Björn Höcke despises the Germany I am proud of. Never, never ever must we allow the demagogy of a Björn Höcke to go unchallenged. Not as Germans, and

especially not as Social Democrats.”