Holocaust Victims Urge Nigel Farage to Apologise Over Alleged Anti-Jewish Statements.
A collective of Shoah survivors has publicly demanded that Nigel Farage be honest and issue an apology for alleged antisemitic comments attributed to him toward Jewish schoolmates during his school days.
The Reform UK leader has said he never racially abused anyone with the aim to hurt, suggesting it may have been mere "playground banter".
"Being Shoah survivors, we understand the deadly peril of bigoted language – for we have seen where such words ultimately lead," stated the survivors in a open letter.
"We must be unambiguous: expressing admiration for Hitler, mocking gas chambers, or shouting racist insults is not simple joking. Not on a schoolyard. Not anywhere."
An Unequivocal Demand
The correspondence asks blunt questions to the political figure: "Is it true you said ‘Hitler was right’ and ‘gas them,’ and mimicked gas chambers? Did you subject your peers to anti-Jewish taunts?"
The Signatories
The collective of eleven survivors includes individuals with devastating personal experiences from the Nazi genocide.
- Hedi Argent, who saw the murder of 27 members of her family.
- Simon Winston, who was confined to a ghetto before fleeing in 1942 and living through the rest of the war in hiding.
- Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau and later moved to Bergen-Belsen, where she was liberated.
The remaining survivors include Janine Webber, Edith Jayne, Helen Aronson, Ruth Barnett, John Fieldsend, Susan Pollack, Hanneke Dye and Agnes Kaposi.
Increasing Allegations
This public letter is a response to the dismissal of corroborating allegations by more than two dozen alumni and teachers as "fabricated nonsense" by a senior party figure.
After the story broke, more contemporaries have shared their stories. Nearly thirty former pupils and teachers now assert they saw racist or antisemitic behaviour by him.
One prominent account comes from Peter Ettedgui, a Jewish-born Bafta and Emmy-winning director, who said that a teenage Farage would approach him and utter the phrases "Hitler had the correct idea" and "send them to the gas chambers", at times including a hiss to simulate the sound of gas chambers.
A Broader Pattern
Other former pupils from ethnic minorities have also shared experiences with accounts of targeted insults.
- Cyrus Oshidar said he was called a "racial slur" and has labelled as rubbish the notion that such actions were devoid of malice.
- Another student of Asian heritage portrayed him as an "open racist" who would use the phrase "Enoch Powell had a point" as a form of "ethnic harassment".
The Survivors' Final Appeal
The missive from survivors asks a concluding challenge to Farage: "Should you continue to deny saying those words, is your position that dozens of individuals are lying? If you did say them, now is the time to admit your error and say sorry."
"People who aspire to lead our country should never create division by race or religion. Anti-Jewish bigotry must never be normalised. This moment is about moral responsibility. The decision is your own, Mr Farage."
