Shoah Survivors Call On Nigel Farage to Apologise Over Reported Anti-Jewish Remarks.
A coalition of Shoah survivors has publicly demanded that Nigel Farage be honest and express remorse for alleged antisemitic comments attributed to him toward Jewish pupils during his school days.
The Reform UK leader has claimed he never racially abused anyone with the aim to hurt, framing it may have been mere "childish teasing".
"Being Holocaust survivors, we grasp the profound danger of bigoted language – because we have seen where such words can lead," stated the survivors in a open letter.
"Let us be clear: praising Hitler, mimicking gas chambers, or hurling racist abuse is not simple joking. Not in a playground. Not under any circumstances."
An Unequivocal Demand
The letter poses direct questions to the political figure: "Did you say ‘Hitler was right’ and ‘gas them,’ while mimicking gas chambers? Did you expose your classmates to antisemitic abuse?"
The Signatories
The collective of eleven survivors includes individuals with harrowing personal experiences from the Holocaust.
- Hedi Argent, who was bereaved of 27 members of her family.
- Simon Winston, who was confined to a ghetto before escaping in 1942 and living through the rest of the war concealed.
- Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and later transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where she was rescued.
The remaining survivors include Janine Webber, Edith Jayne, Helen Aronson, Ruth Barnett, John Fieldsend, Susan Pollack, Hanneke Dye and Agnes Kaposi.
Increasing Allegations
This intervention is a response to the dismissal of similar accounts by more than two dozen or more former pupils and teachers as "made-up twaddle" by a senior party figure.
After the story broke, more contemporaries have shared their stories. Nearly thirty ex-students and educators now state they saw prejudiced actions by him.
One prominent allegation comes from Peter Ettedgui, a Jewish-born Bafta and Emmy-winning director, who recalls that a teenage Farage would sidle up to him and say the phrases "Hitler was right" and "gas them", on occasion making a hiss to mimic the sound of the gas chambers.
A Broader Pattern
Other former pupils from ethnic minorities have likewise shared experiences with accounts of personal harassment.
- Cyrus Oshidar said he was referred to as a "racial slur" and has labelled as rubbish the idea that such actions were not meant to hurt.
- Another student of Asian heritage portrayed him as an "open racist" who would use the phrase "Enoch Powell was correct" as a form of "ethnic harassment".
The Ultimate Question
The missive from survivors asks a concluding challenge to Farage: "Should you continue to deny saying those words, is your position that scores of witnesses are lying? If the words were spoken, now is the time to acknowledge you were wrong and apologise."
"Individuals who seek to govern our country should not ever divide people by race or religion. Hatred of Jews must always be confronted. This moment is about personal accountability. The choice is yours, Mr Farage."
