Holocaust Survivors Demand Nigel Farage to Apologise Over Alleged Anti-Jewish Statements.
A group of Shoah survivors has publicly demanded that Nigel Farage be honest and apologise for alleged antisemitic abuse attributed to him toward Jewish schoolmates during his youth.
The Reform UK leader has said he never racially abused anyone with deliberate cruelty, proposing it may have been mere "schoolyard talk".
"Being Holocaust survivors, we comprehend the deadly peril of bigoted language – because we have seen where such words can lead," wrote the survivors in a open letter.
"We must be unambiguous: expressing admiration for Hitler, mocking gas chambers, or hurling racist abuse is not teasing. Not on a schoolyard. Not under any circumstances."
A Direct Question
The correspondence asks direct questions to the public figure: "Is it true you said ‘Hitler was right’ and ‘gas them,’ while mimicking gas chambers? Did you target your peers to anti-Jewish taunts?"
The Signatories
The collective of eleven survivors contains individuals with harrowing personal stories from the Nazi genocide.
- Hedi Argent, who was bereaved of 27 members of her immediate and extended family.
- Simon Winston, who was confined to a ghetto before fleeing in 1942 and spending the rest of the war concealed.
- Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who was imprisoned at Auschwitz-Birkenau and later incarcerated at Bergen-Belsen, where she was liberated.
Additional names on the letter include Janine Webber, Edith Jayne, Helen Aronson, Ruth Barnett, John Fieldsend, Susan Pollack, Hanneke Dye and Agnes Kaposi.
Growing Accounts
This public letter is a response to the dismissal of similar allegations by more than several dozen alumni and teachers as "fabricated nonsense" by a deputy leader.
Since the initial report, additional former pupils have spoken out. Twenty-eight people connected to the school now claim they saw bigoted conduct by him.
One well-known allegation comes from Peter Ettedgui, a Jewish-born Bafta and Emmy-winning director, who said that a young Farage would sidle up to him and utter the phrases "Hitler was right" and "gas them", sometimes including a hiss to imitate the sound of gas chambers.
Further Allegations
Additional alumni from minority ethnic backgrounds have also spoken publicly with allegations of targeted insults.
- Cyrus Oshidar said he was called a "racial slur" and has labelled as rubbish the notion that such actions were not meant to hurt.
- Another individual with Asian roots portrayed him as an "blatant racist" who would use the phrase "Enoch Powell was right" as a form of "ethnic harassment".
The Survivors' Final Appeal
The final appeal puts forth an ultimate question to Farage: "If you deny saying those words, is your position that scores of witnesses are not telling the truth? If the words were spoken, now is the time to acknowledge you were wrong and say sorry."
"Those who seek to govern our country should never create division by ethnicity or faith. Hatred of Jews must never become acceptable. This moment is about moral responsibility. The decision is your own, Mr Farage."
