Shoah Survivors Urge Nigel Farage to Say Sorry Over Reported Anti-Jewish Comments.
A coalition of Holocaust survivors has publicly demanded that Nigel Farage be honest and express remorse for alleged anti-Jewish comments he reportedly directed toward Jewish schoolmates during his youth.
The Reform UK leader has previously stated he never insulted anyone with deliberate cruelty, proposing it may have been mere "childish teasing".
"As Shoah survivors, we understand the profound danger of bigoted language – because we have witnessed where such words ultimately lead," declared the survivors in a letter.
"Let us be clear: praising Hitler, mocking gas chambers, or directing racial slurs is not teasing. Not on a schoolyard. Not ever."
A Direct Question
The document asks straightforward questions to the political figure: "Did you say ‘Hitler was right’ and ‘gas them,’ and mimicked gas chambers? Did you expose your fellow pupils to anti-Jewish taunts?"
The Signatories
The group of eleven survivors includes individuals with devastating personal histories from the Nazi genocide.
- Hedi Argent, who lost 27 members of her immediate and extended family.
- Simon Winston, who was held in a ghetto before fleeing in 1942 and spending the rest of the war as a fugitive.
- Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who was imprisoned at Auschwitz-Birkenau and later moved to Bergen-Belsen, where she was freed.
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 intervention follows the characterisation of related allegations by more than two dozen ex-schoolmates and teachers as "fabricated nonsense" by a senior party figure.
Following the publication, additional former pupils have spoken out. Nearly thirty ex-students and educators now state they saw racist or antisemitic behaviour by him.
One well-known account comes from Peter Ettedgui, a Jewish-born Bafta and Emmy-winning director, who said that a teenage Farage would approach him and say the phrases "Hitler had the correct idea" and "gas them", at times making a prolonged hissing sound to simulate the sound of the gas chambers.
A Broader Pattern
Other former pupils from minority ethnic backgrounds have likewise come forward with allegations of direct abuse.
- Cyrus Oshidar claimed he was referred to as a "racial slur" and has labelled as rubbish the claim that such actions were devoid of malice.
- Another individual with Asian roots characterised him as an "open racist" who would use the phrase "Enoch Powell was right" as a form of "racial bullying".
The Survivors' Final Appeal
The final appeal puts forth an ultimate question to Farage: "By denying saying those words, do you mean that scores of witnesses are not telling the truth? If you did say them, now is the moment to admit your error and make amends."
"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 ethical duty. The path forward is yours, Mr Farage."
