Shoah Victims Demand Nigel Farage to Make Amends Over Alleged Antisemitic Remarks.
A collective of Shoah survivors has called for that Nigel Farage be honest and apologise for reported antisemitic abuse he reportedly directed toward Jewish schoolmates during his school days.
The political party leader has said he never insulted anyone with the aim to hurt, proposing it may have been mere "playground banter".
"As Shoah survivors, we grasp the profound danger of bigoted language – for we have witnessed where such words ultimately lead," wrote the survivors in a missive.
"We must be unambiguous: praising Hitler, mimicking gas chambers, or hurling racist abuse is not banter. Not on a schoolyard. Not ever."
An Unequivocal Demand
The correspondence puts forth blunt questions to the party leader: "Are the claims accurate that you stated ‘Hitler was right’ and ‘gas them,’ and mimicked gas chambers? Did you subject your classmates to bigoted harassment?"
Those Who Signed
The group of 11 survivors contains 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 imprisoned in 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.
Additional names on the letter include Janine Webber, Edith Jayne, Helen Aronson, Ruth Barnett, John Fieldsend, Susan Pollack, Hanneke Dye and Agnes Kaposi.
Increasing Allegations
This public letter comes after the dismissal of similar accounts by more than several dozen ex-schoolmates and teachers as "fabricated nonsense" by a senior party figure.
Since the initial report, more contemporaries have spoken out. Twenty-eight people connected to the school now assert they saw bigoted conduct by him.
One well-known allegation comes from Peter Ettedgui, a Jewish-born award-winning director, who recalls that a young Farage would sidle up to him and repeat the phrases "Hitler had the correct idea" and "gas them", sometimes making a long hiss to imitate the sound of gas chambers.
A Broader Pattern
Additional alumni from ethnic minorities have likewise shared experiences with allegations of targeted insults.
- Cyrus Oshidar claimed he was referred to as a "Paki" and has dismissed the idea that such actions were devoid of malice.
- Another individual with Asian roots described 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 survivors' letter puts forth an ultimate question to Farage: "If you deny saying those words, do you mean that 20 former classmates and teachers are fabricating their stories? If you did say them, now is the moment to admit your error and make amends."
"People who seek to govern our country should not ever divide people by background or belief. Anti-Jewish bigotry must never become acceptable. This moment is about ethical duty. The path forward is your own, Mr Farage."
