Shoah Survivors Demand Nigel Farage to Apologise Over Claimed Antisemitic Statements.

A collective of Shoah survivors has insisted that Nigel Farage tell the truth and apologise for alleged antisemitic taunts he is said to have made toward Jewish students during his school days.

The Reform UK leader has claimed he never targeted anyone with deliberate cruelty, framing it may have been mere "playground banter".

"Being Holocaust survivors, we understand the grave risk of hateful words – because we have seen where such words can lead," stated the survivors in a letter.

"It is crucial to understand: praising Hitler, jeering at gas chambers, or directing racial slurs is not teasing. Not on a schoolyard. Not ever."

An Unequivocal Demand

The letter puts forth blunt questions to the public figure: "Is it true you said ‘Hitler was right’ and ‘gas them,’ and mimicked gas chambers? Did you target your fellow pupils to anti-Jewish taunts?"

The Signatories

The collective of eleven survivors contains individuals with harrowing personal experiences 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 breaking out in 1942 and living through the rest of the war in hiding.
• Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who was imprisoned at Auschwitz-Birkenau and later incarcerated at Bergen-Belsen, where she was rescued.

Other signatories include Janine Webber, Edith Jayne, Helen Aronson, Ruth Barnett, John Fieldsend, Susan Pollack, Hanneke Dye and Agnes Kaposi.

Growing Accounts

This intervention is a response to the characterisation of related allegations by more than two dozen former pupils and teachers as "made-up twaddle" by a deputy leader.

After the story broke, further individuals from that era have spoken out. 28 ex-students and educators now assert they saw racist or antisemitic behaviour by him.

One prominent account comes from Peter Ettedgui, a Jewish Bafta and Emmy-winning director, who recalls that a teenage Farage would approach him and utter the phrases "Hitler was right" and "send them to the gas chambers", sometimes including a hiss to simulate the sound of the gas chambers.

Additional Claims

Other former pupils from minority ethnic backgrounds have additionally come forward with accounts of personal harassment.

• Cyrus Oshidar claimed he was branded a "racial slur" and has rejected the claim that such actions were not meant to hurt.
• Another student of Asian heritage described 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 dozens of individuals are not telling the truth? If the words were spoken, now is the opportunity to take responsibility and make amends."

"Those who hope to lead our country should never sow discord by ethnicity or faith. Anti-Jewish bigotry must never become acceptable. This moment is about ethical duty. The choice is your own, Mr Farage."