Holocaust Victims Call On Nigel Farage to Apologise Over Claimed Antisemitic Statements.

A collective of Shoah survivors has publicly demanded that Nigel Farage admit the facts and apologise for alleged antisemitic taunts he is said to have made toward Jewish schoolmates during his school days.

The Reform UK leader has previously stated he never targeted anyone with malicious intent, suggesting it may have been mere "schoolyard talk".

"As Shoah survivors, we comprehend the profound danger of words of hatred – for we have witnessed where such words inevitably end," stated the survivors in a letter.

"It is crucial to understand: praising Hitler, jeering at gas chambers, or hurling racist abuse is not banter. Not in a playground. Not anywhere."

An Unequivocal Demand

The letter poses 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 target your peers to antisemitic abuse?"

The Signatories

The collective of 11 survivors includes 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 held in a ghetto before breaking out in 1942 and spending the rest of the war in hiding.
• Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who was imprisoned at Auschwitz-Birkenau and later moved to Bergen-Belsen, where she was freed.

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 comes after the rejection of corroborating accounts by more than two dozen or more ex-schoolmates and teachers as "made-up twaddle" by a senior party figure.

Since the initial report, additional former pupils have shared their stories. Twenty-eight former pupils and teachers now claim they saw bigoted conduct by him.

One well-known account comes from Peter Ettedgui, a Jewish-born award-winning director, who said that a teenage Farage would come near him and utter the phrases "Hitler was correct" and "send them to the gas chambers", at times including a hiss to simulate the sound of the gas chambers.

Further Allegations

More individuals from ethnic minorities have likewise shared experiences with stories of targeted insults.

• Cyrus Oshidar said he was called a "Paki" and has rejected the notion that such actions were not meant to hurt.
• Another individual with Asian roots described him as an "blatant racist" who would use the phrase "Enoch Powell had a point" as a form of "ethnic harassment".

A Concluding Demand

The missive from survivors asks a concluding challenge to Farage: "If you deny saying those words, is your position that 20 former classmates and teachers are lying? Should the allegations be true, now is the moment to take responsibility and make amends."

"Individuals who hope to lead our country should under no circumstances divide people by race or religion. Hatred of Jews must never become acceptable. This moment is about moral responsibility. The decision is your own, Mr Farage."