Shoah Survivors Urge Nigel Farage to Make Amends Over Reported Antisemitic Comments.

A collective of Holocaust survivors has publicly demanded that Nigel Farage admit the facts and apologise for reported antisemitic abuse attributed to him toward Jewish students during his school days.

The political party leader has said he never targeted anyone with malicious intent, proposing it may have been mere "childish teasing".

"Being Holocaust survivors, we understand the deadly peril of words of hatred – because we have seen where such words ultimately lead," declared the survivors in a open letter.

"We must be unambiguous: praising Hitler, jeering at gas chambers, or shouting racist insults is not simple joking. Not on a schoolyard. Not ever."

A Pointed Inquiry

The correspondence puts forth blunt questions to the public figure: "Are the claims accurate that you stated ‘Hitler was right’ and ‘gas them,’ while mimicking gas chambers? Did you subject your peers to antisemitic abuse?"

The Signatories

The collective of 11 survivors features individuals with harrowing personal experiences from the Holocaust.

• Hedi Argent, who saw the murder of 27 members of her family.
• Simon Winston, who was held in a ghetto before breaking out in 1942 and living through the rest of the war as a fugitive.
• Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who was sent to 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.

Mounting Testimony

This action is a response to the rejection of related accounts by more than two dozen or more former pupils and teachers as "made-up twaddle" by a deputy leader.

After the story broke, additional former pupils have come forward. Twenty-eight ex-students and educators now claim they witnessed bigoted conduct by him.

One well-known testimony comes from Peter Ettedgui, a Jewish-born Bafta and Emmy-winning director, who said that a teenage Farage would approach him and repeat the phrases "Hitler was right" and "send them to the gas chambers", sometimes including a long hiss to imitate the sound of poison gas.

Additional Claims

Additional alumni from ethnic minorities have likewise come forward with accounts of personal harassment.

• Cyrus Oshidar stated he was branded a "racial slur" and has dismissed the notion that such actions were devoid of malice.
• Another student of Asian heritage described him as an "open racist" who would use the phrase "Enoch Powell was correct" as a form of "racial intimidation".

The Ultimate Question

The missive from survivors puts forth an ultimate dilemma to Farage: "If you deny saying those words, is your position that 20 former classmates and teachers are not telling the truth? Should the allegations be true, now is the opportunity to take responsibility and apologise."

"Those who seek to govern our country should under no circumstances divide people by race or religion. Antisemitic hatred must never be normalised. This moment is about moral responsibility. The decision is your own, Mr Farage."