UKIP considers legal action in Holocaust row with school
UKIP is considering legal action against a school in Derby that it claims linked the party with the Holocaust during an assembly.
Chellaston Academy showed slides featuring a picture of UKIP leader Nigel Farage and a comment he made about Romanians.
The slides included details of Nazi death squads, Jewish ghettos and the rounding-up of millions of Slavs and Romany gypsies.
An image of former UKIP Councillor David Silvester, who was expelled from the party last year after he linked same-sex marriage to flooding, was also featured.
Asking children how the Holocaust could have happened, teachers at Chellaston Academy displayed slides with the words Evil, Bloodthirsty, Monsters and Murderers and referred to Melita Maschmann, a German diarist whose work recounts her time in the Hitler Youth and as a propagandist for the regime.
It was the next slide, however, that caused fury with UKIP.
Entitled “There’s no way modern Britain could repeat Melita’s mistakes… right?” it displayed an image of Nigel Farage, with the caption “I wouldn’t want to live next door to a Romanian!” and “Blames bad traffic on eastern Europeans”.
UKIP’s East Midlands Chairman Alan Graves has accused the school of “political indoctrination”.
“Having an opinion about who your neighbours are is not the same as being a Nazi,” he said.
Party leader Nigel Farage Farage confirmed he would report the school to the Department for Education for breaching strict “political indoctrination” clauses in the Education Act 1996.
He said: “This was a vile slur that simply had to be corrected. It is wholly unacceptable that children should be exposed to such prejudice.”
Head teacher Ray Ruszczynski has denied the accusation and said that “the description of the content of the assembly as some sort of attack on UKIP is incorrect”.
The Derby Telegraph reports he said: “The whole thing has been taken out of context.
“The assembly was one in a series about how the abuse and misuse of language to isolate groups and stereotype minorities can lead to hate and conflict.
“We are also seeking legal advice on the situation and the extreme comments that have been made on social media about the situation.”
He added: “It is absolute nonsense to suggest we implied Nigel Farage was some kind of grim reaper who would bring the next Holocaust. It was more about how our students should be careful in the run-up to the elections to think about what politicians say.”
On Holocaust Memorial Day last week, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg became the first senior politician to back the inclusion of gay victims of Nazi persecution in a national Holocaust memorial.
Writing for PinkNews Prime Minister David Cameron also paid tribute to all those who were persecuted by the Nazis, including gay people.
He said: “Here in Britain, we will always remember.”
