Blair aide’s horror as Holocaust film-maker told ‘get back in oven’
A FORMER adviser to Tony Blair has told of his shock at witnessing an anti-Semitic rant at a Proms reception.
Martin Bright, a former Observer journalist who once worked for the former Prime Minister’s Faith Foundation, was horrified when BBC journalist Henrietta Foster was told by a fellow guest to ‘get back in the oven’ – a reference to the gas chambers used by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
The fellow guest, who has been identified by The Mail on Sunday as Dr Leslie Jones, the editor of the Quarterly Review magazine, made the comment in reference to an appearance Ms Foster made in My Nazi Legacy, a documentary about the children of Hitler’s officers.
Mr Bright was targeted by anti-Semitic supporters of Jeremy Corbyn last week when he criticised the Labour Party
for suspending Jewish donor Michael Foster for likening Mr Corbyn’s leadership cabal to the ‘Sturmabteilung’, or Nazi stormtroopers, in this newspaper.
One Corbynite told him on Twitter: ‘Foster is the epitome of the negative caracature [sic] of Jews. He ENCOURAGES antiSemitism by his own actions.’
Another said: ‘Removal of the vile Michael Foster from Labour was superb. Corbyn should remove the rest of the Zionist 5th column.’
Mr Bright said the incidents ta taken together made him worry th that ‘something has happened over th the past months in this country to g give a licence to the open e expression of anti-Semitic views’. Last night Ms Foster (unrelated t to Michael Foster), who is writing a history of Hungarian Jews, said she thought Dr Jones h had made the remark at the reception on the Friday before the last night of the proms, because he incorrectly thought sh she was Jewish. She said: ‘We had fallen out at a previous reception over Brexit – I told him to **** off because he had voted out. Then he came over to me last Thursday and said, “You were in that film, weren’t you?”, and told me I was cruel in my filmed question to the son of a Nazi officer. ‘Then he just said: “Get back in the oven. Do you understand me? Just get back in the oven.”’ After Mr Bright and another guest remonstrated with Dr Jones, he insisted that it had been a joke. Dr Jones last night declined to comment.