30ft swastika on Jewish Brexit candidate’s office
A 30FT high swastika has been daubed on the business headquarters of a Jewish candidate standing for the Brexit Party in the European elections.
Lance Forman – whose father is a Holocaust survivor – was alerted to the enormous antisemitic graffiti by office staff in the early hours of Wednesday morning after returning from a business trip.
Police are now examining CCTV images of the area around the H Forman & son smoked salmon company near the Olympic Park in East London.
Mr Forman’s business is the oldest salmon curer in Britain and was set up by his greatgrandfather in 1905 after he fled the pogroms of 19th century Russia to settle in London’s East End.
Mr Forman announced his decision to stand in the May 23 European elections for the Brexit Party last month, referring to party leader Nigel Farage as ‘formidable’.
Responding to the anti-semitic grafitti, he told the Jewish Chronicle: ‘My dad fled the Nazis in Poland and is a Holocaust survivor who spent the war years as a child in a siberian prison camp.
‘He has worked with HET (the Holocaust Educational Trust) to teach children about the horrors of anti-semitism. so the fact that we have been targeted in this anti-semitic way is quite horrific and sick. The police have images of the culprits on CCTV and I sincerely hope they are tracked down.’
scotland Yard confirmed it was investigating an incident of criminal damage in Tower Hamlets after the swastika appeared at about 11.30pm. No arrests have been made.
Meanwhile the number of anti-semitic hate incidents in the UK rose by 16 per cent in 2018, according to figures from a leading Jewish charity.
The Community security Trust said that it recorded 1,652 anti-semitic incidents last year, the highest total since data collection
began in 1984. The charity said the figures, first released in February this year, reflected ‘ deepening divides in our country and our politics’.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid said the Government was doing all it could to ‘rid society of these poisonous views’.
He added that anti- Semitism was ‘utterly despicable’ and had ‘no place in society’. The vile graffiti comes at a time when MPs are being subjected to political abuse while campaigning.
Police are also investigating an allegedly ‘malicious’ remark about rape made against Jess Phillips, the Labour MP, by Ukip candidate Carl Benjamin.