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Why Europe-wide anti-Semitism is driving my vote for Brexit 

Neo-Nazis marching in Berlin
Neo-Nazis marching in Berlin Credit: Getty

In recent months I've had cause to interview several Holocaust survivors.

And though each story – can we call them stories, it sounds so banal? – is different, the themes remain unilaterally unsettling: fear, heart-breaking, wrenching separation from a loving mother or desperate father, arbitrary brutality, unimaginable savagery.

But the harrowing testimony of these now elderly men and women also offers an enduring postscript, as each survivor exhorts those who listen to never forget man's inhumanity to man.

For Jews like me, well, how can we forget?

Auschwitz survivors just after its liberation by the Soviet army
How can we forget this?

After all, had it not been for the bravery of our Allies holding out against the Third Reich and the geographical inconvenience of our island geography, British Jewry would have also been swept up by the systematic slaughter of the Holocaust. As would other detractors of the genocidal Nazi regime.

Fortunately, despite Hitler's best intentions, this never came to pass.

But such fears remain deeply ingrained in the Jewish DNA. What if joined-up political lunacy ever spread across Europe again? Would Britain be so well-equipped to stand alone were we to be yoked together in an already legitimate alliance with Europe?

It's for these reasons that nothing will convince me of the rightness of staying in the EU – even after David Cameron predicted on Monday that a Brexit will increase the risk of Europe descending into war.

Of course I'm aware that my drawing on comparisons with the Nazis will immediately trigger accusations of paranoia. In fact, before you jab the response button at the end of this piece, let me say it for you. Yes, much of  Jewish identity is suffused with a paranoid fear of annihilation. But hasn't every Brexit/Remain argument – not least Cameron's war call – been an expression of paranoia?

This is different. This is more than your paint-by-numbers Jewish angst. Examining Brexit through the bloody history of pan-European fascism renders leaving Europe – at least for me, – a matter of survival.

And  if your face, race, creed or colour risks a future mismatch with photo-fit political state-sponsored idealism, then  it should be something for you to consider too.

To remain in Europe is to transfer sovereignty from Westminster for Brussels. Our borders will remain porous; our laws subjugated by those who would aim to, as Chris Grayling put it "Europeanise" our justice system. The UK has already surrendered significant power and veto to the EU, especially in the Treaties of Lisbon, Amsterdam and Nice.

Should the the far Right, hard Left or disenfranchised extremist communities ever sweep across Western Europe, how much easier will it be for Britain – Jews and non-Jews – to be overrun by such a contagion should those in power align themselves with such toxic beliefs?

After all, Jeremy Corbyn may be a joke. But his party's intractable issue with anti-Semitism remains – potentially – inoffensive to the hard Left or the voices within Labour who may have once schmoozed with extremists.

It's clear that Europe has a problem with bloodthirsty, visceral anti Semitism. Look no further than the jihadist murders of Jews in Brussels, Paris, and the Danish capital of Copenhagen over the past 12 months, or the heinous attacks in Toulouse three years ago when a gunman shot dead a teacher and three children at a Jewish school in the French city.

Conversely, in its reaction to radicalised Islam, the far right has also mobilised, with the neo-fascist Jobbick party in Hungary, the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn in Greece, and the far-right National Front in France. It seems when it comes to the dangers of continent-wide fascism, the European mainland has a short memory.

Were the dots to join would it be such a nightmare prophesy to imagine how much easier some unholy alliance could sweep this way were we to remain in the EU? I've no idea, but I'm not taking a punt.

I'm proud to be British, proud to be Jewish and proud that the Holocaust survivors I know found refuge in this country. But I'm voting out.

As to whether successive generations will find the UK a place of refuge is something only history will be able to tell us.

 

 

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