A LABOUR parliamentary candidate has sparked outrage by performing a Nazi salute while imitating a Hitler moustache during a Cambridge University debate.
City candidate Daniel Zeichner, 53, was speaking at the Cambridge Union when he made the gesture and described the Polish Law and Justice Party, of which recently deceased President Lech Kaczynski was a member, as “fascists”.
He went on to associate David Cameron’s Conservative Party with the Nazis for taking the Conservative MEPs out of the federalist European People’s Party and joining Eurosceptic group the European Conservatives and Reformist party.
His remarks provoked anger from the Jewish community and a Facebook group has been created demanding he make a public apology.
Speaking to the News, Mr Zeichner apologised to the Jewish community but said the Nazi salute was “a fully reasonable way to point out that the Conservatives made very undesirable alliances”.
He called the fall-out “a smear campaign” and said the Conservatives were “sore” about losing the night’s debate, titled “This house believes the Conservatives are ready to run the country again”.
“Why should I be sorry? It was a very rumbustious debate and the fault is on their (the Conservatives’) side. They have made a shameful alliance. I do not need to apologise,” he added.
Rabbi Reuven Leigh, who represents the Jewish community in Cambridge as director of Chabad House, called the behaviour “despicable” and “childish”.
He said: “To make light of the Nazi salute and to accuse these parties, who are not anti-Semitist, is absolutely disgusting”.
Cambridge University student Gavin Rice, 21, who watched the debate, started the Facebook group ‘Zeichner must apologise now’.
Mr Zeichner told the union: “You don’t go and have an alliance with Angela Merkel, you go and find some people in the Polish Law and Order Freedom Party.
“Some people who think that the best thing to do on a Sunday morning is to go out and celebrate the achievements of the Waffen SS in the last war”.
Performing the Nazi salute, he added: “A bit of this kind of thing – you know that’s the kind of thing they like.
“Quite frankly it is shameful that a leader of a major British party in this country has got anything to do with these fascists across Europe”.
Cambridge News
