A Jewish leader has hit out at Kanye West during a gathering outside Parliament for the UK’s National Yom HaShoah.
Phil Rosenberg, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said Nazism ”will never be allowed to pay” after the American rapper, who has used Nazi imagery and antisemitic language, was blocked from headlining Wireless festival in July.
West had previously released a song called Heil Hitler and sold swastika T-shirts. He later apologised and blamed his bipolar disorder.
“Nazism does not pay. It will not pay, and it will never be allowed to pay,” Mr Rosenberg said on Monday evening at the Yom HaShoah event, marking the Jewish day of remembrance for the Holocaust.
“There are also those in our own time, well known public figures, including Kanye West, who have openly described themselves as Nazis and sought to glorify Nazi ideology.
“This is not only offensive, it is a direct affront to the memory of the millions who perished,” he said.
Mr Rosenberg added: “We are of course sympathetic to mental health challenges, but the place to test that contrition was not on the main stage at the Wireless festival and we were not prepared to let that stand.”
Lydia Tischler, a 97-year-old Holocaust survivor who survived both Auschwitz and Theresienstadt, also addressed 2,000 people gathered at Victoria Tower Gardens.
The site is the planned location for a new Holocaust memorial and learning centre.
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Ms Tischler told 125 Jewish primary school children who were gathered at the event: “I was 10-years-old, I was about your age when Hitler, without an invitation, invaded my country and started making the lives of Jews very miserable, in stages, slowly ending up in one concentration camp after another.”
Born in 1929 in what was then Czechoslovakia, Ms Tischler was in the Theresienstadt ghetto before volunteering to be transported to Auschwitz, where her mother was murdered.
After the war, she was brought to Britain and went on to build a life as a child psychotherapist spanning more than six decades.
Communities Secretary Steve Reed also addressed the crowd, saying: “Memory doesn’t survive by accident.
“It needs people who are willing to hold it, to share it and to safeguard it, and that responsibility belongs to all of us, not just for today, but for every generation that follows us.”
He added: “I want to say clearly to our Jewish community, your safety, your security and your freedom to live openly and freely as Jews in the United Kingdom matter and we are committed to stamping out antisemitism wherever and however it manifests.”
The event also included an address from the Chief Rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mirvis, who spoke about “Jewish heroism” in the terror attacks at Heaton Park in Manchester last October, as well as the “extraordinary” community response to the burning of Hatzola ambulances in north London in March.
He added: “If you want to see true Jewish heroism, all you need to do is to consider our extraordinary, wonderful, legendary Holocaust survivors.
“Wonderful women and men who commit their entire existence to guarantee that the world will never forget the suffering that they and their families endured.”