40 Holocaust survivors/descendants denounce the persecution of anti-genocide Jew Stephen Kapos

Respected campaigner targeted by police over participation in stitched-up peaceful march in January

Forty Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and descendants of survivors have signed an open letter denouncing the Met Police’s harassment of Stephen Kapos, a British-Hungarian Jew who survived it as a child.

Kapos, a respected campaigner against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, was ordered to come in for police questioning over the 18 January anti-genocide demo in which police stitched up peaceful protesters by inviting them through police lines then claiming that they ‘forced’ their way through and arresting them for being in a ‘conditioned’ area. More than eighty were arrested and several have been charged despite abundant video evidence showing that the police told them to come through.

The group’s letter reads:

Stephen Kapos

We were extremely shocked to hear that the Holocaust survivor, Stephen Kapos, has been called in by the Metropolitan police for questioning about the 18 January pro-Palestine protest. 

Any repression of the right to protest is bad enough – but to persecute a Jewish 87 year old whose Holocaust experiences compel him to speak out against the Gaza genocide, is quite appalling.

This very concerning development makes it even more important for Jews to speak out against the genocide.

We fully support Stephen.

Dr. Agnes Kory (survivor of the Holocaust in Hungary)
Prof. Jacques Bude (Holocaust survivor – parents murdered in Auschwitz)
Ervin Somogyi (survivor of the Holocaust in Hungary)
Lillian Rosengarten (born Gisela Lebrecht – refugee from Frankfurt 1937)
Prof. Haim Bresheeth (son of two survivors of Auschwitz)
Prof. Anne Karpf (daughter of a survivor of Auschwitz)
Mark Etkind (son of a survivor of the Lodz ghetto & Buchenwald)
Aurora Yaacov (daughter of a survivor of Dachau & Kaufering camps)
Dr. Peter Kapos (son of a survivor of the Holocaust in Hungary)
Prof. Yosefa Loshitzky (daughter of survivors of the Holocaust in Poland)
Carolyn Gelenter (daughter of a survivor of the Holocaust in Poland)
Andrew Feinstein (son of a Viennese Holocaust survivor)Charlotte Monro (daughter of a survivor of the Holocaust in Czechoslovakia)
Miranda Pinch (daughter of a survivor of the Holocaust in Czechoslovakia)
Vicky Moller (daughter of a survivor of the Holocaust in Czechoslovakia)
Dr. Ursula Blumenthal (daughter of a survivor of the Holocaust in Germany)
Sonja Linden (daughter of a survivor of the Holocaust in Germany)
Peter Hall (son of a survivor of the Holocaust in Austria)
Col. Chris Romberg (son of a survivor of the Holocaust in Austria)
Yael Kahn (daughter of survivors of the Holocaust in Germany)
Beatrice Hoffman (daughter of a survivor of the Holocaust in Austria)
Anthony Gimpel (son of Jewish refugees from Hitler)
Merilyn Moos (relative of those murdered by Nazis)
Prof. Miriam E. David (daughter of a survivor of the Holocaust in Germany)
Ronnie Barkan (grandson of Holocaust survivors of Auschwitz & Dachau)
Joel Etkind (grandson of a Holocaust Survivor from Poland)
Sonia Routledge (granddaughter of survivors from Czechoslovakia)
Glenn Bassett (grandson of Austrian Holocaust refugees)
Ann Jungmann (granddaughter of 3 grandparents who died in Terezin) 
Prof. Lara Braitstein (daughter of a survivor of the Holocaust in Belgium)
Julie D. Kosowski (daughter of a survivor – grandparents died in Auschwitz)
Peter Truskier (son of survivors of the Holocaust in Poland)
Prof. Pedro Tabensky (son of survivors of the Holocaust in Hungary)
Elsa Auerbach (daughter of Holocaust refugees from Germany)
Debbie Field (daughter of survivors of the Holocaust in Poland)
Erica Levy (daughter of a Holocaust survivor) 
Daniel Waterman (son of a survivor of the Holocaust in Holland)
Eva Turner (daughter of Holocaust survivors from Czech Republic) 
Anneke Deutsch (daughter of an Austrian Holocaust refugee)
Avigail Abarbanel (granddaughter of Holocaust survivors)

After the 18 January march, Met Commissioner Mark Rowley subsequently boasted to pro-Israel lobbyists of the ‘unprecedented’ restrictions he had imposed. The Met, after trying to whip up opposition among local residents, has also banned Jewish anti-genocide campaigners from holding their weekly protest outside the Swiss Cottage residence of fascist Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely.

The UK government has been slammed by United Nations legal experts for Keir Starmer’s ongoing ‘lawfare’ assault on journalists and activists who expose Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which has killed more than 200,000 civilians and potentially as many as half a million and has now been resumed by the occupation regime with a full, criminal blockade of food, water, fuel, shelters and power and a series of mass bombings that have killed hundreds of civilians, mostly children, after a ‘ceasefire’ that Israel breached daily anyway.

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