A Rabbi whose interview following the Golders Green attack went viral has revealed that his children were told not to wear anything which identified them as Jewish on a school trip to a UK theme park.
Speaking on GB News Rabbi Doron Birnbaum said: “You couldn’t have found a more difficult place to hear about that news. And I felt as somebody who is a proud British Jew, my grandfather Simon Critz, fought in the Second World War, and I grew up in synagogues, and we still do this today, where we pray on the sabbath for the Royal Family and for Great Britain.
“And we feel, as a Jewish community, really part of the fabric of British society. And antisemitism is not a Jewish problem, it’s a societal problem. The past week and few months has not just been sad for the Jewish people, but it’s been sad for the British people.
“Kemi Badenoch, she likened it in a recent interview to the 1930s, and I know I said that in my interview that went around the world, but there is a key difference.
“And the key difference is that in the 1930s when a Jewish person would escape the cattle cars, or they would escape one of the camps on the rare occasion and they wanted to share their story with the world, there was no platform. They couldn’t speak up.
“They would go to the village, and they would tell someone, and it would be rumours and ‘is it true?’
“We live in a different world and I felt a certain sense of responsibility to speak and to be heard, because this is a problem that is endemic.
“I can’t confirm when the carving [of a swastika] was made, but I took the picture in Auschwitz, in the barrack. Now I didn’t anticipate that I would do the interview and I then didn’t anticipate it would get this much coverage.
“I only opened a Twitter account on Friday morning because I realised that there was a platform to share. So I took that image from my camera roll and I published it, and within three minutes, I have to say, Auschwitz, the museum there, they replied, where is it? Let’s take it down. I’m very appreciative of that.
“But that was followed minutes later by an absolute barrage of antisemitism, which I actually woke up to in the morning. I shouldn’t do this, but I looked at my phone first, and I was shocked, absolutely shocked.
“There’s a personal narrative that needs to be told as well. We do look at things in terms of data and figures.
“My kids this morning went on a trip to Legoland Windsor and we were told that they’re not allowed to wear anything visibly Jewish…it was heartbreaking for me, I sent my son out this morning without a kippah on, and I go everywhere with my kippah on.
“But how can this be in a Western democracy in Great Britain that my kids can’t go into Legoland looking Jewish?
“We’re proudly British, and sometimes it’s British attitude, just to get your head down and move on and just keep going. But I think we’ve got to a point where we need to speak up.
“We have a platform where we can speak up and what’s happening in the Jewish community, and what’s happening on a certain personal level, not just a communal level, needs to be shared.”
