Security increased over threats towards Holocaust survivor Lily Ebert and great grandson
Security has been stepped up over threats towards a 99-year-old British Holocaust survivor.
Lily Ebert, a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp, who has amassed more than two million followers from sharing her story on TikTok, has been subjected to abuse online since Hamas launched an attack on Israel.
Her great grandson, the campaigner Dov Forman, with whom she authored a best-selling book on surviving the Holocaust, said: “It is personal threats towards me, my great grandmother, Jews in the UK.
“There are many more personal messages to me and my great grandmother, and that’s incredibly frightening.”
He added: “We’ve had in the past and recently death threats, which the police and CST [Community Security Trust] are dealing with.
“In terms of Lily’s security, we have had to step it up. The police visibility on the streets has improved too and we are incredibly thankful for that.”
Mr Forman says he has received “tens of thousands” of abusive messages online, and has not opened TikTok since Saturday’s attack for concerns about the scale of abuse.
The university student says Jewish young people have been intimidated online and on campuses, with some young Jews afraid to wear the kippah, a cloth hat worn by some Jewish men, in public.
“I’ve been nervous in real life,” he told i. “But one thing is for sure: I will not be cowed into not wearing Jewish symbols.
“I have friends that have been afraid. But I will not take my kippah off. My great grandmother survived the Holocaust, she survived Auschwitz-Birkenau, not so someone like me can be frightened out of wearing my kippah on the streets of London. I will wear my kippah.
“Hopefully nothing will happen, but I have had friends who have had things happen. A friend on the way into university was shouted at and received abuse on the Tube.”
The Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, has ordered police forces to “use the full force of the law” against displays of support for Hamas after an escalation of attacks on Israel’s borders.
Metropolitan Police patrols have been increased in areas of north London where many members of the UK’s Jewish community are based.
Immigration minister Robert Jenrick told a Whitehall rally on Monday that anybody who displays support for Hamas, which is a proscribed organisation in the UK, will be “hunted down, arrested and prosecuted”.
