The charity refuses to delete a clip of a Holocaust survivor confronting the Minister of Interior

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A charity that supports torture victims has defied demands from the Home Office to remove a video of Sola Braverman confronting a Holocaust survivor over her immigration language.

Freedom from Torture said the Home Secretary should be “ashamed” of her “inhumane” rhetoric and would not be “pressured to help her hide it” by deleting the clip.

The video shows 83-year-old Holocaust survivor Joan Salter confronting a government minister during a meeting in her constituency of Fareham in Hampshire on Friday evening.

The Home Office said the one-minute video “misrepresents the interaction” because it presents selected excerpts from Ms Braverman’s response, which was several minutes long.

During the exchange, Ms. Salter, who was honored with an MBE for her work in Holocaust education, likened Ms. Braverman’s language about immigrants trying to cross the English Channel to that used by the Nazis.

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Ms. Braverman thanked Ms. Salter for her question, but said she would “not apologize” for previously describing immigrants as an “invasion”.

Sonja Siates, chief executive of Freedom From Torture, said the charity would not remove the short clip from social media, and noted that a video of the full exchange is available on its website.

Ms Sheets said: “Swella Braverman has refused to apologize for the offensive and inhumane language when it was challenged by a Holocaust survivor at a party meeting.

Not only that, but the Home Office asked us to remove the footage.

“As an organization providing treatment to torture survivors who feel targeted by its language and who know firsthand where such dehumanizing language can lead, we will not.

“She used language that she should be ashamed of, and we will not be pressured to help her hide it.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “Footages of a conversation with a Holocaust survivor are circulating online.

The video has been heavily edited and does not reflect the full exchange.

“Because the footage misrepresents interaction around a sensitive area of ​​politics, we have asked the organization that posted the video to remove it.”

Ms. Salter, who fled to the UK from Belgium, asked Ms. Braverman why she called immigrants an “invasion”, which she said was reminiscent of “the language used to dehumanize and justify killing my family and millions of others” in the 1940s.

The Home Secretary thanked Ms Salter for her question, and said she “shares a great deal of concern and sympathy” about the “challenge” of illegal immigration, adding that her parents were not born in Britain.

She added, “There is a big problem we are facing now with regard to illegal immigration, the scale of which we did not know before.

“I will not apologize for the language I used to prove the extent of the problem.”

Ms. Braverman’s answer drew applause from the audience.

Slater Fanny Zimetbaum was born in Brussels in 1940 to Polish Jewish parents and was only three months old when the Nazis invaded Belgium.

After the invasion, she fled to France with her mother and sister before the Red Cross took her to the United States in 1943.

Mrs. Salter remained in foster care in America until she was reunited with her parents in 1947 in London, where she has lived ever since.

Less than a week after taking over as Home Secretary under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Braverman referred to her job as “about stopping an invasion on our south coast”.

She had previously held the position under Liz Truss from September 6 until October 19, when she resigned for breaching Ministerial Code by sharing an official document from her personal email address.

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