MP pays emotional tribute to Polish man who saved his great uncle from the Nazis

A Jewish MP has paid emotional tribute to the sewage maintenance worker who saved his great-uncle from certain death at the hands of the Nazis.

Alex Sobel told MPs how Leopold Socha hid groups of Jews, including Mr Sobel's relative Yehuda Mildiner, in the sewers for 13 months in the Lwów Jewish ghetto, in what was then Poland.

He was speaking during a parliamentary debate about antisemitism fuelled by the country's new Anti-Defamation Law which makes it a crime to attribute Nazi crimes to Poland.

The MP, whose family came to Britain from Israel in 1971, told the debate: "When the Nazis occupied Poland, Leopold witnessed the suffering of the Jewish people and decided he was going to try to rescue at least 20 Jews from the ghetto.

"He enlisted the help of his co-worker Stefan Wróblewski. Together, they hid 21 Jewish people in the sewers. 

"They stayed in terrible conditions in the sewers for 13 months. Sadly, only 10 of the group survived until the liberation of Lwów.

"I pay tribute to Leopold and the 6,706 who did so much for families like mine."

But Mr Sobel said he feared the new Polish law had sparked an upsurge of Holocaust revisionism from far-right groups.

These groups also targeted the Leeds North West MP on social media in recent weeks.

Mr Sobel said the law has "potentially far-reaching consequences, not just in Poland but globally."

He spoke of the abuse staff at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum had received since the law was passed.

The staff were subjected to “hate, fake news and manipulations”, Mr Sobel said.

The MP added that they had suffered "dozens of articles on dodgy websites, hundreds of Twitter accounts, thousands of similar tweets, profanities, memes, threats, slanders, denunciations" since the law came in.

Mr Sobel also revealed he had been abused after the details of his debate were , telling Westminster Hall he received an email calling him a "Talmudic piece of s***" and one that contained "graphically anti-Semitic images".

Mr Sobel received emails telling him "people like you are the very reason we have the need for this legislation" and that "Jewish Amnesia Syndrome is back".

After the debate, Mr Sobel tweeted that he had received further abusive messages on Twitter.