Zack Polanski, leader of the Green Party and a London Assembly member standing in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, has repeatedly described his family as having fled the Nazis.
In conference speeches and interviews, he has said his ancestors were constantly on the run and moved through Ukraine and Nazi-occupied Poland before eventually reaching Britain. He has presented this family history as the main reason for his strong support for open borders and refugees, and has described himself as the product of migration.
However, public birth, marriage and census records reveal that all four of his biological grandparents were born in northern England, decades before the Second World War.
The Green Party has declined to explain the discrepancy, instead stating that Jewish family histories can be complex and characterising questions about Polanski’s account as an antisemitic attempt to discredit him.
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