A rabbi officiating at the funeral of Holocaust survivor Issy Hahn issued a warning over the rise of the far right in Europe and over the murders of two Israeli tourists at a Jewish museum in Belgium.

Rabbi Aryeh Sufrin of Chabad Lubavitch UK, Gants Hill, told those gathered that the situation in Europe had echoes of the 1940s and urged the friends and family of Issy to help maintain his legacy.

Issy died aged 85 at his Clayhall home on Saturday and was buried at Rainham Cemetery yesterday. He was sent to Auschwitz after the Germans invaded his home town of Konin in Poland at the start of the Second World War.

He went on to be incarcerated in six concentration camps and was sent on two death marches, but was liberated and emigrated to London, eventually settling in Clayhall.

Rabbi Sufrin highlighted the work Issy did educating schoolchildren about the horrors of the Holocaust and said: “Issy was a very formidable person, someone who knew what he wanted and what he wanted to achieve. It was an honour to be able to have known someone like him and what he lived through.”

He added: “You are living testimony to the fact that evil can be overcome by acts of goodness.”

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