Holocaust survivor’s daughter arrested mid-interview vows to do Palestine Action protest again

A Holocaust survivor’s daughter who was arrested for supporting Palestine Action yesterday has vowed to continue backing the group.

Carolyn Gelenter was among more than 900 people detained at a rally opposing the ban on the group in Parliament Square on Saturday.

The 67-year-old was mid-interview speaking about how not all Jewish voices were being heard when officers detained her under anti-terror laws for allegedly supporting the proscribed group.

One says: ‘I’m sorry but we are going to have to make an arrest at the moment.’

She replies, ‘I’m the daughter of a Holocaust survivor’ but he is unmoved. Carolyn is read her rights but drops to the floor before being carried away by half a dozen officers.

The Home Office banned Palestine Action in July after several of its members caused an estimated £7m of damage to planes at RAF Brize Norton in June.

The proscription means that anyone found supporting the group faces up to 14 years in prison.

Speaking to Metro after being released from custody, the great-grandmother said despite it being the ‘first time’ she’s been arrested she feels ‘so strongly’ about the issue that she would do it again.

‘I think this is a shocking, authoritarian law,’ the teacher said.

‘This is a group of young people who are so distressed about what’s going on in Gaza.

‘Israel is still committing a genocide. No one was doing anything about it. Our government is continuing to arm Israel.

‘We felt that we had to do something more.’

Israel has always denied causing a genocide in Gaza and blames Hamas for aid not being distributed to Gaza’s population.

This has been disputed by the world’s leading association of genocide scholars who declared last week that it is committing genocide in Gaza.

International outrage over its actions in the enclave has led the UK to suspend 30 arms export licences to Israel although the countries retain a ‘defence partnership’.

Sir Keir Starmer has also said the UK will recognise Palestine unless certain criteria are met. This includes a ceasefire in the current conflict which was triggered after Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023.

None of this has abated outrage among many protestors including Carolyn over the continuing dire situation in Gaza.

She was among hundreds of people who gathered in central London before writing ‘I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action’ on placards at 1pm.

Officers began making arrests shortly after.

She said that demonstrators who were caught damaging the RAF planes should be charged with criminal damage and not terrorism offences.

‘I just am so incensed. I felt like I had to do something because it feels so important,’ she added.

‘This is really a draconian law. As a Jew, and lots of Jews ask themselves this question, I ask myself what would I have done if I was living in Nazi Germany.

‘I have an answer now. I have something going on in this world today and it is fascism and I feel compelled to do something.

‘I’m driven. I really sat down and thought about it. I didn’t do on the spur of the moment but my heart said ‘you have got to step up’.

‘I am in a position where I can do it. So I just can’t sit by.’

Carolyn, a mother-of-one and grandmother-of-three, is the daughter of Izku Gelernter.

He was a Polish Jew whose grandparents were probably murdered by the Nazis in the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland.

Her father later went to the then Soviet Union where he spent two years in a gulag in Siberia before Joseph Stalin’s regime joined the Allies.

Izku managed to get to the UK where he initially joined the Free Polish Army before transferring to the British Army where he served in the Parachute Regiment.

He was demobilised after the war and moved to Australia where he lived until he died in the early 1990s.

Carolyn, from London, said she was released from Plumstead police station at around midnight and has to return on November 17 to find out if she’ll be charged.

Metro has contacted the Met Police for comment.

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