This is the shocking moment Warwick University Tory students allegedly dance to a Nazi song at an annual black-tie dinner.
During Warwick University Conservative Association’s (UWCA) ‘chairman’s dinner’ last month, a member reportedly asked the DJ to play Erika, which was composed by a troop leader in the Nazi Party’s paramilitary wing called Herms Niel in 1938.
The song has since been reclaimed by white supremacists like Thomas Sewell, the founder of the National Socialist Network, who has connections to the Christchurch mosque attacker.
Footage of the dinner shows students dancing and laughing along to the song until one member tells the cameraperson to stop filming.
Members of the association allegedly went on to shout ‘Kill the Hughs’ – seemingly replacing the word Jews with the first name of their former chairman Hugh Herring – as well as saying ‘Heil the chairman’, according to the Times.
The picture above shows members of Warwick University’s Conservative Society attending the chairman’s dinner
Students at the chairman’s dinner look at the camera while song Erika can be heard in the background
The conservative group has since issues an apology (pictured above: members at the event)
The conservative group has since issued an apology, in which it said that it ‘wholeheartedly condemns the behaviour exhibited during this video and apologises for any offence that has been caused’.
It added: ‘The song “Erika” was playing for a brief period. Once we became aware of the song being played and what it represents, an exec member spoke to the DJ, and it was immediately turned off.
‘We have subsequently found that the song was requested by a lone member directly to the DJ. We stress that it was not included in the preplanned music selection handed to the DJ.’
UWCA said the member who asked for the song to be played would be excluded from future events and the same would apply to anyone else who ‘knowingly engaged with the song’.
‘We can also confirm that the person heard actively singing lyrics is not a University of Warwick Conservative Association member, and he has been barred from future events along with others,’ the statement to MailOnline continued.
‘We would note that the overwhelming majority of those seen in the video were completely unaware of the origins and connotations of the song.’
UWCA said it had ‘spoken extensively to people present at the event, nobody has any knowledge or recollections of those comments/chants occurring,’ in regards to the alleged ‘Kill the Hughs’ chants.
After the events of the chairman’s dinner were reported, the group, whose honorary president is former Tory cabinet minister and Warwick alumna Dame Andrea Leadsom, has removed its website and closed down its page on X.
A spokesperson for Warwick, a top 24 Russel Group university, told MailOnline in a statement: ‘We have been made aware of this video and the allegations surrounding it, which are extremely troubling. Behaviour like this is reprehensible and we are disappointed to see our students involved.
‘The University is reviewing the material disclosed to us via our reporting service and has notified the Student’s Union. We have requested a meeting with the Jewish Society (Jsoc) to assist with our review.’
Meanwhile the university’s Union of Jewish students and the campus JSoc said: ‘The blatant and unchallenged support for Nazism at the Warwick Conservative Association “chairman’s dinner” is utterly abhorrent.’
Pro-Palestinian students from the University of Oxford take part in an encampment with dozens of tents outside the Pitt Rivers Museum to call for a full divestment from Israel
A passerby take pictures of pro-Palestinian’s banner displayed at Oxford University, in Oxford
They added that they are expecting ‘swift and decisive’ action by the university over the incident.
This comes as cases of antisemitism are rising on UK campuses amid the Israel-Hamas war.
Just last month Jewish professors and students revealed the shocking extent of anti-Semitism at Oxford University, with more than 70 incidents in eight months.
A dossier presented to the Vice Chancellor details numerous bullying allegations, including one student being insulted over their ‘Jewish nose’.
Meanwhile, attendees at a vigil for hostages of Hamas were branded ‘kid murderers’ and one academic supervisor is said to have told his student: ‘Israel is a terrorist state.’
Complaints have been ignored, with some advised to simply ‘leave Oxford’ if they felt uncomfortable.
A letter accompanying the dossier says: ‘We have felt isolated, unsafe, targeted, stressed, disappointed, angry and hopeless. Many of us have faced all manners of anti-Semitic slurs.’
One Jewish professor, who spoke to the Mail anonymously, said: ‘What was a hate-on-Israel movement has become a hate-on-Jew movement. A lot of students and lecturers feel very hurt – they have left or suspended their studies.’
The letter, which has not been signed because its authors are worried about their security, was the result of ‘a series of meetings and conversations we have held with dozens of Jewish and Israeli people at Oxford’.
The letter describes a ‘hostile environment’ for anyone who believes in the right of Israel to exist with the university ‘overflowing’ with messages about plans to ‘globalise the intifada and eliminate Israel’s existence’.
‘Oxford’s administration would be unlikely to turn a blind eye to faculty members who spoke about other minorities in such terms,’ it added.
The other 72 incidents of anti-Semitism included a professor telling students the October 7 massacre was ‘justified’ while another claimed it was planned by Israel.
