THE FIRST Jewish Lord Mayor of Oxford branded ‘deeply upsetting and offensive’ comparisons between a councillor involved in the traffic filter pilot and a genocidal Nazi.

Hotelier Jeremy Mogford, who owns the Old Parsonage and Old Bank hotels, described county councillor Andrew Gant as the ‘equivalent’ of Nazi SS officer Josef Mengele who carried out sickening experiments in Holocaust concentration camp Auschwitz II.

In the email, which was sent on February 14 and to which Cllr Gant and MP Anneliese Dodds were copied in, Mr Mogford wrote: “This man Gant, along with his associates, are the Mengele equivalent……Experimenting with people (our city), without knowing what the consequences might be, which could and probably will be terminal.”

He later told the Oxford Mail that the message was sent ‘in error’ and that he ‘regretted’ sending the message.

Former Green councillor Elise Benjamin, who in 2011 became the city’s first Jewish Lord Mayor, gave her reaction to the hotelier’s comments: “I’m still struggling to articulate it because it’s so deeply upsetting and offensive.”

Speaking at a counter-protest, organised by Oxford Stand Up to Racism following reports that members of neo-Nazi group Patriotic Alternative planned to join Saturday’s anti-LTN march, she added: “To make a comparison between traffic congestion reduction measures and a man who conducted experiments on children as part of a mass genocide, I struggle to understand how anyone in their right mind can think that is an appropriate comparison.”