Dutch Holocaust survivor and his wife branded 'Nazis' by Israeli coach driver for talking on bus after he mistook their accent for German
- Martin Leeda and his wife Jeta berated for talking on a bus to Tel Aviv
- As they spoke, driver yelled: 'You non-Jews, you Nazis, quit that talk'
- Driver sent the couple a letter of apology and faces disciplinary action
An Israeli bus company has been forced to apologise after a Jewish man from Holland who survived three concentration camps and his wife were branded 'Nazis' by one of its drivers.
Martin Leeda, 72, and his wife Jeta, 69, were aboard the bus travelling from Ramat HaScharon to Tel Aviv sitting in a forward section reserved for elderly passengers.
As they began to speak to each other in Dutch, the bus driver suddenly yelled out: 'You non-Jews, you Nazis, quit with that talk.'
Israeli bus company Metropoline has been forced to apologise after a Jewish man from Holland who survived three concentration camps and his wife were branded 'Nazis' by one of its drivers
He had mistaken their Dutch for German, said Mr Leeda.
Mr Leeda, who works in a Jewish historical museum in Amsterdam, travels regularly to Israel and said he and his wife were 'deeply hurt' by the insult.
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He said: 'I, as a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust, should not have had to listen to this.'
The driver sent the couple a letter of apology and faces a disciplinary hearing, according to the Metropoline bus company.
'Deeply hurt': Martin Leeda, 72, and his wife Jeta, 69, were aboard a bus travelling from Ramat HaScharon to Tel Aviv (pictured) when the incident happened
Around 150,000 Jews were living in the Netherlands in 1941, according to a survey by the Nazi occupation force.
Of those, some 100,000 had been deported to concentration camps including Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt by September 1944.
Among the Western European countries affected by the Holocaust, the Netherlands had the lowest survival rate among Jews, with only around 30 per cent outliving the German occupation.
This compares to 60 per cent in Belgium and three-quarters in France.
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