Sydney Silverman

Samuel Sydney Silverman (8 October 1895 – 9 February 1968) was a British Labour politician and vocal opponent of capital punishment.

He rethought his pacifism in light of the reports of antisemitism in Europe, and reluctantly supported Britain's entry into the Second World War.

[2] Silverman was prominent within the debates over the potential repatriation of Jewish refugees, telling Churchill "that it would be difficult to conceive of a more cruel procedure than to take people who have lost everything they have – their homes, their relatives, their children, all the things that make life decent and possible – and compel them against their will, to go back to the scene of those crimes".

[3] Silverman was widely expected to join the government after the Labour victory in the general election in 1945, but, as he was a leftist, he was not appointed by Clement Attlee.

[citation needed] He refused to support German rearmament in 1954 and had the Labour Party Whip withdrawn from November 1954 to April 1955.

The Riegner Telegram , addressed to Sydney Silverman in August 1942, was one of the first pieces of evidence of the implementation of the Final Solution by the Nazis.