A columnist in a major Italian newspaper has been slammed on Twitter as “filthy” and an “imbecile” for apparently comparing Brexit to the Nazi regime, and those choosing to leave Britain to Jews fleeing the Holocaust.

An opinion piece in the Corriere della Sera, headlined “The descendants of the Jews who escaped Nazism now escape Brexit,” was blasted online for purportedly putting Britain’s democratic choice to crash out of the EU two years ago on the same level as the Third Reich.

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The piece argues that just as people were forced to flee Germany during the Second World War for fear of being persecuted by the Nazis, their descendants are now escaping the UK ahead of it leaving the 28 member state bloc.

It points out that the number of Jewish refugee descendants flocking to Germany shot up to 1,667 in 2017, compared to just 43 in 2015, before the EU referendum took place.

“It’s mainly about finding yourself some insurance: with the terms of Brexit being still uncertain, pocketing a European passport means ensuring the possibility in the future of being able to carry on travelling and working freely within the EU,” Luigi Ippolito, the author of the opinion piece, wrote on Saturday.

The controversial comparison sparked outrage on Twitter, with people blasting the article as “filth.”

One said there is no such link between Brexit and the totalitarian regime that prompted the Jewish exodus from Germany in World War II, and branded those behind the article as “pitiful.”

Another blasted them as “imbeciles.”

One Twitter user said: “Let’s hope for a police report over the obscene weaponization of the Shoah [Holocaust].”

Tweeter Damian Oppici responded to the Corriere saying: “Brexit was an exercise of democracy whose outcome can either be liked or not, but putting that alongside the Shoah is villainous.

“Do you recognize you’ve got to the criminalization of democracy? You’re honestly revolting!”

Italian Umberto Molini added: “To conceive such filth you must really be out of your mind.”

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