UK Green Party Leader's Family Escape Story Contradicted by Records

Zac Poleski, the leader of Britain's Green Party, is facing public scrutiny after historical records emerged that appear to contradict his widely told story of his ancestors fleeing the Nazis. Poleski, 43, had recounted in a major speech at the party's conference in Bournemouth last year that his Jewish ancestors escaped pogroms in Latvia and Ukraine, moved to Nazi-occupied Poland, and then fled to England, where they encountered antisemitism. However, an examination of public records from 1891 and 1901, including births, marriages, and census data, indicates that his family settled in Britain in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, well before the Nazi era.

Poleski has repeated the narrative of escaping the Nazis on multiple occasions, including on the podcast "The Rest Is Politics" and the BBC's "Question Time" last December. The "Daily Mail" reported that the discrepancy deepened last month when, during a podcast with Iain Dale, Poleski himself acknowledged that his great-grandparents arrived in Britain "long before the Second World War." In that same interview, he stated that his family changed their surname from Poleski to Folden to escape antisemitism in Britain, not the Nazis. Poleski, born David Folden in 1982, reportedly changed his name to Zac Poleski to connect with his Jewish heritage and distance himself from his stepfather.

The Green Party has declined to comment on the discrepancy to the "Daily Mail." A party spokesperson stated that "Jewish family history is often confusing, as Zac himself has admitted," and suggested the reports were an "attempt to smear the only Jewish leader of a political party in Britain."

The controversy comes as the Green Party opens its 2026 conference in Brighton and less than a week before Poleski competes in the general election for the Holborn and St Pancras constituency in north London, a seat held by Labour since 1983. This is not the first time Poleski, who serves as a London Assembly member earning approximately £66,500 annually, has been involved in contradictory statements. Earlier this year, he apologized for an "unintentional error" in failing to pay council tax on a residential property due to "financial difficulties." In May, he admitted to not voting in local elections because he was not registered, despite publicly promising a party candidate he would vote for them. His spokesperson claimed he had voted by post, with these incidents being explained by the party as "lack of understanding."

Separately, the Green Party recently passed a motion declaring Zionism a form of racism, leading Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar to ban Poleski from entering Israel. The motion calls for a "one-state solution" in all of historic Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital and advocates for extensive sanctions against Israel, comparing it to apartheid South Africa. The "Telegraph" reported that Lubna Spitan, a party member who led the motion, is a close associate of an Al-Qaeda terrorist, Minah Kwang Pam, who planned a suicide bombing at Heathrow Airport targeting Israeli and American travelers. Spitan reportedly offered to testify in defense of Pam, who was convicted in the U.S. for his role in Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Court documents from 2015 described Spitan as his "close friend." Spitan has previously stated that Hamas should not be defined as a terrorist organization and called for Zionism to be "dismantled from the world," suggesting that Zionists would one day be "hunted as the Nazi oppressors were hunted."

When initially questioned about her connection to the terrorist, Spitan called the question "insulting" and denied any connection to her work. She accused the "establishment media" of attempting to demonize Palestinians and hinted that Pam was wrongly accused. Responding to Pam's 44-year prison sentence, she stated, "People are demonized for all sorts of things and are wrongly accused of all sorts of things."