Ed Miliband and Justine Thornton
Ed Miliband and Justine ThorntonReuters

A controversial British journalist has raised eyebrows after making a Holocaust "joke" about Labour Party leader, Ed Milliband's wife, the Huffington Post reported Monday.  

Katie Hopkins is virulently anti-Milliband and has been stepping up a campaign against the politician on social media. 

Last week, she tweeted that she would leave the United Kingdom if Labour wins the general elections in May, and on Friday, she wrote: “Pollsters say Justine is the least popular of party wives. He might stick her head in the oven and turn on the gas.” 

Miliband, who was named the 20th most influential Jew in the world in 2013, is the child of refugees who came to Great Britain during the Holocaust. His wife, Justine Thornton, is not Jewish. 

Twitter hordes responded angrily to Hopkin's tweet, with several classifying it as anti-Semitic. 

"Sun columnist tells Holocaust family member to gas his wife. Either very stupid or extremely offensive. Care to tell us which?" a man named David Price tweeted in response. 

Another social media user, Michael N. Leissner, wrote: "Pity we are not in Germany. You would be in prison for hate crime and ridiculing the Holocaust."

The executive director of the Holocaust-education group the Anne Frank Trust UK, Gillian Walnes, told the Jewish Chronicle that "[Hopkins] is a simple-minded publicity-craving woman who speaks before she thinks."

"Even taking our the Holocaust references and the Miliband family connection to the Holocaust, why does this woman need to be quite so personally offensive and abusive?"