Dressing up as SS officers is perfectly legal in this country. Neither is it a criminal offence to be offensive (Nazi uniforms banned at wartime festival, LT May 27).

Obviously, many people in the community – particularly camp survivors – are going to find this activity particularly upsetting, but no one is compelled to go and see it.

We live in a society where everyone is free to engage in whatever legal and harmless activities they enjoy.

Seeking to have them banned because we don't like them is another step on the road towards the type of society that the original wearers of these uniforms perpetrated.

I suspect that our lobbying every year to have this dressing-up stopped causes considerable resentment among both those at East Lancashire Railway who indulge in it and those who don't, although as Holocaust survivor Gisela Feldman has said, at the same time they probably appreciate all the publicity we bring them.

There’s nothing to suggest that these people actually are Nazi sympathisers, but it's my view that if we succeed in stopping them we will merely have created more anti-Semites than there were before.

Finally, as any child will tell you, when people are told to stop doing something, there is immediately much more pleasure to be had in continuing to do it, if only to annoy them.

I suspect that infuriating us is a significant factor contributing to the continuation of this activity.

I suggest we change tack, ignore it, and it might just go away.

This unpleasant but ultimately harmless event is diverting us from dealing with all the real racists in this country.

Rabbi Michael Gold Jewish National Fund/ Muslim Jewish Forum of Greater Manchester and Lancashire