Appeal court judges have upheld a ban on Thierry Baudet comparing the Dutch government’s coronavirus policy with the Holocaust.

Four Jewish survivors of the Second World War and two organisations took legal action against the Forum voor Democratie leader last year over comments he made on Twitter describing unvaccinated people as “the new Jews”.

Baudet removed the tweets after a court imposed a conditional penalty of €25,000 for every day that they remained online, but said he would appeal against what he called a “ludicrous, incomprehensible” judgment.

The appeal court in Amsterdam said Baudet’s comments “trivialised the Holocaust” and may have encouraged “the spread of anti-Semitic sentiments on the internet”. It said the rights of Holocaust survivors took precedence over Baudet’s freedom of expression.

The Israeli documentation centre CIDI, one of the organisations that brought the original case, said Baudet’s remarks were “unnecessarily harmful to Holocaust survivors and their relatives”.

“It’s very important to the Jewish community that the court of appeal has ruled that comparisons of this kind between the Holocaust and a pandemic are unjustified,” CIDI said in a statement.