Western countries are turning a blind eye to the genocide that the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) is committing against Christians in Iraq and Syria, reports the U.K.’s Daily Express, citing a charity group.

ISIS has already executed thousands of Christians and forced thousands more to flee ancient Christian communities in northeastern Syria and western Iraq, notes the article, adding that the jihadists demand they either covert to Islam, pay an extortionate rate/tax, or face execution, while other Christians are crucified.

“Despite concerns being raised by religious leaders including the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, the plight of Christian refugees is largely being ignored by the western world,” reports Daily Express.

Jewish peer George Weidenfeld, who was able to escapee Nazi-occupied Austria with the assistance of British Christians, is funding a charity known as the Barnabas Fund in an effort to save the Syrian Christians.

“I have a debt to repay,” Lord Weidenfeld, who was rescued by Quakers at the age of five, told Daily Express. 

ISIS “is unprecedented in its primitive savagery compared with the more sophisticated Nazis. When it comes to pure lust for horror and sadism, they are unprecedented. There never was such scum as these people,” later added Weidenfeld.

The charity has already mounted a series of missions to rescue the Christians in Syria.

Christians have reportedly been crucified, beheaded, raped, and forced to convert to Islam by ISIS. All the while, Christian children are being sold into slavery.

“It is like going back 1,000 years seeing the barbarity that Christians are having to live under. I think we are dealing with a group which makes Nazism pale in comparison and I think they have lost all respect for human life,” the charity’s founder and international chief Patrick Sookhdeo told Daily Express.

“Crucifying these people is sending a message and they are using forms of killing which they believe have been sanctioned by Sharia law,” he added. “For them what they are doing is perfectly normal and they don’t see a problem with it. It is that religious justification which is so appalling.”

In Syria alone, the Christian population has plunged by nearly two-thirds since the country’s civil war started in 2011, Daily Express reports.

More than 700,000 of Syria’s Christian population of 1.1 million have been displaced by ISIS.

No more than 250,000 Christians remain in Syria, estimated Mr. Sookhdeo.

“In Aleppo, to give you one illustration, there used to be 400,000 Christians four years ago. Today there may be between 45,000 and 65,000,” he said.

Mr Sookhdeo is struggling to find countries that will take in the hundreds of thousands of Syrian Christians whom he believes have “lost all hope”.

The Barnabas Fund has already liberated 158 Christians from Syria. They were taken to Poland, where the charity found them a new home.

Mr. Sookhdeo recently traveled to eastern Europe in search of “refuge for the hundreds of thousands of Syrian Christians who continue to live under the tyranny of IS,” reports Daily Express.

The charity chief accused the British government of employing a Syrian refugee policy that is unfair to Christians.

Sookhdeo believes that “Britain’s offer to take up to 20,000 Syrian refugees inadvertently discriminates against the Christian communities most victimised by the Islamic State butchers.”

Only taking refugees from the camps excludes many Christians, because most of them prefer to live in church halls or with other families instead, noted Mr. Sookhdeo.

“Because these people are Christians they can also integrate very quickly within the churches…There are eastern European countries that are sympathetic but once we hit the UK and some of the other countries, they say they don’t want to do it,” he also said.

Some European nations have expressed a willingness to take in Christian refugees from the Syrian conflict.

In July, church leaders accused the UK PM of refusing to offer refuge to Christians facing genocide in Syria and Iraq, Telegraph reported.