By Dr Dvir Abramovich
As you read this, Jewish and non-Jewish communities are gathering to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, designated by the UN to coincide with the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet forces.
They will remember the six million Jews, including the 1.5 million children who were exterminated in the inferno of Hitler.
They will also mourn the millions of Roma, homosexuals, political dissidents, individuals with disabilities and anyone deemed “undesirable” by the Nazis.
They will honour the survivors whose gritty courage, unflinching determination and spirit are a continuing source of inspiration.
And they will salute the Righteous Gentiles who risked their lives to save the Jews and the Diggers who sacrificed their lives to defeat this demonic regime.
This is an occasion that always brings me to the abyss of despair. It’s a reminder that Satan once ruled the earth, and of humankind’s capacity for unfathomable evil in the service of a barbaric ideology.
I shut my eyes and listen to the terrifying screams of the kids.
I imagine the anguish of mothers torn away from their sons and daughters.
I wash away the tears as I picture children walking into the gas chambers, thinking they are going into the showers.
The passage of time will never liberate us from the crimes of the Holocaust, nor dim the pain.
Auschwitz, a place as close to limitless hell on this Earth as man could devise, is the largest cemetery in human history, where 1.1 million Jews were systematically murdered simply for being Jews.
The Holocaust happened during the 20th century, in a country considered to be the embodiment of culture and progress.
It did not begin with the engineers of the killing centres, but with a society that saw the Jews as their enemy, as the devil in human form. The Holocaust began with laws that prohibited Jews from sitting in parks, living in certain neighbourhoods and working in certain occupations.
Most countries shrugged when Hitler was elected to power, when the boycott of Jewish businesses began, when the Nuremberg Laws were passed, during Kristallnacht, and when Jews were disappearing all over Europe.
Dvir Abramovich at the Raoul Wallenberg Memorial garden, St Kilda. Picture: Stuart McEvoy/The Australian
In the aftermath of the Nazi onslaught, civilisation pledged: “Never again.”
Yet, in the seven decades plus since, the world has failed to learn the lessons and ‘Never again’ has become ‘Again and again’ – Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Sudan, the Congo, Myanmar, Nigeria, Syria.
Here in Australia, a malevolent shadow is stalking our nation, with daily reports of Jews being harassed and abused, either online or in the real world.
“It couldn’t happen here” is no longer true as local neo-Nazis are defacing properties with swastikas and spewing their fantasies of a Fourth Reich. The infinitely adaptable antisemitism has an impressive way of modernising itself and re-emerging in different varieties.
Covid-19 dialled up the rhetoric, as newly created online chat groups in Australia, are awash with accusations that Jews created Covid-19.
Such scapegoating, a slow-burning poison that is amplified and catalysed in cyberspace, can take on a life on its own – with deadly consequences.
As recently as Wednesday, on Australia Day, a witness described seeing a group of men dressed as Nazis displaying racist signs in East Melbourne.
These men were allegedly standing next to a sign that read: “Conquered not stolen.”
Victoria Police has confirmed it’s investigating an incident.
Jewish students are also bearing the brunt of this scourge, like the 12-year-old Jewish boy from Cheltenham Secondary who in 2019 was forced by a classmate to kneel and kiss the feet of another student. Or the five-year-old who was allegedly called a “Jewish cockroach” and repeatedly hounded by his young classmates in the toilets at Hawthorn West Primary.
Or the two Jewish brothers at Brighton Secondary College, who in 2020 witnessed classmates giving the Heil Hitler salute and who reported swastikas around the school, or other Jewish students who were beaten and pushed down the stairs.
Many Jewish parents are concerned that when their kids walk down the street wearing a Yarmulka or any other item that identifies them as Jews, they are taking a risk.
That being a Jew makes one more vulnerable to an attack was once unimaginable in our country.
This is not normal.
It is our duty to teach succeeding generations that the Holocaust is the direct result of prejudice and remind them of the devastation unbounded hatred engenders.
Holocaust education should be mandatory in every state and territory, especially since there is a shocking lack of knowledge among Millennials.
History is giving us advance notice of what can happen if we do nothing or downplay the danger.
Hitler was an antisemite before he was a Final Solutionist.
We have to pay attention to the first step before it gets to the second stage.
Dr Dvir Abramovich is Chairman of the Anti-Defamation Commission, Australia’s leading civil rights organisation. The author of seven books, his latest is ‘The New War Against the Jews: Writing from the Trenches’.
