Backyard Nazi flag 350m from Newtown synagogue
Police are investigating a Nazi flag hung in the backyard of a Newtown home just 350 metres from a local synagogue.
NSW
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Police are investigating a Nazi flag hung in the backyard of a Newtown home just 350m from a local synagogue.
Concerned residents took issue with the red, black and white swastika-emblazoned flag hanging on the veranda of the Watkin Street property.
“Police are aware of an offensive flag at a residence in Newtown,” NSW Police Media said in a statement.
“Officers from Inner West Police Area Command are conducting inquiries.”
The flag is understood to have been erected on Sunday and was still hanging late last night.
The home sits just inside the City of Sydney precinct, with a representative from the council saying that it was yet to receive any complaints over the issue.
The Nazi swastika symbol is outlawed in some parts of Europe but is not illegal in Australia. “The City of Sydney condemns any form of discrimination or vilification on the grounds of religion, gender or sexual orientation,” a council spokeswoman said.
“We would urge anyone who sees any material they find offensive to contact NSW Police.”
Darcy Byrne, mayor of the neighbouring Inner West Council, said his local government had seen an increase in “racist taunts and attacks” due to coronavirus.
“At such a time of emergency in which the only way we can combat COVID-19 is by being unified and respectful, something does need to be done about this idiocy,” Mr Byrne said. “It is deeply insulting and unhelpful. I have contacted the inner west police commander to bring it to his attention and maybe it is the case that the council and the police together go around and pay these people a visit and ask them to use a bit of common sense and pull the flag down. For someone to have put this up newly in the middle of this crisis is insulting and deliberately trying to sew division.”
Dr Dvir Abramovich has been spearheading a national campaign to ban the public display of the Nazi swastika.
“Another week, another terrifying outburst of pure neo-Nazi hate invading our country and terrorising residents,” said Dr Abramovich, Chairman of leading civil rights organisation, the Anti-Defamation Commission. “Hitler is dead, but his modern-day followers are alive and well in Australia and the law is on their side. Hanging this Nazi flag, the emblem of genocide and death, is a stab in the heart of every Holocaust survivor, and a spit on the memory of the victims and the Diggers who gave their lives to defeat that monstrous dictator.”
Dr Abramovich said all Nazi insignia should be banned.
“It is frightening to know that walking among us are ‘Final Solutionists’, white-supremacists who are unabashedly proud to celebrate Hitler’s evil legacy of exterminating six million Jews and millions of others. As we witness an upsurge of antisemitism in our nation, spiking to alarming levels, the time has come to align actions with words.”