This is Australia in 2025. My Jewish ancestors would be appalled

My Jewish ancestors helped build this amazing country. They fought – and some died – in Anzac uniform. They would be appalled by Australia in 2025, writes Amy Lees.

When I first moved to Sydney, like many young people I saw the eastern suburbs as the place to be, so I moved to Bondi.

My share house was just minutes from the generations-old small businesses run by Jewish families. Some were Holocaust survivors who had started their lives again in Australia and recalled being warmly welcomed by the community. But many also recall being met with intolerance and anti-Semitism after arriving in Australia as refugees escaping the horrors of post-war Europe.

My ancestors came to Australia in the mid-1800s and they too were met with the same mix of warmth and vitriol, but from the moment they arrived in Hobart from London’s gritty East End, they considered themselves part of this place and worked to make it better. They helped to establish two synagogues, businesses employing local people. They gave charity to the families of murdered police, drowned sailors, Catholic hospitals and the poor.

The author’s ancestors helped to establish the Hobart Synagogue – Australia’s oldest. Picture: Sam Rosewarne

My great-uncle David Heckscher Lewis was just 21 years old when he signed up in 1915 to fight in the Great War, like so many other Australian men. And like so many other Australian men less than a year later he was ‘blown to smithereens’ in Pozieres. When I travelled to the Australian War Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux there was no grave to visit. It was almost like he had never existed at all. But he had, until he died for his country.

David Heckscher Lewis with his sister Louisa Marion. David was killed in Pozieres in 1916, when he was 21 years old.

These people helped to grow Australia, and I believe they made it better.

And they arrived nearly 200 years ago, and my family history includes the insults they received and the difficulties they had in their new country.

Could they have imagined these would continue?

Jewish refugees fleeing Europe at end of WWII arrive in Australia in the mid to late 1940s. Picture: National Library of Australia.

My grandmother was Jewish, but according to Jewish ‘laws’ I am not, however there is a deep feeling of belonging that many descendants share.

I now live in another part of Sydney. At first I missed the warmth of the eastern suburbs, but while the bile and hatred is literally pouring out onto our streets it feels safer to be elsewhere. And I am not even part of the community.

Each week I add to this list The Tele is compiling – the timeline of hate. It is shocking.

It hurts to see the hate: the graffiti that looks as if it was taken out of the pages of Der Sturmer, or the babies and toddlers pulled out of daycare because their safe place was set on fire, or vandals shut down a place of worship, or the homes violated with hideous language written in red paint.

Or when a caravan full of explosives – enough for a blast zone of 40 metres – contains a note with a list of Jewish targets.

Southern Sydney Synagogue anti-Semitic graffiti. Photo: Tom Parrish

A childcare centre in Maroubra was set on fire and anti-Semitic graffiti was sprayed on a fence on January 21. Picture: Supplied.

Members of the local Jewish community in Maroubra arrive with their children at the childcare centre that was firebombed in an anti-Semitic attack. Picture: NewsWire/ Julian Andrews

The community is desperately asking for protection and action from our politicians, but the response has been too slow, too reactive, and sadly, sometimes lacking. And from other corners of the political spectrum there has been silence about what is going on in Sydney, and there was silence on October 7 too.

Politicians who describe themselves as anti-racist and lean on whataboutism when called out for using inappropriate language.

A couple of months after the October 7 attacks I was speaking with a colleague whose children go to a Jewish school in Sydney. He said they had been advised to not wear their school uniforms for fear of reprisal.

I am talking about very small children.

A year after that conversation it is still happening. We see tiny preppies walking past armed guards and police through fortified gates for their first day of school.

In 2025 this is our normal?

Students arrive at Mount Sinai College in Maroubra for their first day at school after the summer holidays. Graffiti was sprayed on the school wall as anti-Semitic attacks continue in Sydney. Picture: Julian Andrews

Nearly two hundred years since my ancestors arrived and I am sure this is not what they thought the country they dreamt about – and helped to build – would be.

I am sure they would be appalled.