Vandals draw Hitler moustache on poster of country’s most prominent Jewish MP

Vandals have drawn a Hitler moustache on posters of Australia’s most prominent Jewish MP, Josh Frydenberg, with the disturbing etchings discovered in the federal Treasurer’s leafy Melbourne electorate overnight.

One of the defaced Josh Frydenberg posters.

Vandals have drawn a Hitler moustache on posters of Australia’s most prominent Jewish MP, federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.

The damage was discovered on posters in Hawthorn, in the Treasurer’s inner-east Melbourne electorate of Kooyong overnight.

Another Frydenberg poster vandalised with a Hitler moustache.

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Textas had been used to draw the distinctive toothbrush shape of notorious Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s moustache on the election posters along with the words “right wing fascist” as well as devil horns.

“Regardless of one’s political persuasion, vandalism is unacceptable,” Mr Frydenberg said.

“It’s one thing for these cowards to graffiti a sign, but it’s another thing altogether to invoke the horrors of the Holocaust and the evils of Hitler and the Nazis. These people should be ashamed of themselves.”

Mr Frydenberg, 47, was sworn in as treasurer in August last year wearing a black kippah and used a Hebrew Bible for the oath.

His mother was a Hungarian Jew born in 1943 who arrived in Australia in 1950 as a stateless child from a refugee camp after escaping from the Holocaust.

His father is also Jewish, and emigrated to Australia from Poland.

Chairman of the Anti-Defamation Commission Dr Dvir Abramovich said he decried in the “strongest possible terms” the “cowardly and hateful attack”.

“It is sicking and chilling that seven decades after the Holocaust Jewish members of our community continue to be targeted by vilification and Nazi imagery,” Dr Abramovich said.

Josh Frydenberg with Jewish community leaders after the signing of the Torah in Parliament House in 2017. Picture Gary Ramage

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“We stand firmly with Josh Frydenberg and hope that those who perpetrated these crimes are swiftly apprehended and are brought to justice.

“We urge leaders across the political spectrum to voice their outrage at this vicious and obscene assault against an elected representative and to say that such abhorrent conduct will never find a home in our nation.”

Mr Frydenberg is being challenged in the seat by prominent Melbourne barrister Julian Burnside, representing the Greens, and independent candidate Oliver Yates.

He rarely invokes his religion in public life but in November last year blasted Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad for his anti-Semitism.

“He has called Jews ‘hooked-nosed people’. He has questioned the number of people that have been killed in the Holocaust,” he said at the time.

“He banned Schindler’s List as a movie being shown, though it showed the amazing story of a righteous Gentile who saved many people from persecution.”