Society must meet challenge of rise in anti-Semitism

The virus of anti-Semitism is alive and well in Australia. But the Holocaust didn’t begin with the bricks and mortar of Auschwitz.

Images taken from far-right group Antipodean Resistance. “In our country, the growing virus of anti-Semitism is alive and well.”

The Holocaust is the darkest and most terrifying chapter in human history. Defying definition, it has no equal and stands alone.

Six million Jews, including 1.5 million children, were murdered, not in the context of war, or over territory, or because of anything they did, but simply because of who they were. Millions of Roma, homosexuals, prisoners of war, political dissidents and individuals with disabilities also were exterminated.

If you were to recite the name of each of the Jewish victims — hunted, ghettoised, starved, raped, experimented on, tortured, shot, gassed — allowing for two seconds a name, it would take you 133 days to do so, provided you did not pause to eat, drink or sleep.

Forget the abstract statistics.

Close your eyes and imagine the indescribable pain and the inhumanity that those babies, girls, boys, mothers, fathers, grandmothers, sisters, uncles, aunts and cousins witnessed and suffered.

Tomorrow, Jewish and non-Jewish communities will ­com­memorate International Holo­caust Remembrance Day, designated by the UN to coincide with the anniversary of the ­liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet forces.

Those solemn ceremonies ­remember the victims, and those who survived, and whose unflinching courage, determination and spirit are a source of inspiration.

Children photographed by Russians who liberated Auschwitz in January 1945.

The occasion also honours the Righteous Gentiles who risked their lives so others could live, and salutes the virtuous who fought and gave their lives to defeat the brutal regime.

It also marks the continuing strength of the Jewish people who overcame the Nazis to establish a strong and vibrant Israel, a safe haven to ensure Jews are never again alone or powerless.

In the spring of 1944, 12,000 bodies a day were incinerated in the death camp of Auschwitz, while accountants, working in the executive suites of the Third Reich, calculated the value of gold fillings and hair harvested from corpses.

It’s still hard to grasp the scale of horror, to understand how an entire “civilised” country and their enthusiastic collaborators, not just a handful of soulless leaders, participated in planning and carrying out the “Final Solution”.

It was the most documented genocide, and the world knew of Hitler’s ­a­mbitions of a “master race”. In a 1919 letter, he called for the “uncompromising removal of the Jews”, and when he took office in 1933, his book Mein Kampf, which outlined his ­demonic ­agenda, had entered its 25th ­edition.

The Holocaust did not begin with the bricks and mortar of Auschwitz.

It began with 2000 years of anti-Semitism that dehumanised and defamed Jews, creating the receptive climate that justified the Nazis’ sole purpose of annihilating every Jew on earth.

Most of the world remained ­silent when Hitler rose to power, when the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses began, when the ­Nuremberg Laws were enacted, during Kristallnacht, and when Jews were rounded up, sent to the ghettos and then shipped to the killing centres.

Nations refused to provide refuge to Jews fleeing the machinery of death.

So, have we drawn the right conclusion and learned the Holocaust’s lessons?

Since 1945, mass massacres and other genocides have been perpetrated under our watchful gaze, and without much outcry: Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, Aleppo. Christians, Yazidis, Hindus, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Coptic Christians, Muslims and other minorities are still persecuted and killed.

Ongoing large-scale atrocities serve as a constant reminder that in the 21st century, the culture of state-sanctioned obliteration of life, and its enabling by the international community, can still ­happen.

In our country, the growing virus of anti-Semitism is alive and well, with incidents during the past year the highest on record. No longer history, anti-Semitism has become a routine story, a ­current event, and I am deeply worried.

Besides the daily reports of neo-Nazi and white supremacist activity, or the cases of outright slurs and cyber-slander, the phone often rings at the Anti-Defamation Commission office with a distraught parent asking for our help because their child has been baited, taunted, has had money thrown at them, has been assaulted, and harassed at school because they are Jewish.

Such calls, the tip of the iceberg, have become more frequent.

In Europe, Jews no longer feel safe, and I pray that this permeant fear never reaches our shores.

Racism is a virulent fire that can quickly envelop societies, its flames spreading rapidly and dangerously. It is never static and, left unchecked, can evolve and ­escalate into a barbaric and cruel force.

Those at the highest levels of power must pledge to be vigilant, to defend the vulnerable and the weak, and to combat any manifestation of religious intolerance, ­social exclusion, xenophobia, incivility towards others, extremism and excessive nationalism.

Because what we ignore, we empower.

In recent years we have seen Australian politicians, seeking to win over popular sentiment, promoting bigotry and incitement for political advantage and preaching that cultural, ethnic and religious diversity is a problem for our social cohesion.

In a bipartisan voice we need to call on the angels of our better ­nature, to pursue justice and equality, and to declare that blaming minorities for our miseries, and that singling out people on the basis of something they cannot change, is unacceptable.

The consequences of the pyramid of hate are never limited to one group and will destroy us all.

The only way to build a safe ­future is to condemn, as the Anti-Defamation Commission does, any toxic scapegoating, inflamed rhetoric and the demonisation of difference, and build through education, such as our schools-based program Click Against Hate.

Pluralism, rather than a cause for discord, is a reason for celebration. Woe to a nation whose citizens start to believe that their prejudice is socially acceptable and normal.

I have been asked: “Why should a 14-year-old Aussie teenager, with no familial ties to the Holocaust, be personally interested in a historical event that took place so long ago in such a faraway place?”

Because, as my friend Abe Foxman points out, anti-Semitism is the mother of all bigotries and, as we know, Jews are the canary in the coalmine. The health of a society can be measured by how secure Jewish communities are.

Reflect on the words of David Gruber, who died in the Warsaw Ghetto and whose message was uncovered as part of a hidden archive in the cellar: “I would love to see the moment in which the great treasure will be dug up and scream the truth to the world. So, the world may know all … May history attest for us.”

Let us heed Gruber’s high call of “never again”, so that the unrepentant evil that was unleashed on the Jews never happens to us or to any other people.

Dvir Abramovich is chairman of the Anti-Defamation Commission.