80 Years After Auschwitz: Has Australia Learned Nothing?

Tonight is Yom Hashoah—Holocaust Remembrance Day. We remember the systematic extermination of six million Jews—murdered not for anything they did, but for who they were. Born Jewish. That alone sealed their fate under the Nazi regime.

Six years ago, on this very day, I participated in the March of the Living—a profound, week-long Holocaust education journey through Poland that takes you far beyond what any textbook can teach. On Yom Hashoah, we walked the same path so many victims once did—three solemn kilometers from Auschwitz I to Birkenau. That march stands in defiant contrast to the death marches forced upon prisoners at the war's bitter end. Ours was a walk of remembrance, of dignity, of life.

We stood where humanity reached its lowest point—inside ghettos, gas chambers, and the ruins of crematoria. I stood on the ground where my own grandparents were rounded up, herded onto cattle cars bound for the death camps: Treblinka, Majdanek, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen. I stood in the very places where their families were stripped of their names, their dignity, and their lives—reduced to ashes within hours of arrival.

At the entrance of an Auschwitz barracks, I read the words: “Those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.” That sentence hit me like a thunderclap—true then, painfully true now.

Just a week ago, the world marked 80 years since the liberation of Bergen-Belsen—the camp where my grandmother barely survived, ravaged by typhoid, rescued just inches from death. In 1950, my grandparents arrived in Australia with their two young children, born in the shadow of unfathomable loss. My mother grew up with only an uncle, an aunt, and a few cousins. She should have grown up surrounded by generations of family—dozens of aunts, uncles, and cousins, stolen by the Nazis and their collaborators.

Tonight, we remember all of them—among the six million Jewish lives extinguished.

My grandfather once said to me, “You are lucky to grow up in Australia, free of the antisemitism we lived with every day in Europe.” His words echo louder now than ever.

We remember. We mourn. And we vow—never again.

And now, I must ask: On this Yom Hashoah, has Australia truly learned from the past? Or has it chosen to forget—and instead resurrect the world’s oldest hatred?

Are we really lucky to be living in Australia anymore?

In record time, our government has corroded this once-proud nation with a cocktail of identity politics, critical race theory, and self-loathing ideology. We've seen scenes echoing 1930s Europe: boycotts of Jewish businesses, doxing of Jewish individuals, violent attacks on synagogues and schools, and vile anti-Jewish university encampments that look more like hate rallies than protests.

Moral clarity is gone. Leadership has failed.

Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong haven’t just looked the other way—they’ve enabled antisemitism, they’ve rewarded it. They’ve emboldened it through their words, their silence, and their policies. The so-called ‘Teals’ have voted to reinstate funding to Gaza-based terrorist organisations, despite those groups having charters calling for the destruction of the only Jewish state on earth. Let’s be clear: Hamas is a designated terrorist organisation by Australia, the U.S., the EU, and others. The Teals voted against mandatory sentencing for those who attack Jews. Their voting record is nearly indistinguishable from the Greens—let’s stop pretending they’re “independent.”

The Greens Party—and their partners at the Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network—have crossed every red line of decency. They’ve tolerated chants like “gas the Jews,” “f**k the Jews,” and “Jews should be made to feel uncomfortable.” They’ve stood beside signs calling for Jews to be thrown in the trash. They’ve refused to condemn Hamas even after the atrocities of October 7, 2023—the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. They’ve called for the eradication of Israel and told Jews to “go back to Germany.” Is it ignorance, or is it evil? Most Jews in Israel didn’t come from Europe—they came from the Middle East, expelled en masse after 1948. That’s real ethnic cleansing.

Let’s be clear: The Holocaust happened because there was no Jewish country.
It did not happen because there was one.

So what makes 2025 different from 1939, when World War II erupted? One thing: We have a Jewish country now. We are no longer Jews with trembling knees. We are strong, proud, defiant. We are a nation—whether in Israel or here in Australia—that will not be silent again.

Yet our leaders act as if history never happened. They spit on the memory of survivors who rebuilt their lives here—people like my grandparents, who arrived in Australia with nothing, and gave everything. They contributed in medicine, business, education, defence, philanthropy, and the arts. They helped make Australia great.

And now? The government they trusted has betrayed them.

It is the Coalition that has the moral courage to stand up—to fight for Judeo-Christian values, to preference the antisemitic Greens last, and to speak out when it matters. While Albanese claims he won’t negotiate with the Greens, he still preferences them. So does Mark Dreyfus. In the seat of Isaacs—named after Sir Isaac Isaacs, Australia's first Jewish Governor-General—Dreyfus himself has preferenced a party that has waged war on Jewish Australians. And when questioned? His excuse: “It’s a matter for the party.” That cowardice should disqualify him.

The greatest irony? Mark Dreyfus and Penny Wong had the audacity to represent Australia at the 80th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation. The same ministers who stood by as Jews were attacked here at home. The same ones who have stomped on the memory of my grandparents, and all survivors, with their policies and indifference.

This election isn’t just political. It is existential.
It will determine if Australia remains the lucky country, or if we slide back into the dark, hateful abyss of the 1930s.

Let us remember the words of German Pastor Martin Niemöller after World War II:

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Tonight, on Yom Hashoah, I speak out. Loudly. Unapologetically. Because silence is complicity.