JOSH FRYDENBERG:
I’m joined here today at the ACT Jewish Community Centre with my friend and colleague, the Minister for Education, Alan Tudge. Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day; a solemn day that has been designated by the United Nations General Assembly in 2005 to remember the innocent victims of the Holocaust and to collectively say “never again,” to unite against prejudice, racism and anti-Semitism and xenophobia.
The Holocaust was not just a crime against the Jewish people, but a crime against humanity. Roma, Sinti, homosexuals, the disabled, Jehovah’s Witnesses, political and religious leaders all fell afoul of the Nazi killing machine, as well as 6 million Jews and tragically and heartbreakingly, 1.5 million Jewish children. If a minute silence was observed for every Jewish victim of the Holocaust, that silence would last for more than eleven years.
That is why we are here today to commemorate the Holocaust, but also to commit on behalf of the Morrison Government $750,000 to be matched, to be in partnership, with the ACT Government to establish a Holocaust museum here in the ACT. General Dwight Eisenhower when he came upon those horrific images of the concentration camps as the allied commander back in 1945, he said there would come a time when people would deny that the Holocaust ever happened.
We have to stand firm against that historical revisionism and against the rise in anti-Semitism and hate and that is why education is so important. So, Alan, thank you for your support. Thank you to the state and territory governments who have partnered with the Morrison Government on establishing this network of Holocaust museums. We want all Australian school children to understand the lessons of the past so that they can’t be repeated into the future.
Read the full transcript on Josh Frydenberg’s ministerial website.