Horrified Tasmanian Jews alerted a top civil rights group when they spied a concerning detail in a luxury home for sale. But the owner says it’s not what you think.
A feature wall in a high-end Tasmanian residence, which has just hit the market, that includes the word ‘Auschwitz’ – the Nazi death-camp where 1.1 million Jews were exterminated in World War II – is “bizarre and tasteless”, says the chairman of a Jewish-Australian civil rights group.
However, the owner of the Launceston house expressed horror at the misunderstanding, as she revealed the personal and innocuous reason the name was included among dozens of other countries, cities and notable locations on the kitchen’s feature wall.
The Mercury has chosen not to identify the address or suburb of the three-bedroom house.
Dr Dvir Abramovich, the chairman of the Melbourne-based Anti-Defamation Commission, said his organisation was alerted to the feature wall, a picture of which was included on the initial listing but has since been removed, by a member of Launceston’s Jewish community who was looking at real estate.
“While I don’t know what is in the heart of these homeowners, and though there isn’t a single way to commemorate the Holocaust, I am certain that there would be survivors who would find this tasteless and a gross trivialisation of the Holocaust,” Dr Abramovich said.
Read the article by Alex Treacy in The Mercury.