I grew up in Caulfield, a southeastern suburb of Melbourne, comprising the largest population of Jews in Australia. Jewish inhabitants ironically refer to as “the Ghetto”. I attended a modern Orthodox Jewish school from kindergarten until year 12. We were taught Hebrew and Torah. We learnt about the Holocaust, about our special place as the “Chosen People”, as a “light unto the nations”, chosen by God to lead the rest of the world out of the dark.
In January this year my namesake, Whoopi Goldberg, stated on The View – a US panel show – that the Holocaust “was not about race”. In response to her comments, David Baddiel, author of Jews Don’t Count, appeared on Good Morning Britain and rebutted Whoopi’s statement. He said the Jewish people were indeed a race because, despite him being an atheist, “the Gestapo would have shot me tomorrow”.
Baddiel’s rhetoric is one I’m familiar with. Growing up, the message was ubiquitous and unavoidable – from school assemblies where we sung the Israeli anthem to the relentless study of countless texts and films on the Holocaust – you are Jewish Australians, not Australian Jews. Jewish members of the German economic elite were not spared from the gas chambers, what makes you think you would be? Never assimilate, it happened once, it could happen again. Here, among your own, this is where you’re safe.
Read the article by Ashley Goldberg in The Australian.