As the world marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Friday, a disturbing rise in anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial is occurring. Australia, sadly, is part of the trend, with analysis by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry showing anti-Semitic incidents have risen 40 per cent in the past two years, with almost 300 cases of assault and verbal abuse recorded. With many incidents unreported, the figures are “the tip of the iceberg”, ECAJ research director Julie Nathan says. Neo-Nazis have become more brazen, giving salutes outside a Holocaust Museum in Adelaide and raising a Nazi flag in a park in Sydney. The pattern matches findings by Deakin University’s Steve Cook that a quarter of Australians have little awareness of the Holocaust, apart from its existence.
Research by the US-based Claims Conference, representing Jews in negotiations with Germany for restitution and compensation, finds one in four Dutch people born after 1980 thinks the Holocaust is a myth or that the number of Jews killed by the Germans is greatly exaggerated. It found “shocking and disturbing” ignorance among millennials and Gen Z in The Netherlands, which it ranked the worst place for Holocaust denial among Western countries surveyed. Dutch millennials were even ignorant of Anne Frank’s fate.
Read the editorial in The Australian.