THE HOLOCAUST DISTANCED FROM AFAR

To a Jewish youth like me, leading a sheltered life in the safety of Australia, the crimes that were being perpetrated on the Jews of Europe by the elected government of Germany, was just something one read about if one got to the back pages of the newspaper. The grim stories of those relative few who reached here went largely unnoticed except by those working in the aid agencies as was my mother. Yet, while we were leading a hedonistic life here, our co-religionists were being pilloried, killed, imprisoned, driven from their homes and their jobs, forced to do the most menial tasks, irrespective of their culture, their achievements, their previous service to their country, their professional or trade qualifications.

The Holocaust Museum is not only a reflection of the past, of the attempt by Nazi Germany to eliminate Jewish life in Europe and subsequently the rest of the world. It is a warning to beware of the threat of barbarity that runs through all humanity, a threat described by Robert Burns as 'man's inhumanity to man, makes countless thousands mourn', by Neitzsche who taught that 'man is the cruelest animal. At tragedies, bullfights and crucifixions he has so felt best on earth', and by George Bernard Shaw who wrote, 'there is in man a specific lust for cruelty which affects even his passion for pity and makes it savage'.

To me, the lesson of the Holocaust is that it was almost a whole society, not just a few people who contributed to its enormity. Almost a whole society? It is fair we remember, as Mr Justice Einfeld has pointed out, that despite the complicity of the majority in attempting to make good the Nazi 'final solution', there were men and women in Germany, Italy and the occupied countries who risked their lives and the lives of their families to save their Jewish compatriots.

My despair is that our existence as a religious community has been in jeopardy so often. A visit to the Holocaust Museum and those like it in other countries is a reminder of the venomous treatment meted out to the Jews in almost every country of Europe, including England as far back as the year 1200. As has happened before, so could activities akin to anti-semitism happen again, anywhere. And it has. Remember the cruelties inflicted on the prisoners of war in Asia in World War II, the so-called 'ethnic cleansing' in Bosnia, the massacres in Africa, the cruelty of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, the torturing of political prisoners in Uzbekistan which, according to a report in the New York Times, acts as a surrogate gaoler for the United States. Consider too, the wanton attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York and on transport in London, of recent suggestions that in some circumstances, torture would be legal. Australia's history is blemished by our decimation of Aborigine communities - and I am not sure that our treatment of some seeking refuge in Australia is humane, nor our attitude to Muslims, foreigners and other minorities is as compassionate as it should be.

How can a repeat of the Holocaust and similar inhumanities be avoided in the future? How can we curb the excess of anti-Semites such as David Irving and Eric Butler, the rantings of Pauline Hanson and her supporters? How can we stop the rise of religious based fanaticism of Christians, Jews and Muslims. The emergence in Australia of Family First as a political party, the intrusion into politics of the Hillsong Church and the influence of an ultra-conservative religious faction in the New South Wales Liberal Party all concern me. So does the cleavage among Jewish communities in Israel, where fanatics are fighting against government attempts to reach an agreement with the Palestinians that may bring peace to the Middle East.

Among those whose attitude to Jewry has changed is the Roman Catholic Church. Pope John Paul II visited Israel. There he spoke against anti-semitism and placed a note in the Western Wall with an apology for church anti-semitism written on it.
In 2003 John Paul hosted a delegation from the World Jewish Congress to whom he said, "we share a common religious heritage; co-operation between Christians and Jews requires courage and vision". Ariel Sharon described Pope John Paul as 'a man of peace and a friend of the Jewish people'. The new Pope, Pope Benedict XVI, has condemned the events of the Holocaust calling it an atrocity. He expressed support for Israel saying, "I think it important that Jews, even if they live all over the world, have a homeland".

Ecumenicalism in Australia is led by the inter-faith work of the Council of Christians and Jews of which I am a supporting member. A manifestation of the growing harmony between religions was the recent Order of Australia inter-faith service held at the Temple Beth Israel attended by Catholic, Uniting Church and Muslim clerics who participated in the service.

Since the Allied victory in 1945, the people of Germany and Italy, of the Baltic states and the quisling countries have had a chance to repent for the moral blindness which caused power to be put in the hands of ruthless dictators. Through their post-war governments the German and Italian people have tried to make amends - but what amends can compensate for the six million who were slaughtered?

The Holocaust Museum is visited by hundreds of school-children each month. School principals and their teachers bring their students to the Museum to prove to them that the stories of the barbarism of the Holocaust are true. It is most commendable that educators make the effort to show the effect of man's inhumanity to man; to warn the growing generation that they must beware of attempts to place people into different categories and to alert young people of the seductive power of evil and the pathology of racism, be it in churches, in politics, in commerce, even in the home.

In the same way that the Commonwealth Government asks us to help protect Australia from terrorism by reporting to the National Security Hotline anything suspicious, so should everyone be alert and report to the appropriate authority, any verbal comment, any film, any writing, any action that denigrates, attacks or belittles a person or a group because of religion, race, nationality, sexual preference or bodily appearance.

- Edited from a speech given on 22 May 2005