Eighty-four years ago, senior Nazi officials gathered at the Wannsee Conference and calmly coordinated the ‘Final Solution’, the systematic genocide of Europe’s Jews. There was no hysteria. No chaos. Just bureaucrats, paperwork, lists, and the confident belief that no one would stop them.
Wannsee stands as a permanent warning of where dehumanisation, hatred, and silence lead when tolerated, rationalised, or ignored by those in power. Confronting antisemitism is not optional. It is a moral obligation. If we don’t it won’t end with the Jews, it never does. And it is why Australia today is failing a test it once claimed to have passed.
When I read the regions listed at Wannsee, I see the places where my grandparents and their families were condemned to death for no reason other than being Jewish. That knowledge does not live in history books. It lives in my family, small in number as a result.
On January 22, 2026, the National Day of Mourning for the Bondi Beach Hanukkah terrorist attack, a one-minute silence will be observed at 7:01 pm. It is right that we pause. But we should also mourn something else: the Australia we are rapidly losing.
Holocaust survivors who rebuilt their lives here became fiercely proud Australians. They celebrated the flag. They celebrated Australia Day. They raised children and grandchildren to believe that this country, because it had absorbed history’s lessons would never again allow hatred to fester unchecked. I remember standing at school assemblies, honouring the flag, singing the anthem, believing those lessons had been learned.
Today, that confidence is gone. Today many are taught to shame the flag and our Australian values. Love thy neighbour was once a given, now not so.
‘Those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.’ Etched into a barrack at Auschwitz, these words are not a metaphor. They are a verdict.
The Holocaust did not begin with gas chambers. It began with boycotts and confiscations. With chants. With intimidation. With propaganda. With the steady conditioning of a population to believe Jews were the problem and leaders who did nothing.
More than 90 years ago, Hitler did not begin with mass murder. He began with manipulation. Jewish businesses were targeted. Jews were excluded, blamed, restricted, expelled. Educated, civilised Germans were persuaded it was necessary, even virtuous. Step by step, society was marched toward genocide.
Anyone who has visited a Holocaust museum knows this. Anyone who has walked through Yad Vashem knows the concentration camp exhibits appear only halfway through. The Holocaust did not begin with Auschwitz. It began with words, indifference, and leadership failure.
Since October 7, 2023, Australia has been replaying that opening chapter, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has either failed to recognise it or chosen not to confront it.
Two days after the Hamas massacre in Israel, crowds gathered in Sydney chanting violence against Jews near the Opera House. In the weeks and months that followed, protests escalated: ‘Globalise the intifada.’ ‘From the river to the sea.’ These were shouted publicly, repeatedly.
At points, chants echoed on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The message was unmistakable. Yet national leadership froze.
When extremist preachers demonised Jews portraying them as corrupt, violent, or deserving of divine punishment, the response was the same: silence, delay, and deflection. When action came, it was reactive, grudging, and driven by headlines, not principle.
Then came the violence.
In December 2023, the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne was firebombed. A house of worship. Not graffiti. Not online abuse. Arson.
Other incidents followed: threats, vandalism, intimidation, and graffiti of Jewish schools and community spaces. ‘Jew Die’ painted on one Melbourne school. Jewish Australians were advised by police to avoid identifying themselves publicly.
After every incident, the Prime Minister delivered the same carefully crafted lines:
‘There is no place for hate in Australia.’
‘We stand with the Jewish community.’
‘This does not reflect who we are.’
‘Australia is a peaceful, multicultural nation.’
Words without action are not leadership. Condemnations without consequences are not deterrence. Sympathy without enforcement is not solidarity. It is abandonment.
The irony peaked after the Bondi Beach Hanukkah attack. Many who had minimised antisemitic chants, excused extremist rhetoric, and urged ‘community calm’ rushed to podiums, cameras rolling, statements read, flowers laid. Yet these were the very leaders who had allowed the environment for such an attack to take root.
They spoke of grief while ignoring warnings. They spoke of unity while tolerating division. They spoke of ‘never again’ while demonstrating, in real time, how again becomes possible. Solidarity offered after blood has been spilled is not virtue. It is absolution-seeking.
Mr Albanese did not lack information. He lacked resolve. While Jewish Australians were targeted and attacked, the Labor government hesitated, worried about optics, factions, and ideological discomfort. Instead of drawing clear moral lines, it equivocated. Instead of acting decisively, it outsourced responsibility to slogans. It did what it could, some believe, to protect its stronghold in Western Sydney.
This is not neutrality. It is complicity. Labor chose ideology over its responsibility of keeping its citizens safe. And Hamas praised them for it.
Extremist chants echoed on the Harbour Bridge. Synagogues were firebombed. Jewish schools and community spaces were threatened. Each warning, each act of intimidation, demanded urgent action. Instead, Labor delayed, equivocated, and relied on appearances. Even now, the Royal Commission he was forced to call has not begun, and the government has, until recently, ignored the clear warnings in Jillian Segal’s report on rising antisemitism. Recommendations that could have guided decisive action are treated as optional guidance were wrongly postponed. The consequence of that inaction is not abstract: it materialised in the Bondi Beach attack. Leadership that commissions inquiry only when forced, and then treats expert warnings as secondary, is not just grossly negligent, it is complicit in the harm it was tasked to prevent.
History teaches that extremists do not need endorsement from leaders. They need only the assurance that no one will stop them. And they understood the signal perfectly.
The result is an Australia where Jewish parents reconsider schools. Where synagogues require heavy security. Where Holocaust survivors watch familiar patterns re-emerge in the country they love. Generations after, they recognise the stories their grandparents told them. I certainly do.
This did not happen overnight. And it did not happen without warning.
Every Holocaust Museum begins the same way: with propaganda, rallies, chants, boycotts, intellectuals explaining away hatred, and leaders urging calm instead of justice. The lesson is not subtle. The Holocaust did not begin with Auschwitz. It began when leaders chose political comfort over moral clarity.
That is the choice Labor has made since October 7, 2023.
Australia is not Germany in the 1930s. But history does not repeat itself identically. It repeats in patterns and those patterns are now visible to anyone willing to look.
The question is no longer whether antisemitism exists in Australia. It does. The question is whether leaders will confront it with the seriousness history demands or hide behind empty words while the damage becomes irreversible.
Wannsee was a meeting. Auschwitz was the outcome. Between the two was silence. History will judge where we stood. And it will not be kind to those who knew better and chose to look away.
