War to end anti-Semitism is not over

[Kiwi]

War to end anti-Semitism is not over

http://www.theage.com.au/news/editor...620274200.html
January 20, 2008

AUSTRALIANS who fought against the scourge of Nazism — and its Japanese equivalent — in World War II are fading fast. As they pass, so does living memory of a conflict that came about, in Europe, through a belief that a "master race" should subjugate — and exterminate — other people. Most evil of all, of course, was the Holocaust that "liquidated" six million Jews, among other groups that did not fit Hitler's monstrous delusion of Aryan superiority and dreams of world domination.

Australians born in the post-war decades grew up in its shadow. Relatives and friends had been in the conflict and all around were European refugees and immigrants whose lives had been brutally affected by it: here a Jewish doctor whose hands had been slashed by the SS; there a middle-aged mother with a death camp tattoo on her arm. But as the war generation and its memories die out, and as Australia's ethnic mix alters through immigration, the risk is that a growing element of our society will tolerate — even embrace — the lurking anti-Semitism that flowered so horrifically in Germany last century.

The case of Menachem Vorchheimer, an orthodox Jew punched in the face when he remonstrated with drunken men hurling anti-Semitic abuse in late 2006, has become a cause celebre here and elsewhere. Some might question Mr Vorchheimer's zealous pursuit of those who victimised him but he doesn't care.

What matters more than the Vorchheimer case is its context: it is just one of a growing number of anti-Semitic incidents in Australia, where Jews are now four times more likely to be attacked than they are in the UK. On the latest annual figures, 638 incidents were recorded here — twice the previous average.

No wonder, then, that a US envoy with a brief to combat anti-Semitism is arriving here this week to investigate what's going wrong. We will watch with interest whether he gets a hearing from our Premier and our police chief. And report accordingly.