A Darkness Looms Again

Very few people are alive today who can recall the mood as global war drew slowly closer during the 1930s.

But history shows us the signs.

It shows how vicious ethnic loathing and scapegoating in Europe led to the horrors of the Holocaust and World War II.

And history also shows us how many institutions and cultures were united in their primitive hatred of the Jewish people.

As in the 1930s, we now see universities and other formerly admired educational institutions absolutely seething with anti-Semitism. We see crowds of affluent young men and women calling for Israel’s destruction as we once saw similar crowds smashing the windows of Jewish-owned businesses.

History is also handed down by families. Australia has many Jewish families who will forever bear the Holocaust’s scars.

Former federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s mother Erika escaped the Holocaust as a child, arriving here as a refugee at the age of seven. A great aunt wasn’t so lucky, being trapped in the Auschwitz concentration camp for two years.

Frydenberg now warns that Australia must take action against anti-Semitism before our national harmony is shattered.

“We have students openly and publicly stating their support for atrocities on university campuses, and this hate – this virus – is infecting the next generation of students,” Frydenberg told The Daily Telegraph.

“Administrators can’t be indifferent,” the ex-treasurer continued. “There have got to be much tougher consequences for this sort of behaviour. It feels like the 1930s all over again.”

Regrettably, it certainly does. The black and white photographic history of 1930s Europe is aligning ominously with our instant-footage social media present.

Frydenberg will later this month presenting a Sky News Australia documentary Never Again: The Fight Against Anti-Semitism. Viewers, Frydenberg warns, will be “shocked when they realise the depth, extent, and impact of the problem”.

Good. Then we can take urgent and necessary steps to address it.