Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Melbourne Ports for bringing this important motion to the parliament and congratulate him on his strong advocacy on behalf of his electorate but particularly for what he has done for the Jewish community in this place. I also acknowledge the member for Canberra and thank her for her important words as well as acknowledge the presence in the gallery of Rabbi Meltzer and Rabbi Feldman.

I come to this motion with a heavy heart, because my own family background is no different to that of many other Jewish members in communities in Melbourne, Sydney and elsewhere, in that I had relatives who passed away in the Holocaust, including two great-grandparents and great aunts who lost their lives at Auschwitz. So it was with some trepidation that I went to represent the Australian government at the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and made my way, with 3,000 other people, to this historic ceremony. Ten years ago there were some 1,500 survivors there. This time round, there were only 300. In 10 years time, there may not be a survivor present. But I was able to see the presidents of Germany, Switzerland, Poland and France, and many other world leaders, come to pay their respects to the more than six million Jews who lost their lives in the Holocaust, including, tragically, 1.5 million children, and to remember what happened at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where 1.1 million people lost their lives, 90 per cent of whom were Jewish. Also, importantly, people from Romani backgrounds, people who were homosexual, people with a disability and political prisoners from Poland and Russia also lost their lives there. For the first time, I walked through those gates that said, 'Work will set you free,' and I saw the orderly nature of the camp where so many innocent people lost their lives. I saw the ovens and the showers where gas came down instead of water. People were put through slave labour in the coldest and most brutal of conditions. People lost their humanity. And the cultured, intelligent, educated German nation was allowed by the world to get away with such horrors.

I left asking the question: how could we and the rest of the world have stood by when the country that produced Wagner, Mozart and Bach were allowed to kill their fellowman and deny them any human dignity? But that is the tragedy of the Holocaust. I know I stand with everybody in this place, regardless of their political persuasion, to say: never again.

I am reminded of that famous Lutheran pastor and theologian Martin Niemoller, who himself was targeted by the Nazis after originally being a supporter of the Nazis. What Niemoller said was: 'First they came for the socialists, and I wasn't a socialist, so I didn't say anything. Then next they came for the trade unionists, and I wasn't a trade unionist, so I didn't say anything. Then they came for the Jews, and I wasn't a Jew, so I didn't say anything. And then they came for me, and there was no-one left to speak up for me.'

That is the lesson of the Holocaust—that even the most cultured nation, such as Germany, could go down to the lowest possible level to do what they did. But the rest of the world was relatively silent. When General Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the Allied forces, came upon a liberated concentration camp, he said there would come a time in the world when people denied that what had taken place here had actually happened, so he called upon senior journalists and political leaders from around the world to come and bear witness to what had transpired in these most horrible of horrible places. Thankfully, there are good people like General Dwight Eisenhower who will ensure that all those innocent lives that were lost are remembered. This is a very important occasion to remember, but it is also a very sad day for many of us in this chamber.

See this speech in context