Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Every year on the 27th of the Jewish month of Nisan, Jews and non-Jews around the world observe Holocaust Remembrance Day, or, as it's known in Israel, Yom HaShoah. This year it was commemorated on 17 and 18 April, coinciding with the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The value, or, rather, essentialness, of remembrance is something well understood to Jewish people. The Hebrew word for remember, 'zachor', is repeated nearly 200 times in the Hebrew bible and embodies the belief in a divine commandment to remember, such as remembering the Sabbath, remembering the Covenant and remembering the Exodus from Egypt.

In particular, the Book of Deuteronomy includes a specific commandment to remember the suffering inflicted on the Jewish people on their journey out of Egypt. Jewish people are called to keep in their memory the injustice of this persecution, which included targeted violence against women, children and the elderly. Ultimately, this practice of zachor is meant to keep the tragedies of the past close in the Jewish consciousness, to ensure they are never again repeated, so that the suffering of their ancestors was not in vain.

It's a practice that has taken on significant additional implications in the aftermath of the Holocaust. The systemic murder of over six million Jews during the terror of the Nazi regime remains one of the darkest periods in our recorded history. As should be well known to us all, the Nazi regime sought to completely eradicate Jews across Europe and subjected them to forced labour, starvation, medical experiments and execution in many cruel forms. The horror of these events is difficult to properly express or represent in words. The world has relied heavily on the contributions of those brave survivors, who have reminded us, through their own storytelling, of this period of death and destruction, and who have been able to articulate to us the nature of this horror in the most lucid of ways—given, of course, it was them who saw it with their own eyes and experienced it with their own pain. They felt the pain of watching the execution of their loved ones, the indignity of being reduced to a number tattooed on their body and the agony of starvation and torture.

As the survivors generation of the Holocaust passes away, we look instead to the significance of honouring their story in the spirit of how Jews have practised zachor for generations. Whilst Yom HaShoah is a period of mourning, it is also a time to recognise the bravery of those who resisted the Holocaust and its perpetrators. We note that this year commemorated 80 years since the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, where 13,000 Jews were killed in an act of resistance against their forced transportation to the Majdanek and Treblinka death camps. These resistors faced terrible odds and chose to face death on their own terms, in a final stand against their oppressors.

The Holocaust Institute of Western Australia and the Jewish Community Council of WA honoured this anniversary in April this year with their own Yom HaShoah commemorations, headlining the uprising as an embodiment of what they dared to do. Whilst my travel commitments prevented me from attending this year's memorial, which has become an important custom of mine, I did want to use this opportunity in the Senate to acknowledge all the work that they do upholding the mission of education and remembrance of the Holocaust. This day of remembrance is observed in many reverent ways around the world and across our own country. In Israel the entire nation comes to a standstill as sirens are heard in every city and this is followed by a moment of silence. In Australia, exhibitions, lectures and memorials take place in synagogues, community centres and museums nationwide. In the homes of many, candles are lit to pray for those whose lives were lost in the genocide.

I spoke in this place recently of the work of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and the necessity of the important work that the organisation does in fighting antisemitism, which continues to rear its ugly head in some corners of our own community here in Australia. It remains true that education and remembrance of the Holocaust are critical elements of fighting antisemitism and hateful discrimination. Many antisemitic people change their views when confronted with Holocaust survivors and the truth of the events that took place during the Second World War. Once those survivors have gone it will be entirely up to us to keep their memory alive. May we all recognise the importance of Yom HaShoah, work to ensure that the world never again bears witness to a holocaust and, more importantly, stand resolute in calling out and standing up against those preconditions to the terrible events that made something like the Holocaust such a terrible event.

Just on Sunday, before travelling to Canberra, I had the opportunity again to join with the Western Australian Jewish community at their JHUB, Jewish Hebrew centre, community fundraising appeal. This appeal is in addition to the $12 million—half contributed by the WA state government and the other half by the federal government—to refurbish the Jewish community centre in Western Australia and, importantly, to improve upon and house the Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Western Australia.

The Western Australian Jewish community has a tremendously proud history of contributing to not only Perth and its suburbs but also the entire Western Australian community. I just use this opportunity again to honour all of those people who have been involved in working towards funding the refurbishment of the Jewish community centre in Menora, which is close to where I live. I want to add my continued support for the wonderful work the Jewish community does not just in my home state of Western Australia, as important as that is to me, but across our whole country.