Monuments to the victims of the Holocaust abound around the world. The city council of Melbourne, Australia has announced something slightly different. According to the Herald Sun, the body plans on erecting a memorial in honor of both victims and survivors.
The paper quoted Councillor Joel Silver, who proposed the idea, as explaining that the monument would not only memorialize those who lost their lives in the European inferno but that it would also celebrate the contributions of the tens of thousands of survivors who made their way to the land down under following the war and proceeded to give "so much to this area, and to Australia at large.”
“People wonder why we haven’t established a survivor’s memorial earlier. I think we’re just at that time in the cycle where the need has become clear,” Silver said. “Since we started the process ... I’ve been approached by so many community members and their support has been unanimous, I’ve found that so very humbling."
A report by the council cited by the Herald Sun stated that by the early 1960s there were 35,000 Jewish refugees, both from the years proceeding and following the war, in Australia, the vast majority of whom lived in Melbourne and Sydney and contributed in important ways to Australia society.
“For many, this was their way of giving something back to the country which had given them a new start,” the report stated.
Last month the Australian Jewish community was appalled when the Antipodean Resistance Group, a fringe movement that billed itself as “the Hitlers you’ve been waiting for,” surreptitiously put up anti-Semitic posters at three different Melbourne schools, including one showing a foot with a swastika crushing a Jewish insect, and another of a grasping, hooknosed Jew — a classic image in Nazi propaganda —alongside the words “Multiculturalism,” “Degeneracy” and “Reject Jewish Poison.”
“I am appalled. This form of hatred on our doorsteps, on the doorsteps of our schools is terrifying and is a direct attack on Victoria’s prized Multiculturalism,” Jennifer Huppert, the President of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria was quoted as saying by the local J-Wire Jewish news website.
