February 19, 2016
Media Coverage:
The B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC), Australia’s leading organisation fighting anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and hatred in all its forms, has denounced the comments by Dr Michael Dudley comparing Australia’s immigration detention policies and centres to Nazi Germany. Dr Dudley’s comments were reported in a Sydney Morning Herald article, in which Dr Dudley further claims that “Public numbing and indifference” towards state abuses in Nazi Germany resembles that enabling Australia’s immigration detention centres.”
Dr Dvir Abramovich, Chairman of the ADC, issued the following statement:
“Invoking the unspeakable atrocities of the Holocaust to criticise the government’s detention policy grossly diminishes the genocide of millions of people, insults their memory and needlessly causes further pain to survivors and to their families. There is no place for it in our civil discourse. Yes, the debate about Australia’s immigration detention policy is a legitimate one, and Dr Dudley is entitled to disagree with the government’s stance and to express his concern. However, to argue that these policies are in any way similar to the circumstances of the Nazi concentration camps where millions were gassed to death cheapens the suffering experienced, and shows a total lack of historical understanding about the terrors that Hitler and his monstrous regime actually perpetrated. In no way can the measures taken by the Australian government be compared to the Third Reich’s deliberate, systematic and mechanised annihilation of six million Jews and millions of others. Also, there were millions of Germans who supported Nazi anti-Jewish measures that were openly promulgated in the 1930s. The terrifying events of Kristallnacht ensured that every German knew exactly what fate awaited the Jews. There wasn’t public numbing, quite the opposite. I am increasingly concerned about the coarsening of public discussion and about the misappropriation of the Holocaust through such offensive equations and hope that there will come a point where commentators will realise that using inappropriate and painful comparisons to the Holocaust and to the Nazi death camps to score a political point is misguided and odious. We call on Dr Dudley and others to choose their words carefully and refrain from employing Holocaust analogies in the future.”
For further information please contact Dr Dvir Abramovich on (03) 9272 5677
The Anti-Defamation Commission, founded in 1979, is Australia’s leading organization fighting anti-Semitism and all forms of hatred through educational programs that combat bigotry, prejudice and racism.
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