The B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC), Australia’s leading organisation fighting anti-Semitism and hatred in all its forms, has denounced comments by One Nation senator Rodney Culleton who in calling for a royal commission into the banking industry said, “This will show that the ANZ bank came in and misled the farmers. In actual fact, said, ‘Come take a shower’, and gassed them.”
Dr Dvir Abramovich, Chairman of the ADC issued the following statement:
“We condemn in the strongest terms this disgraceful and misguided comparison that shows very poor judgment on the part of senator Rodney Culleton. Marshalling the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust to score political points and to criticise the actions by the ANZ Bank trivialises and cheapens the murder of millions of people, insults the memory of victims and needlessly causes further pain to the survivors and to their families. Yes, we should have a debate banking policy, and yes Senator Culleton is of course free to voice his concerns. However, to suggest that the way ANZ treated farmers equates to the circumstances of the Nazi concentration camps where millions were exterminated, and where children were torn from their mothers’ arms and pushed into the gas chambers, diminishes the deaths and the enormous suffering experienced, and shows a gross lack of historical understanding about the crimes that Hitler and his evil regime committed. In no way can the statements or actions by a bank be analogised to the Third Reich’s deliberate, systematic and mechanised annihilation of six million Jews and millions of others. Invoking hurtful and insensitive comparisons to the Nazi death camps is unacceptable and we urge Senior to apologise and to cease from invoking the Holocaust in the future.”
The B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission, founded in 1979, is Australia’s leading civil rights organization fighting racism through educational programs that combat bigotry, prejudice and all forms of hatred.
For further information please contact Dr Dvir Abramovich on (03) 9272 5677.