The B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC), Australia’s leading organisation fighting anti-Semitism and hatred in all its forms, has denounced the comments by ALP candidate Dr Michael Freelander comparing the Manus Island processing centre to Nazi Germany’s concentration camps.
Dr Dvir Abramovich, Chairman of the ADC, issued the following statement:
“Deploying the indescribable atrocities of the Holocaust to lambast the government’s detention policy grossly dilutes and cheapens the genocide of millions of people, insults their memory and unnecessarily causes further pain to the survivors and to their families. Yes, the debate about Australia’s immigration and detention policy is a legitimate one, and Dr Freelander is entitled to articulate his concerns with the government’s stance. However, to argue that these policies in any way equate to the circumstances of the Nazi concentration camps where millions were liquidated diminishes the deaths and the suffering experienced, and shows an absolute lack of historical comprehension about the crimes that Hitler and his demonic regime committed. The measures taken by the Australian government must never be compared to the Third Reich’s planned and industrial annihilation of six million Jews and millions of others. I am increasingly alarmed about the coarsening of discussion in the public square and about the misappropriation of the Holocaust. I hope that there will come a point where commentators will acknowledge that using unacceptable and offensive comparisons to the Nazi death camps in order to score a political point is misguided and odious. We call on Dr Freelander and others to choose their analogies prudently and to cease from invoking the Holocaust in the future.”
The Anti-Defamation Commission, founded in 1979, is Australia’s leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through educational programs that combat bigotry, prejudice and all forms of hatred.
For further information please contact Dr Dvir Abramovich on (03) 9272 5677
Join the ADC on Facebook
or visit our website at antidef.org.au