The B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC), Australia’s leading organisation fighting hatred in all its forms, has denounced a series of troubling anti-Semitic Facebook comments that were posted on a VCE discussion page which has 57,000 members. A Jewish student contacted the ADC and provided it with evidence of the repugnant posts on the VCE Discussion Space which included comments such as: “You don’t need a good ATAR to cook Jews”, “But you need a good ATAR to get a good Job to have the cash to fly to Germany and meet other Hitler lovers to give us a hand with cooking the Jews, there are a lot of them”, “Feeling relatable to Hitler” He shouldn’t have done further maths, he should have done Führer maths, “When the only person you can relate to in life is Hitler, “ Jew wish you could get that 99atar,”. The comments accompanied images that show Hitler with the line, “HITLER’S ATAR, LOL”.
Dr Dvir Abramovich, Chairman of the ADC, issued the following statement:
“It is deeply saddening that these students thought that expressing hatred towards Jews and exploiting the Holocaust to vilify others is funny. We must not brush aside such offensive conduct as ‘kids being kids’. We should be very concerned that this manifestation of intolerance has reared its ugly head on a forum visited by young people since we know that where anti-Semitism flourishes, so do racism and discrimination. There is also the risk that these hurtful expressions and attitudes will migrate into behaviour at school and beyond. Clearly, this outburst is a wake call that we all have much work to do in countering the poisonous cancer of prejudice. Every parent should ask themselves: where did these teenagers learn these disturbing attitudes? do my children harbour the same harmful sentiments, and are they engaging in this kind of abuse? We call on the Victorian government to introduce mandatory Holocaust education into the school curriculum. The young people, who displayed such shocking insensitivity towards the six million Jews and millions of other victims who were brutally murdered at the hands of the Nazis, all others, must be taught about the universal lessons of the Holocaust and become ambassadors for our country’s fundamental values of plurality, multiculturalism and inclusivity. “
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