Antisemitism is no longer abstract

The Bondi Beach massacre was a moment that shattered something fundamental for me. It came after more than two years of a sharp rise in antisemitism in Australia following October 7, and it transformed an abstract fear into something deeply personal.

Like many Jews, I had already been living with heightened awareness and concern. After Bondi, that concern became a constant question about personal safety for myself, for my family, and for the society we live in.

I was born in Poland in 1940. As a child, my parents and I were forced into hiding in Będzin, and later into the ghetto in Środula. We fled during the deportations to Birkenau, and I survived the Holocaust disguised as a girl.

Liberation came on a farm near Auschwitz. In 1949, my family immigrated to Australia, where I rebuilt my life. I became a surgeon, a researcher, and later an academic, teaching and working in universities in Australia, Britain and Israel.

I have spent decades studying history, disease and human survival – and I have spent my life bearing witness as a child survivor of the Holocaust.