Jewish school children taunted with ‘Heil Hitler’
A NSW parliamentary inquiry in antisemitism has heard how the Jewish community has experienced shocking incidents of hatred.
A NSW parliamentary inquiry into antisemitism has been told about Jewish school children being afraid to wear their uniforms in public, Jews being excluded, stigmatised and gaslighted, and called “cockroaches”.
Moriah College principal Miriam Hasofer told the inquiry that a year 9 girl had been “chased” up Queen’s Park Road near Sydney’s eastern suburbs school by a woman repeatedly shouting “F— the Jews” and “free Palestine”.
In another incident, a person drove past the school gates and “gave a Nazi salute”, and last year a man driving along the road next to the school yelled “F— the Jews”.
Emanuel School principal Linda Emms said students were sometimes targeted outside of school, online and on the sporting field, detailing an incident where an 11-year-old child was “taunted” with comments of “Heil Hitler” while playing sport.
She said students “hid their Jewish identity in public by covering their uniforms”.
Karen Forgach from Youth HEAR detailed how, on her wedding day, her husband and his groomsmen were accosted by a group of men and called “dirty Jews” and “cockroaches” who “deserved to be gassed”.
National Council of Jewish Women Australia (NCJWA) president Lynda Ben-Menashe told the inquiry that her daughter, who worked as a midwife at Bankstown Hospital, was advised not to wear her name badge because her family name is Hebrew-sounding.
Holocaust survivor Mark Spigelman gave a moving account of his first day at school in Sydney, describing it as “heaven” after what he had gone through in Poland.
But he said since October 7, he doesn’t recognise the Australia he fell in love with all those years ago.
“Freedom of speech is great, but I like to have freedom of religion,” he said, before he addressed the burning of the Addass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne.
“The president of that synagogue is Martin Spigelman, my cousin. Here I am, a Holocaust survivor – most of my family was murdered in Auschwitz – and suddenly they’re burning synagogues in Melbourne,” he said.
“What are we going to do about it? We’re a multicultural society. If we let antisemitism, which is really racism, spread then it wont stop with the Jews.”
The NSW Legislative Council launched an inquiry into antisemitism in NSW in February. Its purpose is to consider the “underlying increasing incidents of antisemitism across the state, and the threat that these incidents present to social cohesion”.
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