Mostyn: ‘Never Again’ message more vital than ever

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Governor-General of Australia Sam Mostyn, and Professor Sabina Kleitman – whose Holocaust-surviving father, Alex Kleytman, was murdered in the Bondi terror attack at the Chanukah by the Sea event – headlined a deeply moving International Holocaust Remembrance Day commemoration at Sydney’s Emanuel Synagogue on January 27.

With the theme of ‘bridging generations’, it was presented by the Sydney Jewish Museum (SJM) and the Australian Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants.

In his opening speech, the latter’s president, Dr George Foster, said,”Alex’s life, shaped by survival of the Shoah, was taken by violence – not in Europe in the 1940s, but in Sydney in December 2025.

“For our survivor community, for their children and grandchildren, the shock was, and is, profound.

“But remembrance is not only about mourning, it is also about responsibility . . . it is not passive, it is an act of vigilance.

“Our task is not only to honour the dead, but to defend the living, to ensure that no community – Jewish or otherwise – is made to feel unsafe, marginalised, or alone.

“Gatherings such as this affirm our shared determination to ensure that such atrocities, whether in Auschwitz or in Bondi, truly will never happen again.”

Professor Kleitman spoke for the first time at a public event about her late father from the specific perspective of him being a Holocaust survivor, and how in his retirement – after a distinguished engineering career since immigrating from Ukraine to Australia in 1992 – “he’d turned his mind to writing books about antisemitism in the former Soviet Union, because he wanted to connect [new] generations with that history”.

Alex Kleytman was only three when World War 2 began, and his family only survived by fleeing to Siberia, on horrific journeys by train and by boat, in which many passengers died.

“His, and his brother’s, bodies were forever deformed by the conditions of not only that journey, but the conditions for survival at that time.

“He always talked about how fortunate he was to survive.”

Professor Kleitman said she felt grateful to be able to speak about the connections between the Holocaust, and what happened on December 14 last year in Bondi Beach, where her father was one of 15 people shot dead.

“During the Holocaust, Jews were killed, and it didn’t matter if they were rich or poor people, young or old, or if they were socialists or capitalists, or religiously observant or secular.

“They were killed simply for being Jews, and exactly the same happened on the 14th of December last year.

“The connection is undeniable. And this intergenerational trauma is no longer intergenerational – it has become real.”

Governor-General Mostyn lamented how “There is a new shadow over this [annual] day of memory . . . and I know that many others who died at Bondi that day [December 14, 2025] had family connections to the Holocaust.

“Never Again – that warning – is of course now more vital than ever, and the theme for today – bridging generations – is deeply necessary,” she said.

“As Governor-General, I’m conscious that Australians, in their many hundreds, came to Government House in Canberra in the 24-48 hours after the tragedy of Bondi, to share their sorrow and their solidarity with the Jewish community. They wrote pages and pages of notes.

“I give you my promise that these are the stories that we’ll share across Australia, and across the world.”

She added, she is working with the SJM to ensure that original copies of the beautiful words in those letters “are entrusted in the care of the museum”.

Among the audience at the commemoration were 11 diplomats, federal MPs Allegra Spender and Tanya Plibersek, state MP Marjorie O’Neill, Jewish communal and interfaith leaders, emergency services personnel, and many Holocaust survivors and descendants.

SJM CEO Kevin Sumption told them “All of your presence tonight honours and reassures us all.”

he commemoration ceremony also included memorial candle lighting and prayers, a minute’s silence, a poetry recital by Miriam Hechtman, and a panel discussion featuring Professor Avril Alba, Professor Jan Lanicek, and 3rd Generation Sydney leader Michelle Levitt.

Musical performances added another poignant layer to the evening, with singers including Rabbi George Mordecai, Gabriella Mordecai, and Ilan Kidron, performing songs such as Fragile by Sting, and the Hebrew song Olam Chesed Yibaneh (the world is built with kindness).