New Perth Holocaust Education Centre opens

A new Holocaust Education Centre opened in Perth on Thursday night, delivering on a $1.8 million WA government election commitment.

The centre, at the JHub Maccabi Community Centre in Yokine, was developed by the Holocaust Institute of Western Australia and will deliver education programs for students, educators and the broader community.

The state funding supported the internal fit-out of the museum space, including exhibition construction, art installations, lighting and graphics. The centre combines exhibition spaces, multimedia displays and survivor testimonies, and presents the Holocaust as a case study in human behaviour, encouraging visitors to examine ethical decision-making and moral courage.

Premier Roger Cook said the centre would ensure Western Australians could learn about one of the darkest chapters in recent history and reflect on the lessons it held. “Educating future generations will help ensure the horrors of the Holocaust are never forgotten and never repeated,” Cook said.

Multicultural interests minister Jessica Stojkovski said the centre would play a vital role in ensuring current and future generations understood the devastating consequences of hatred, prejudice and discrimination. “There is no place in our society for antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism or any form of hatred,” she said.

Mount Lawley MLA Frank Paolino, who made the centre an election commitment, described it as an innovative, world-class education centre where people could better understand the Holocaust from a sociological and psychological perspective.

The state government has provided more than $8.3 million to the JHub Maccabi Community Centre since 2020. The Commonwealth is providing operational funding for the education centre, announced by the Prime Minister on a visit last year.

Speaking at the opening, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister Patrick Gorman traced the site’s history to the Jewish community members who door-knocked across Perth’s suburbs in the 1950s to raise money to buy and build on the land.

Among them was Joe Berinson, who went on to become the member for Perth and a federal and state minister, and who was present at the opening of the former centre on the site in 1973. Gorman quoted Berinson telling a heated parliamentary debate: “I am only interested in the substance of the problem and the substance is antisemitism, racism, prejudice.”

He said he had first heard of the determination to build a new, safe community centre while sitting at Joan Hillman’s home in Dianella as a new local candidate, and that the project had since been championed by Geoff Midalia and Michael Levitt.

Gorman said the build had presented an unusual problem for the federal government. “It was not completed on time. It was completed early,” he said, noting the Infrastructure Department had been required to bring forward its payments. He also thanked Holocaust Institute of WA president Sol Majteles for his belief that “child by child, human by human we can eliminate hate”.

Former treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who attended the opening and who oversaw funding commitments for Holocaust centres around Australia while in office, said the centre was more important than ever at a time of rising antisemitism.

“As Elie Wiesel reminds us, action is the most powerful remedy to indifference, and one hopes this museum will honour the memory of those that we have lost and make safer the lives of those who carry on,” Frydenberg told The AJN. “The Jewish community in Perth has done a remarkable job bringing this project to life and I hope people from around the country come to see the exhibitions and the vitality of this new precinct.”