Nina Bassat: We felt betrayed by leaders’ silence

Melbourne Holocaust Museum Foundation board member Nina Bassat gave powerful evidence yesterday in the final session of the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion’s hearing blocks.

The 87-year-old Holocaust survivor said Australian political leaders at all tiers of government had failed the Jewish community in their silence on antisemitism, and warned that the word “genocide” is being dangerously and harmfully misused in debate over the Gaza war.

Bassat arrived in Australia in 1949 after surviving the Holocaust in a ghetto and in hiding in Poland, followed by two years in a displaced persons camp in Germany. Only four members of her extended family survived.

She went on to a career as a lawyer and decades of Jewish communal leadership, including two terms as president of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, and the presidency of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.

SORROWED BY THE LOSS OF EMPATHY IN SOCIETY