‘This is now a widespread blackness’

To the Royal Commission on Antisemitism, My name is Miriam Gould and I am 86 years old. I came to Australia as a 11 month old baby in 1940 and was interned, with my German-born parents, as an enemy alien at the camp in Tatura, regional Victoria.

My history?

My father, Werner Baer, was seized by the Nazis on Kristallnacht in 1938 and was taken to Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp outside Berlin. My mother was able to have him released, after his head was shaved and he had been beaten, on the promise that they would leave Germany. And so they did, winding up in Singapore, where I was born, to be later interned by the British government, fearful of a fifth column, on the Queen Mary and taken to Australia in 1940.

After the war, my parents, immediately seeking naturalisation and recognising Australia as a land of peace and opportunity, were able to make a wonderful life for themselves. My father’s great musical gifts were recognised and he would later be awarded an MBE and Queen’s Jubilee Medal for services to Australian music.

I would inherit my mother’s joy in literature and become a senior English teacher with pastoral care responsibilities, notably for over 20 years at Mt Scopus Memorial College, a Jewish day school in Melbourne. Our family would expand with the addition of children, their partners and grandchildren.

With great pride and joy, we knew we were Australian. And, of course, we were Jewish.

Because even with the passing of years, our history would never be forgotten. My mother’s stories of watching helplessly the rise of Nazism, of having to give up schooling to endure a dressmaking apprenticeship, so that, on her farsighted father’s advice, she would have a profession which could be taken easily to a foreign land, of being fearful when someone was late home, of seeing her brother leave for Brazil and stay hidden as an illegal immigrant … and finally desperately seizing those visas to Shanghai as where else were Jews accepted?

Of being a pariah, with despair and fear the only companions.

Of knowing of the concentration camps where millions were slaughtered.

This history is not easily forgotten.

And now?

It started as a small black cloud on our horizon.

Then with the ghastly massacre in Israel on October 7, 2023, the black clouds gathered.

I am not here to apologise for Israel’s war against Gaza. I will, however, say that Israel has become part of my being. We have a large, close family there and our connection goes back to the 1920s. I recognise, with all my Australian heart, that, after the Holocaust, knowing there is a Jewish homeland is central to my life.

I have studied the history of this tiny area, surrounded by hostile peoples, waging war in its struggle to stay alive and my great wish is that this history could be known and understood by those not intimately connected and all too ready to throw stones, even firebombs.

Yes.

I wept when the Adass Israel Synagogue burnt; I grieved when my beloved Jewish school was graffitied with hateful anti-Jewish words; I despaired at the Sunday marches, carrying flags with bitter slogans; I was horrified that Jewish schools needed to hire so much security, that Jewish children were afraid to wear their school uniforms, that youths in traditional Jewish garb were targeted by cars as they walked supposedly peaceful streets.

And then on December 14, 2025, the Bondi Beach massacre where men plotted and planned to callously murder Jews, even Jewish children, celebrating a sacred day. Why? Because they were Jews.

There are no words.

Is this my Australia? This black hatred?

I recognise a change in myself.

I have never worried about saying I was Jewish. Now I do. I have a mezuzah on my door, an Israeli sticker on my fridge and I am concerned that a delivery person may see them. I don’t tell my hairdresser where I taught for over 20 years as it is a Jewish school. I know that young Jewish people, including my loved ones, are involved with security at our holy places and that when there are Jewish gatherings, the location is kept secret.

I fear that we are no longer safe. I fear that history may repeat itself.

This is no longer the beginning of antisemitism. This is now a widespread blackness, perhaps associating Australian Jews with what has happened in Gaza, perhaps building on what I didn’t or wouldn’t realise was there before – a deeply ingrained antisemitism, which has now come to the fore.

I believe education is the only answer. Wiser heads than mine should grapple with how mindsets can be changed, how tolerance can be built – and how Australia can again become the land my parents knew as accepting and enlightened.

I can only hope.

A member of the Melbourne Jewish community, Miriam Gould is a loving wife, parent and grandparent, who taught at Mt Scopus Memorial College for over 20 years. This is her submission to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.

The deadline for submissions has now been extended to June 14. More info: asc.royalcommission.gov.au