International Holocaust Remembrance Day 27 January
On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we pause to reflect on an act of inhumanity so vast and horrific, it is almost beyond reckoning. Yet reckon with it we must.
As we give thanks for all who survived, we hold on to the memory of the victims. We hold on to all those names, all those faces, all those stories. And, even with the passing of so much time, we are haunted by the terrible truth that they add up to six million.
That most infamous of numbers falls across the decades like a shadow. It holds within it the immense multitudes of Jewish lives and futures stolen with a pitiless cruelty that remains scarcely fathomable in its evil.
Consider all that the Nazis and their allies and enablers robbed from the world. All the energy and inspiration. All the talent and potential. All the dreams and aspirations. All the love. Entire family lines ended, communities torn apart. Lives upended, uprooted and changed forever.
In the coldness of its calculation and the vicious discipline of its execution, the Holocaust was a ruthless campaign of extermination targeting a people simply because of who they were.
Yet the Jewish people still stand, proud and resilient, bolstered by the great foundations of identity, tradition, community and faith.
More than eight decades since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, we repeat the vow: Never again.
We repeat it because Jewish people should never have had to know such pain again. Yet, as we have been so horrifically reminded by the 7th of October atrocity carried out by Hamas and last month's terrorist attack at Bondi Beach, the darkness that underwrote the Holocaust is a darkness that still dwells in too many hearts.
The Australian Jewish community found hope and safety in our country after the Holocaust. The Jewish community is part of our Australian story, and to the even greater future that is within our reach.
Just as we embraced Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust, we wrap our arms around the Jewish community now.
The safety, freedom and hope that Australia represented to the Jewish community is something we must all commit to protect.
Australia stands against antisemitism because it stands in opposition to all we are as a country, the nation we have built together over generations with care and compassion.
On this most solemn day of remembrance, we join you in our shared humanity. And together we tend the flame of memory, ensuring its glow will live on in the hearts of future generations.
https://www.pm.gov.au/media/international-holocaust-remembrance-day-0
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