Anne Sarzin, An ‘intimate history’ of Australia and the Holocaust, J-Wire, 24 February 2025

Book review by Dr Anne Sarzin

The publication of a new, scholarly and authoritative book on Australia and the Holocaust—The Palgrave Handbook of Australia and the Holocaust to be released by Palgrave Macmillan this year —was announced for the first time by a panel presenting their collaborative research and writing at the conference of the Australian Association of Jewish Studies held in February at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum.

This year seems a particularly apt year for the book’s publication. Our community has been rocked and destabilised by pernicious displays of Jew-hatred and anti-Zionism. Concurrent with these destructive waves of racism, there has been an outpouring of testimonies from Jewish refugee families, gratefully recollecting the sanctuary and haven they found pre- and post-Second World War in Australia, where they could raise their children in peace and safety. Nonetheless, looking back through the decades, it is a complicated and somewhat fraught history, given the restrictions Australia imposed on Jewish migration prior to the war. Those who were fortunate enough to gain admission to the lucky country have generally made a sterling contribution to many Australian fields of endeavour, such as medicine, law, the arts and philanthropy.

Altogether, the four authors of this new book–Professor Avril Alba of the University of Sydney, Associate Professor Jan Lanicek and Professor Ruth Balint from the University of New South Wales, and Associate Professor Jayne Persian of the University of Southern Queensland—have written thirty chapters, providing an historical survey and an overview of the multiple impacts of the Holocaust on Australia.

The year of publication, 2025, marks eighty years since the end of the Second World War in Europe with the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany on 8 May 1945. ‘The European experience was not as distant from Australia as its geography and its history might first suggest,’ Professor Alba said. ‘That the events of the Second World War and the Holocaust in Europe have continued to be part of the Australian story is the central claim and premise of our book.’

Professor Alba pointed out that the state governments of New South Wales and Victoria have promoted Holocaust education, which is now mandatory for Years 9 and 10 students, thus reinforcing the significance of Holocaust remembrance.

In the introductory chapter, co-authors Professor Alba and Associate Professor Lanicek (Professor of Modern European and Jewish History) highlight the strong linkage between the discourse concerning Holocaust history and commemoration and Australia’s continuing struggle to come to terms with its legacy of persecution and dispossession of its First Nations peoples. The authors state that recent efforts to foster interest in William Cooper’s protest against the Nazi persecution of Jews on Kristallnacht in November 1938 have been partially motivated by the use of Holocaust memory, thereby reminding Australians about historical injustices perpetrated against Indigenous peoples. ‘The events of the Holocaust continue to have relevance regarding the unresolved legacies of Australia’s colonial past and present,’ the authors state.

According to Professors Alba and Lanicek, who have edited the book, their goal is ‘to unpack and lay bare’ many of these complexities and to make sense of these histories and their resonance in Australian culture and politics today. ‘Our motivation has been to bridge two separate field of enquiry, Holocaust and Australian histories, in order to show what has been achieved by scholars in the last decades, and to propose new, cutting-edge approaches for researchers.’

The four authors envisage this book serving diverse purposes and demographics, and trust that it will be a valued resource for researchers, educators, museum professionals and other stakeholders. ‘We aim to encourage discussions about difficult histories that are crucial for societies attempting to face their own pasts,’ Professor Alba said.

The book is divided into four sections: the first titled ‘History’  focuses on the  historical connections between Australia and Europe prior, during and after the Holocaust; the second section, ‘Reverberations’,  analyses the long-term impact of the events of the Holocaust in Australia; the third section, ‘Memory and Representation’, looks at different forms of memory and interrogates their influence on the meanings Australians associate with the Holocaust and their impact on Australian identity and politics; and finally, the section ‘Australia, the Holocaust and Genocide’, connects the history and legacy of the Holocaust with colonial histories, especially the persecution and dispossession of Australia’s First Nations peoples.

At the panel’s conference presentation, Professor Jayne Persian, who has researched the records of war criminals and right-wing ideologues, said that until 1992, there were 800 cases, three trials and no convictions of war criminals. She added that Professor Konrad Kwiet, Resident Historian of the Sydney Jewish Museum, has estimated that more than 5000 war criminals entered Australia. Some 170,000 displaced persons were resettled in Australia between 1947 and 1952. Jewish groups immediately protested that they included Nazi collaborators, a claim dismissed by Immigration minister Arthur Calwell as a ‘farrago of nonsense’. Australia received extradition requests from Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union between the 1950s and mid-1960s that were refused. Individual Jews who recognised former Nazis were often threatened and attacked.

Professor Ruth Balint, in her presentation, interrogated the meanings of ‘sanctuary’. Jewish refugees, she said, were faced with racially biased government and immigration restrictions, but they also experienced discrimination from the Australian Jewish community. Inter-married families, so called ‘mixed marriages’, did not receive the same measure of support as a result of the exclusionary policy of organisations such as the Joint, which viewed assimilation as a great danger.

Professor Suzanne Rutland chaired the panel discussion at the conference.

Avril Alba is Professor of Holocaust Studies and Jewish Civilisation and Head of the School of Languages and Cultures (University of Sydney)

The Palgrave Handbook of Australia and the Holocaust

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

1925