The federal government has pledged $4.4 million to build a national Holocaust education centre in Canberra on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp.
There's a further $2 million to upgrade the Holocaust Education Centre in Western Australia.
Ernst Willheim recalled how his father survived two concentration camps but his aunt was murdered. (Dominic Giannini/AAP PHOTOS)
Mr Willheim was born in Sweden during World War II and came to Australia with his family in 1948.
His father spent time as a prisoner at two of the most notorious Nazi concentration camps, Dachau and Buchenwald, for being both a Jew and a socialist.
"Like most people, he wouldn't talk much but I know the treatment there was quite horrific and many people actually died," he said on International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Monday.
When he was able to leave the camp, a friend arranged a visa to Norway.
Mr Willheim's parents moved around Europe as Nazi Germany expanded and his grandmother, aunt and uncle in Austria were murdered.
"To give you some illustration, the aunt who was murdered was in her fourth year of medicine in Vienna University," he said.
"She was taken to one of the many sites where she was paraded in front of a trench and machine-gunned, along with all the other Jews, that's the way people were treated."
The national centre will mean people can remember what happened and ensure it never happens again.
"We live in a time where there is, unfortunately, a lot of racism against Jewish people," Me Willheim said.
"I can understand that there is a diversity of views about what is happening in Palestine, I think the ACT Jewish community, like any community, would have a range of views.
A national Holocaust education centre will help ensure it never happens again, Ernst Willheim said. (Dominic Giannini/AAP PHOTOS)
"But what is so sad is that some people are turning their hostility about what is happening in Palestine towards Australian Jewish people and that is pure racism and totally unacceptable."
The Canberra memorial would be a key stop for thousands of visiting students each year, former Labor MP Mike Kelly said.
The Holocaust arose from "1000 cuts of small pieces of legislation, of propaganda, of distorting people's minds over a period of time", he said.
"There is a massive opportunity to make this ... a part of that itinerary, and that is essential because that there's less and less of our wonderful survivors with us to tell their stories.
"There is more and more misinformation appearing in social media of Holocaust denial and less understanding of what that was all about.
"If we don't have that understanding, we don't have the opportunity to avoid these things happening again."
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese used the anniversary to declare anti-Semitism needed to be stamped out.
As we mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, our observance carries a powerful message about the enduring strength of the Jewish people, and about our unwavering commitment to combat antisemitism. — Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) pic.twitter.com/jFqYJrJIA9January 26, 2025
"It's important we have full knowledge of what occurred, where hate leads," he told reporters in WA.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton attended an anniversary service at the Holocaust Institute of WA on Monday.
The coalition has pledged $2 million for the institute to support education about the Holocaust and October 7 attack.
"We want to put more money into the Holocaust museums, we want to make sure school children can really get an appreciation of what it meant during that period of history for six million people to be gassed," Mr Dutton said.
Six million Jewish people were systematically murdered in the Holocaust by the Nazi regime, about 1.1 million of them at Auschwitz.
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