Don’t let responses to Bondi silence our voices!

 Written by: Central Committee, CPA (M-L) on 20 December 2025

 

It is now six days since the December14 massacre of Jewish Australians at Bondi Beach.

The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) condemns this event, acknowledges the grief of those affected, and offers its condolences to the Australian Jewish community.

We draw on a long history of opposition to anti-Semitism within the Communist movement. Jews played a prominent part in the development of Marxism and were in positions of leadership in the Soviet Union during the attempts under Lenin and Stalin to build socialism. 

Many underground anti-Nazis Resistance movements across Europe were led by Communist Jews during World War 2.  Many German communists lost their lives fighting Nazism and Hitler.

Hitler was so enraged by the participation of Jews in the Communist movement that he coined the hyphenated term Jewish-Bolshevism to identify the close relationship between Jewish activists and the Communists.

In 1931, Stalin wrote a reply to an inquiry by the Jewish News Agency in the United States:

In answer to your inquiry :

National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Anti-semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism.

Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism. Anti-semitism is dangerous for the working people as being a false path that leads them off the right road and lands them in the jungle. Hence Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable, sworn enemies of anti-semitism.

In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty.

J. Stalin
January 12, 1931

To our knowledge, this is the only statement by a major world leader, issued at the time of the rise of German Nazism, to so whole-heartedly denounce anti-semitism. 

We claim this statement by Stalin as our own.

We abhor and condemn all anti-semitism and all forms of racism and vilifications of cultures, nationalities and peoples of colour.

However, we do not support the Bondi massacre being used to pursue other agendas in the name of anti-semitism.

Anti-semitism must not silence or criminalise condemnation of Israel’s anti-Palestinian genocide.

The Jewish faith is not Zionism. Zionism is a political ideology, rooted in colonialism and imperialism, that demanded an exclusive homeland of their own for Jews who wished to leave countries where they had suffered the violence of pogroms and institutionalised discrimination.

It was developed towards the end of the 19th Century and embraced by the wealthy anti-Communist Zionist leadership in US and Europe throughout 20th Century.  Zionist leadership joined western imperialism in actively vilifying and attacking the young Soviet Union and communists. Zionism received a huge boost in the wake of the Holocaust when upwards of 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis. That homeland, however, could only be created out of another people’s country, and that country was Palestine. Zionist leadership weaponised the World War 2 Holocaust for its own colonial capitalist ambitions in the Middle East.  This weaponisation of the Holocaust continues today to justify Israel and US Palestinian genocide and occupation of the West Bank.   

The peak Zionist leadership forms a part of the capitalist and imperialist ruling class oppressing and exploiting Palestinians and its own Jewish working class and working people.

Attacks on Zionism can be inspired by anti-semitism; attacks on Zionism, equally, can be devoid of anti-semitism and inspired by belief in the human rights of all people. Criticism of   Israel as a Zionist state in relation to its own genocidal killings of tens of thousands of Palestinians must not be prevented by labelling such criticism anti-semitic. 

Democratic rights must be protected.

Politicians serving the ruling class always assess the opportunities for restricting people’s rights to protest. Spurious reasons are seized upon.  

Over the past decade, successive governments have continued to expand police powers and criminal penalties.

In 2016, the NSW Baird government introduced move-on powers near mining sites after coal seam gas protests.

In 2022, the Perrottet government in NSW made it an offence to block major roads and entry to important facilities after blockades at Port Botany.

In 2023, the Malinauskas government in SA rushed harsh anti-protest laws through after an Extinction Rebellion action temporarily closed one city street. Obstructing a public place was deemed punishable by a $50,000 fine or imprisonment for three months.

This year, the Minns government in NSW created move-on powers for protests near places of worship —powers the Supreme Court later ruled unconstitutional.

The Victorian Assistant Police Commissioner decided to declare the entire Melbourne CBD and surrounds as a “designated area” for 6 months from 30 November 2025. The Designation gives Victoria Police extraordinary powers. Anyone in the Melbourne CBD over the next six months can be stopped and searched for no reason or be ordered to leave the area if they refuse to remove a face covering. This includes people engaged in peaceful protest.

On December 18, NSW Premier Minns declared, “So we’re looking at reforms whereby when there is a terrorism designation in the state, the police commissioner may not accept applications for protests on the grounds that it will both stretch police resources and secondly, add to community disharmony.”

But it is not just restrictions aimed at support for Palestine. Minns has also indicated his support for arming the private Community Security Group, a body boasting of hundreds of members in NSW and Victoria, and reported to have close ties to Israel’s special operations organisation, Mossad. This would be state approval for the use of violence against critics of Israel and legalise vigilante groups.

Thanks to the murders at Bondi committed by two adherents of ISIS, the democratic rights of the whole community are under attack. Bondi has given politicians who have been pushing an anti-democratic agenda the excuse they are so keen to use.

The defence of the rights of all must take precedence over sectional considerations.

Prime Minister Albanese has been weak in responding to criticism of his response to anti-semitism.  In July 2024, he appointed Israeli advocate and immediate past president of the pro-Zionist Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Jillian Segal, as the government’s Special Envoy to Combat Anti-semitism.

Segal and her husband had been major donors to the ultra-right anti-immigrant lobby group Advance which had campaigned prominently against the Yes referendum. Despite slandering pro-Palestinian demonstrators, she remained silent when Nazis helped organise the anti-immigration March for Australia on August 31, and also when some 60 Nazis paraded outside the NSW Parliament on November 8 with police approval under a banner reading “Abolish the Jewish lobby”.

This is the same Segal who released a 13-point Plan to counter anti-semitism which adopted the definition of anti-semitism advanced by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). The latter definition conflates anti-semitism with anti-Zionism. It was denounced by nine Australian Jewish organisations. Jesse McNicoll, of Jewish Voices of Inner Sydney said: “Australian Jews who value justice for all people are deeply concerned about the proposal to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism. This definition purposefully blurs the line between real antisemitism and legitimate criticism of the State of Israel. Around the world the IHRA definition has been used to silence debate, and we are alarmed to see attempts here in Australia to use it to suppress scrutiny of Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank.”

On July 10, the Jewish Council of Australia warned that Segal’s Plan risks undermining Australia’s democratic freedoms, inflaming community divisions, and entrenching selective approaches to racism that serve political agendas.

“The Council,” it said, “criticised the plan’s emphasis on surveillance, censorship, and punitive control over the funding of cultural and educational institutions: measures straight out of Trump’s authoritarian playbook. We caution that some of the recommendations  — including visa powers and judicial inquiries into student activity — risk censoring criticism of Israel, deepening racism, and failing to meaningfully address the root causes of antisemitism.”

Albanese was aware of concerns about Segal’s plan voiced by civil libertarians, unions, peace activists and Jews, but criticism of his allegedly soft response to the Plan has led him, as of December 18, to completely capitulate to the Zionist influencers and declare that the Government is taking action on all 13 recommendations outlined in the Plan and would fully adopt the Segal report.

The appointment of Segal as the Special Envoy was wrong; the creation of a Special Envoy was wrong.  A position such as this should embrace the whole community, or, as Judith Treanor, of Jews Against the Occupation ‘48 said: there should be “a whole-of-society approach that unites communities instead of dividing them”.

A Special Envoy for Human Rights would prioritise all racism and division. It would tackle anti-semitism alongside anti-immigrant racism and criminalise calls for remigration (sending all non-White migrants back to the places they, or earlier members of their families, came from). It would require action to stop institutionalised racism against the First Peoples.

People will not be silenced

There is a significant, encouraging and growing push-back by communities opposing division, racism and clamping down on democratic rights. It will take many forms, develop unevenly, and require courage in the face of state violence and the threat of violence and vilification. 

But people will not be silenced. Our strength lies in our unity as a class, not in division on the grounds of race, colour or religion. 

We will not let the weaponisation of allegations of antisemitism against pro-Palestinian activists in any way diminish our determination to act against the genocide perpetrated by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank.

We repeat the unanimous call of the rebellious miners at the 1854 Eureka Stockade for people “irrespective of nationality, religion and colour, to salute the Southern Cross as the refuge of all the oppressed from all countries on earth.”

 

Remain firmly opposed to Zionism, anti-Semitism and all forms of racism

Written by: Nick G. and Alice M. on 11 December 2024

 

(Above: Nasser Mashni denounces synagogue arson at last Sunday's rally)

Ever since the start of the current Zionist Israeli aggression against Gaza, on October 7, 2023, attempts have been made to equate criticism of Israel and Zionism with anti-Semitism.

The Zionist lobby in Australia is particularly vociferous and influential in using allegations of anti-Semitism to attack supporters of the Palestinian people and critics of Israel’s genocide, many of whom are Jewish people. 

People in the media and politics who have defended “Israel’s right to defend itself” by committing wholesale genocide have rushed to condemn any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism every time the Zionist lobby has demanded it. They have sent their police to harass and arrest demonstrators against Zionist crimes.

The arson attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne’s South East is a case in point. 

This was real anti-Semitism at its worst. 

It is a hate crime just as was the mass killing of Muslim worshippers in New Zealand. There is silence surrounding other hates crimes targeting Muslims in our community.  A replica bomb was left on a car in the driveway of a house flying the Palestinian flag in Sydney.  

The family home of the founder of the Burgertory chain, Palestinian activist Hash Tayeh, was firebombed last April in Melbourne, the second time in the past five months that arsonists attacked a property connected to him. 

A driveway of a Melbourne house, displaying Palestinian flag and calls for a ceasefire, was graffitied with abusive language.  There are many unpublicised political and racist acts against Palestinian supporters.

Last Sunday night a school bus belonging to Adelaide Islamic school IQRA College was set on fire and badly damaged in a blatant act of Islamophobia.  It was parked outside bus driver’s house, and deliberately lit before midnight.

Quite correctly, the Muslim community and supporters of Palestine have denounced the synagogue attack.

The Islamic Council of Victoria said it was “saddened” by the attack, and “reiterates that the right of Australians to practice their faith and worship without fear must be upheld, and that places of worship should be respected as spiritual and community havens.”

Hash Tayeh, angered by the double standards surrounding treatment of hate crimes in Australia, nevertheless tweeted “My heart breaks for the synagogue that was firebombed, and I want to help rebuild it.”

At the Palestinian solidarity rally on December 8, Australia Palestine Advocacy Network president Nasser Mashni addressed the crowd, condemning the attack. “Whoever set fire to that synagogue is a racist, is a fascist, is a Nazi,” Mr Mashni said. 

The message to anyone who took part in the firebombing who may have come from the ranks of Palestinian supporters was clear: “Piss off!”

At all pro Palestine rallies held every Sunday since 7 October 2023, Mashni and other speakers repeatedly condemn anti-Semitism.  “Anti-Semitism and all forms of racism have no place here!” they loudly proclaim to thunderous applause and cheering by tens of thousands.

There is little point speculating about who may have been involved: Nazis, or those who mistakenly think that they can show support for Palestine by using Nazi methods.  

The act itself was wrong and only plays into the hands of Zionists by lending credibility to their accusations of anti-Semitism and calls for what are essentially protections of Zionist advocacy.

It is provocation and lays the ground for calls to ban Palestinian rallies, roll out more so-called “anti-terror” powers for the state and armed forces, and jailing protestors.  Most of these state powers will continue to be used against the people in many struggles.

From this it can be expected that there will be further surveillance and harassment of those who denounce Zionist aggression and genocide. 

As Communists, we have always condemned anti-Semitism and racism in all its forms and disguises.  

In the 1930s, and in the shadow of Nazi attacks on Jews, many political leaders of the day were asked to denounce anti-Semitism. Most were silent. Only Stalin made the statement that Jews wanted to hear.

Replying to an Inquiry of the Jewish News Agency in the United States, on January 12, 1931, Stalin said: “National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Anti-semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism.

“Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism. Anti-semitism is dangerous for the working people as being a false path that leads them off the right road and lands them in the jungle. Hence Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable, sworn enemies of anti-semitism.

“In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty.”

No other major world leader made such a forthright condemnation of anti-Semitism or explained its dangers to working people. Not only did Stalin strongly condemn and denounce anti-Semitism in words, the USSR was the only country to open its borders to persecuted Jewish people fleeing Nazis occupations, pogroms and the holocaust.  No other European country would let in Jewish people seeking escape from the Nazi holocaust.

Rather than pandering to the Zionist lobby, the authorities must take the lead in treating all racist hates crimes with the severity they deserve. 

Supporters of the Palestinian resistance cannot be silenced or intimidated.

They are firm in their opposition to Zionist aggression.

They are firm in their opposition to anti-Semitism and all forms of racism.

Opposition to Zionism is not anti-Semitism.

 Written by: Nick G. on 27 November 2023

Ever since international solidarity with the Palestinian resistance to Zionist aggression against Gaza emerged after October7, the Zionist lobby and its supporters have charged their opponents with anti-Semitism.

The Zionist lobby knows well the effectiveness of this charge. As one group of Semites (the term originally included Palestinians and other Arabs, and Akkadians, and Phoenicians), the Jews had been attacked by Christians for their alleged involvement in the crucifixion of Christ and barred from most employment and professions throughout Europe. Pogroms attacked Jewish communities over hundreds of years before Hitler elevated ethnic cleansing into wholesale genocide. Thus, from the late 1800s on, anti-Semitism was promoted by some, and opposed by others, as a specific form of hatred of Jews.

The German variant of the fascist movement that began in Italy under Mussolini, took anti-Semitism and anti-Communism as its targets. Hitler often spoke of them in the same breath as “Jewish Bolshevism”. The National Socialist Program of 1920 clearly stated its intention to deny citizenship to Jews and people of Jewish descent, and five years later, Hitler’s Mein Kampf further developed his racial hatred of Jews as a people inferior to the Aryan “master race”.  

There was nothing hidden or concealed about Hitler’s intentions towards the Jews. As his Nazi Party grew in strength, world leaders were asked by Jewish organisations to take a stand against anti-Semitism. Many were affected by the disease themselves or were afraid to alienate those in their electoral bases who were anti-Jewish. Only one leader made a public condemnation of anti-Semitism,
and he was the head of a country which had a long history of hatred of Jews and of pogroms against their communities.

Stalin’s forceful denunciation of anti-Semitism

On January 12, 1931, Joseph Stalin replied to an inquiry from the Jewish News Agency in the United States:

In answer to your inquiry :

National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Anti-semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism.

Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism. Anti-semitism is dangerous for the working people as being a false path that leads them off the right road and lands them in the jungle. Hence Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable, sworn enemies of anti-semitism.

In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty.

J. Stalin
January 12, 1931

Not one other leader of the so-called “democracies” denounced anti-Semitism so forcefully. Indeed many did not at all.

Despite knowing of Hitler’s desire to cleanse Germany (and Europe) of Jews, and knowing of the existence of concentration camps, they refused to condemn Hitler.

On the other hand, and knowing of Hitler’s plans for war and his “final solution” of the “Jewish problem”, Stalin had Pravda publish his reply to the US Jewish News Agency on November 30, 1936 so as to provide leadership on this question among the Soviet people.

Anti-Semitism not an issue for Menzies.

This stands in marked contrast to people like Robert Menzies. As Attorney-General in the Lyons United Australia Party government, Menzies admired Hitler’s government for its suppression of the workers’ movement, and ignored its growing record of anti-Semitism. In 1933, he had acknowledged the “barbaric and medieval persecution” to which Jews in Europe were “apparently” being subjected, but the following year he unsuccessfully attempted to exclude Czech Jewish Communist Egon Kisch from entering Australia on an anti-fascist speaking tour. 

Whilst still Attorney-General (and Minister for Industry) he toured Europe from April to August 1938, and included Nazi Germany on his itinerary. Persecution of Jews was in full swing (it was only three months before the notorious Nazi pogrom known as the Kristallnacht) yet all he could talk of was how wonderful was Hitler’s leadership.

Addressing the Australian Women's National League in Melbourne in October after his return, he said “If you were Germans, you would take off your hats to Herr Hitler, who does really rule Germany and is not a figurehead. He has produced results. He has been able to bluff and the other nations have not been able to call his bluff.”

The Melbourne Argus, Nov. 15th, 1938 said “In his recent visit to Germany he (Mr. Menzies), had been impressed with German industrial efficiency and with the attitude of responsibility of the big industrial enterprises to the welfare of their employees and their children.”

Reporting on the same speech by Menzies, the Sydney Morning Herald quoted him as saying “The dictator in Germany had been guilty of unspeakably bad things, but there were also points in the dictatorship that Australia could learn from. He had been impressed with German industrial efficiency.”

On July 17, 1939 in Perth, Menzies said “If Herr Hitler were to be considered fairly and dispassionately, it must be admitted that he had done remarkable things for his country.”

A woman shouted an interjection: “Concentration camps, my God!”

Menzies replied that he regarded it as a cardinal rule to be fair to one's opponents. In other words, the woman should be fair to Hitler!

Following the death of Lyons in April 1939, Menzies became UAP leader and Prime Minister. In September, he announced as his “melancholy duty” that as a consequence of the UK declaring war on Germany, Australia was also at war.

But at this stage it was a “phoney war”, with no real action being taken by the US and France to stop Hitler. That lasted for eight months until May 1940, when Germany invaded France. Up until this point, Menzies was still defending Hitler. 

“I have a great admiration for the Nazi organisation of Germany. There is a case for Germany against Czechoslovakia. We must not destroy Hitlerism, or talk about shooting Hitler,” he told Parliament (Hansard, April 22, 1940).

Zionism has inherited the spirit of anti-Semitism

It is all very well for the heirs of Menzies and their look-alikes in the Labor Party to decry anti-Semitism, but they do so only as a defense of Israel as an imperialist enclave within the Middle East.

When the Israelis engage in Nazi-like suppression of the Palestinians, they are silent. 

When Israel established itself through terrorist violence of the Haganah, and of the Irgun and Stern gangs, Zionism fully embraced a racist ideology of conquest and suppression. As early as 1895, Theodor Herzl had proclaimed that “The superiority of Jewish colonial rights over the rights of the indigenous Palestinians has always been the hallmark of the Zionist movement.” He had the Nazi concept of lebensraum (the right of conquest for seizure of living room) before Nazism existed and made it its own. It still manifests itself in Israel’s illegal seizure of Palestinian territory following the Zionist state’s creation in 1947, and in its state-supported invasion of the West Bank by so-called settlers who impose their will by way of anti-Palestinian pogroms.

To achieve its attempted crushing of the Palestinians, Israel has imposed the Warsaw Ghetto writ large upon Gaza. Announcing a “complete siege” of Gaza two days after Hamas’ attack on Israel, the latter’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, was straightforward about his view of Palestinians. “There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything will be closed. We are fighting against human animals and will act accordingly.” When the Palestinians stage their own Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the Israelis stage their own Nazi demolition of the ghetto they have imposed.

It is one thing to slander the supporters of the Palestinian resistance as anti-Semitic. It is a blindness to the spirit of anti-Semitism that lies at the heart of Zionism and its supporters.

This is the Nazi-like spirit that infuses the comments of Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu who said that dropping a “nuclear bomb” on the Gaza Strip is “an option”.

Eliyahu, a minister from the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, said that “one of Israel’s options in the war in Gaza is to drop a nuclear bomb on the Strip,” Daily Times of Israel reported.

Speaking a radio interview, Eliyahu also “voices his objection to allowing any humanitarian aid into Gaza.”

“We wouldn’t hand the Nazis humanitarian aid,” the minister said, adding that “there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza.”

The far-right minister also said that the Palestinian population “can go to Ireland or deserts, the monsters in Gaza should find a solution by themselves.”
He added: “Anyone waving a Palestinian or Hamas flag shouldn’t continue living on the face of the earth.”

Again, the same spirit infuses the comments by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu following the events of October 7. 

In describing the war he had unleashed as a “holy mission”, he said: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible”. His words are reference to a text which goes on to read: “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass,” (1 Samuel 15:3). 

According to George Browning, former Anglican Bishop of Canberra Goulburn, “This statement frighteningly tells you all you need to know about the mindset and intention of Israel’s vengeful Prime Minister, and of the future that lies ahead for all Palestinians in the lands of their birth.”

Nothing gives the lie to charges of anti-Semitism directed at supporters of the Palestinian resistance more than the involvement of non-Zionist Jews in the rallies and demonstrations. A disciplined approach to anti-Semitism has been a hallmark of the organisers of pro-Palestinian marches and rallies, and they have welcome the presence of Jews with their anti-Netanyahu slogans of “Not in our name”.

The courage of the young Jewish boy who spoke at the Sydney school student strike for Palestine, and the welcome afforded by the Palestinian organisers points in the best possible way to a future in which Jews and Palestinians, and Hebrews, Muslims and Christians cooperate in the creation of a singular, secular state from the River to the Sea.

75 years ago, the Soviet Red Army opened the gates of Auschwitz....

Written by: Nick G. on 28 January 2020 

January 27 2020 marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz by the 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front of the Soviet Red Army (above).

Over 230 Soviet soldiers, including the commander of the 472nd regiment, Col. Siemen Lvovich Besprozvanny, died in combat while liberating the Main Camp, Birkenau, Monowitz, and the city of Oświęcim. The majority of them are buried at the municipal cemetery in Oświęcim.

Auschwitz-Birkenau, Nazi Germany’s largest concentration camp and extermination camp, was actually three camps in one: a prison camp, an extermination camp, and a slave-labour camp. Between 1.1 and 1.5 million people died at Auschwitz; 90 percent of them were Jews. Also among the dead were some 19,000 Roma (Gypsies) who were held at the camp until the Nazis gassed them on July 31, 1944.  Anti-Nazi Poles constituted the second largest victim group at Auschwitz, where some 83,000 were killed or died.

Auschwitz has come to symbolize the atrocity that was the Holocaust.  It was one of numerous concentration camps set up by the Nazis after they came to power in Germany and in countries they overran during World War 2. The first camp was opened in Germany in March 1933 for political opponents of the regime (Communists, left Social Democrats and trade union organisers).

Anti-Semitism was not confined to Germany. Between 1894 and 1906 France was in turmoil over the Dreyfus Affair when a French Jew serving as a Captain in the French Army was framed on charges of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment. In Tsarist Russia, the right-wing Black Hundreds gangs conducted murderous pogroms against Jews with the connivance and protection of the authorities. The same was true of the Ukraine and Poland. During the Civil War that followed the Great October Socialist Revolution, the anti-Communist Ukrainian leader Pilsudksi was noted for the ferocity of pogroms carried out under his command. Leaders of the Polish Government told Hitler they would welcome anything he could do to rid Poland of Jews. 

Communist attitude to anti-Semitism

One national leader alone denounced anti-Semitism. That was Stalin. He had been asked by the US Jewish News Agency about anti-Semitism, and replied on January 12, 1931.  It is worth quoting the full text of his reply:

In answer to your inquiry :

National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Anti-semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism.

Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism. Anti-semitism is dangerous for the working people as being a false path that leads them off the right road and lands them in the jungle. Hence Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable, sworn enemies of anti-semitism.

In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty.

J. Stalin

No other leader made such a definitive, strong and wholly condemnatory statement about anti-Semitism.  Few made any statement. As the Nazi violence against Jews intensified, the Soviet paper Pravda republished the statement on November 30, 1936 in an expression of sympathy and solidarity for Hitler’s victims. The opening of the gates of Auschwitz by the Red Army in January 1945 confirmed just how apt Stalin’s use of the word “cannibalism” had been in relation to anti-Semitism.

Seventy-five years on from the liberation of Auschwitz and anti-Semitism is on the rise again. Even in Australia there are a few grubs who periodically crawl out from under whichever rock has given them shelter to heroically daub swastikas on Jewish-related artefacts and sites. But it is Poland which causes the greater concern:  since the right-wing nationalist Law and Justice Party took power in 2015, Poland has set about rewriting its story of the Holocaust to evade complicity in the extermination of Jews by Poles who supported and collaborated with Hitler. In 2017, the party reduced the number of times Polish schoolchildren would learn about the Holocaust from three to two and  outlawied the description of Auschwitz as “Polish death camps”, making it a criminal offence – reduced, after international backlash, to only a civil offence – to attribute the Nazis’ crimes to the Polish state or nation. The same government follows the standard right-wing objective of making abortions illegal and denying entry to “illegal” migrants and refugees.

Relations between Israel and Poland have deteriorated because of Poland’s actions, but a study by Israel’s Tel Aviv University Kantor Center confirms that anti-Semitic incidents world-wide spike sharply upwards when the Zionist state commits aggression against Palestinians. Zionism is the political ideology that justified the creation of a Jewish homeland at the expense of occupied Palestine, and anti-Zionism is not, and must not, be a cover for anti-Semitism. 

Historical memory is a precious thing, yet few Australian schoolchildren leave school with an appreciation of what the world owes to Stalin and the glorious Red Army. 

We remember.