International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Speech delivered on 27 January 2026, Sydney

We are on Gadigal and Birrabirragal land, and I pay respect to elders, past and present.

I extend that respect to all First Nations people joining us this evening.

Thank you Rabbi Jacqeline Ninio OAM for your warm welcome. Simeon and I are so pleased to be back at Emanuel Synagogue, once again so warmly welcomed. 

Acknowledgements:  

  • Greg Shand AM – President, Sydney Jewish Museum  
  • Dr George Foster OAM – President, Australian Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants (AAJHS&D)
  • Michele Goldman, CEO, Jewish Board of Deputies
  • Alain Hasson – CEO, Jewish Communal Appeal  
  • Peter Philippsohn OAM – Australian Jewish Historical Society  
  • Kevin Sumption – CEO, Sydney Jewish Museum  
  • Hon. Tanya Plibersek MP – Federal Member for Sydney  
  • Allegra Spender MP – Federal Member for Wentworth
  • Marjorie O'Neill MP – State Member for Coogee  
  • Diplomatic representatives of Aotearoa New Zealand, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Poland, France, Hungary, and Switzerland
  • I also acknowledge Professor Sabina Kleitman, who will shortly share her father’s story.
  • As Rabbi Ninio has said so beautifully, it is particularly special to have Holocaust survivors and their descendants. It is profound to see you and to be with you. And of course, other Jewish community leaders, survivors, and family members.  

It is an honour to join you here at Emanuel, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, for this time of solemn remembrance and deep listening.  

Together, we recognise the liberation of the camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau, on 27 January 1945, and the beginning of the end of the Holocaust.

We remember the millions of murders, and the deep darkness of those years. The collapse of morality, as George has just described.

We also remember the strength and dignity of the Jewish people. Their faith in the generations that came before and the ones who would come after. Particularly here in Australia, which became a haven of calm and safety and peace.  

In 2026, sadly, there is a new shadow over this day of memory:

The unspeakable antisemitic attack at Bondi Beach last month, when a peaceful Hannukah by the sea was shattered by a nightmare of terror and violence.

In the wake of that tragedy, Australians in Bondi, Sydney, New South Wales, and across the country surged to support and to stand in solidarity with Jewish Australians, and Jews everywhere.

We affirmed our deep conviction that Jewish people belong here; that you are essential to Australia’s story of welcome and success.  

We committed to rejecting antisemitism and striving to ensure it has no place in this nation.  

And we committed to never forgetting the lessons of the past.

We will hear from Sabina shortly, but, it is unfathomable that the life of Alex Kleytman, a man who survived the Holocaust in Europe, and who spent his last decades imploring the world to pass the knowledge of the Holocaust to our children, should be taken by such a vile act of antisemitism.

I know many others who died at Bondi had family connections to the Holocaust. Their stories, and the larger story of Jewish life, must continue to be told.

With thanks to many of you who have opened your hearts and your doors, I have spent sombre and reflective time with the Bondi Jewish community – including at many funerals, the Night of Unity at Bondi Pavilion, visiting hospitals and homes, hosting a Hannukah event, welcoming multifaith leaders to Admiralty House in Kirribilli, and marking the National Day of Mourning last week.

Throughout it all, Simeon and I have found ourselves reflecting a lot on an event we hosted last year.

In March 2025, I had the extraordinary privilege of welcoming 25 Holocaust survivors – all in their 80s and 90s, all vibrant and full of stories – to Admiralty House in Kirribilli.

Thank you, Michele Goldman and Kevin Sumption for making it happen.

We had met some of those survivors when visiting the Museum in January, where we were privileged to interact with the ‘virtual’ Olga Horak OAM, and learn all about her, despite her passing.

The survivors shared their childhood memories of the war, and the lives of peace and success they built in Australia over many, many decades.

They had all spent years as volunteer guides at the Sydney Jewish Museum, and they all left important, poignant and generous messages in our Visitors’ Book as they were leaving.  

We’ve been sharing those messages as much as we can, wherever I visit.

Imploring us to remember and teach the horrors of the Holocaust, and carry forward the warning words: ‘never again.’  

That warning is, of course, now more vital than ever. The theme of ‘Bridging Generations’ is deeply necessary now.

I thought I’d share some of the personal moments that Simeon and I have had.

I want to thank Greg and Kathy Shand, who welcomed us for an extended family Shabat dinner, and to see the babies of that family and think about the generations yet to come was very special.

Back in Canberra recently, I reconnected with a dear friend I was at university with, Joshua Getzler, and his mother Rochelle Getzler in Canberra.  

Josh has spent the last 30 years at Oxford, but he’s back taking care of his mother, who has written a book about his father Manny’s life as a Holocaust survivor. To sit and share stories with people we have known across our lives was deeply personal.

And just as I had seen those virtual lives at the Sydney Jewish Museum, I’ve been watching many of the videos of Holocaust survivors and their families that we can all access, like the one Nina Bassat AM recorded just last February in the Journeys of Hope series.

She is one of the Victorian Jewish community’s leaders, and her video tells how when she and her mother, her brother, and her cousin – the four left of her family – needed a haven at the end of the war, somewhere where they thought they could be safe, it was Australia that they came to.

She speaks of feeling welcome, but because of when she’s speaking, in early 2025, her tone is also full of sadness as she talks about the rise of antisemitism.

She recalls in particular young people no longer feeling safe at school, but also young people completely unaware of the history.

She also said that many of her non-Jewish friends were saying this was not the Australia they recognised, or wanted to continue.

And so I loved it when she spoke in the video about at 14 becoming an Australian citizen, and just yesterday we celebrated citizenship again with many new citizens celebrating our democracy.  

She also talked about her intergenerational message which was to engage with our democracy, as a multicultural and multifaith community of good faith and open heart.  

Since Bondi, Jewish leaders have called on Australians of every faith and background to perform mitzvah – millions of acts of kindness, care, love and generosity – and to embark on a national project of peace, belonging and unity, and care, kindness and respect.  

Last week, I also met with Canberra’s Jewish leaders at Government House.

Athol Morris, President of the ACT Jewish community, had a message for all Australians.

He said this:  

‘This tragedy has marked us with grief, but it has not erased our compassion, our courage, or our commitment to life.’  

Today, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, I join all Australians, and the global community, in utterly rejecting antisemitism, racism and hate, and embracing love and care and kindness and eternal vigilance.  

And in affirming our respect and care for the Jewish people we share life with, in this country of peace and promise, and in the spirit of the ‘Bridging Generations’ theme, I will share these stories and this hope with the many people I meet as your Governor-General.

I’m conscious that Australians came in their hundreds to Government House in the 24, 48 hours after Bondi, to share their sorrow and their solidarity with the Jewish community.

They wrote pages and pages of notes, and tomorrow I will share them, as we did with the ACT Jewish community, with the families of those whose lives were taken at Bondi, who are coming to Admiralty House for a family picnic.  

I’ll show them what Australians said about solidarity, and about the future, and about love extending, and the vigilance that is required for us to be better.  

I’m also looking forward to working with the Sydney Jewish Museum to ensure that the original copies of all those beautiful words of Australians are shared, and entrusted to the care of a museum who should have those artefacts to remember and to show what Australians did do in the face of such horror.

In the past weeks I have read and remembered those comments, both from the Holocaust survivors who came to Admiralty House, and from the Australians of good will and love and compassion who left their words at Government House in Canberra.

We are involved in a national project of unity. It should never have come to this, but I give you my promise that as your Governor-General, these are the stories I will share across Australia and across the world, to make sure that we remain the safe haven, the safe place, to which those Holocaust survivors came in 1945 and after.

It’s a privilege to address you all tonight, and remind us all about the love and care you’ve brought, that we must always commemorate and celebrate.  

[END]