CANBERRA, Jan. 27 (Xinhua) -- Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has warned that antisemitism and Holocaust denial is on the rise in the country.
Josh Frydenberg said on Wednesday, the Holocaust Memorial Day, that as survivors of the Holocaust age memories of "the darkest chapter in human history" were beginning to fade.
He said that good people have an obligation to "take on hate wherever we see it" and that "Holocaust education is part of the response."
"We've seen antisemitic acts on the rise against kids in Victorian schools including, tragically, kids as young as five," Frydenberg, whose mother was a Jewish Hungarian who fled the Holocaust, told Nine Entertainment radio.
"We've seen swastikas...daubed across businesses that happen to be owned by Jews or Jewish sites - or indeed on material for a theatre production of Anne Frank, of all things."
The government of Victoria, Frydenberg's home state, in 2020 announced that Holocaust education would be compulsory in secondary schools.
The Treasurer on Wednesday applauded the initiative but said that more had to be done across the country.
"I'm afraid there is a rise in historical revisionism...and therefore it is incumbent on all good people, Jewish and non-Jewish across the world, to place an emphasis on Holocaust remembrance but also Holocaust education and genocides more broadly whether it is in Darfur, or Rwanda or Cambodia - we need to promote tolerance and diversity and take on hate wherever we see it." Enditem