Moshe Fiszman is a 96-year-old Holocaust survivor who lived through the horrors of Auschwitz and Dachau before making a new life in Melbourne.
He has a simple message for Queensland senator Fraser Anning and his decision to use the loaded terminology of Hitler’s “final solution” when discussing immigration policy in Australia.
“He should come down here and I will show him around and he will find out the meaning of the words he used,” Mr Fiszman said. “I’m sure that after paying a visit here, he would be a different man and have a different point of view.”
Mr Fiszman, who was born in Poland, devotes his time to teaching visitors and students at the Jewish Holocaust Centre in Melbourne.
“The final solution means the murder of my family of 200 people, of my three sisters, of my dad, of my uncles and aunties and my grandfathers and grandmothers, in such a horrible way, to be choked to death in gas chambers, and he uses this just for fun.
“If a senator of the Australian parliament is so poor that he’s got to use the words ‘final solution’ to make a point, he shouldn’t be there.”
Senator Anning said during his maiden speech on Tuesday that he wanted a plebiscite on who came to the country to allow people to decide whether they wanted “wholesale non-English-speaking immigrants from the third world”.
“The final solution to the immigration problem is of course a popular vote,” he said.
Victorian federal Liberal MP Josh Frydenberg, who is Jewish, condemned the use of the term, which was used by the Nazis to describe their program of Jewish genocide during World War II, which killed millions.
“I call on Fraser Anning not only to apologise but also to go and visit a Holocaust museum,” Mr Frydenberg said.
Jewish groups urged Senator Anning to apologise and learn more about the words he spoke.
“What a poor and inappropriate choice of words by Senator Anning to make his intolerant views about immigration,” Anti-Defamation Commission chairman Dvir Abramovich said.
“I will remind him that the Nazis’ final solution was the deliberate, systematic and mechanised extermination of European Jewry.’’
A spokesman for Senator Anning said the context in which the phrase was used had no relationship to the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany.
“The comments have been deliberately taken out of context by those who want to distract from the senator’s call for a plebiscite on who comes to this country,” he said.
“Senator Anning is a strong supporter of Israel and his track record of support for the Jewish community is a matter of public record.”