December 16, 2025 • 21 mins
When Michael Visontay heard of the shootings at Bondi Beach on Sunday, his first instinct was to call his son, who often swam there. Then came the sickening feeling of dread, when his son didn’t answer his phone.
Something that thickened this dread even further, was a family history that taught him to always be alert to possible threats. His father and grandfather survived the Holocaust after living in concentration camps. His maternal grandmother was killed in Auschwitz.
Visontay is far from alone. Australia has a higher proportion of Holocaust survivors than any country in the world, besides Israel.
Today, Michael Visontay, author of the book Noble Fragments, and a former senior editor at The Sydney Morning Herald, on how this unique makeup of Australian Jewry impacts their response to the Bondi terror attack.
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S1 (00:02):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Seelinger Morris. It's Wednesday,
December 17th. When Michael Visconti heard of the shootings at
Bondi Beach on Sunday. His first instinct was to call
his son, who often swam there. Then came the sickening
(00:23):
feeling of dread when he didn't answer his phone. Again
and again, something that thickened his dread even further was
a family history that taught him to always be alert
to possible threats. His father and grandfather survived the Holocaust
after living in concentration camps. His maternal grandmother was killed
in Auschwitz. And he's far from alone. Australia has a
(00:47):
higher proportion of Holocaust survivors than any country in the
world besides Israel. Today, Michael Visconti, author of the book
Noble Fragments about his family history and a former senior
editor at the Sydney Morning Herald on how this unique
makeup of Australian Jewry is coloring how the community is
feeling now. So, Michael, welcome to the Morning Edition. It's
(01:11):
a bit surreal because we've known each other a very
long time, and yet you've never been on.
S2 (01:15):
No. Thank you, Samantha, it's lovely to be here with you.
S1 (01:18):
Okay, so I have to ask, first off, of all
the conversations you've had with members of the Jewish community
since Sunday's horrible attack at Bondi Beach has the reality
that one of the victims was a Holocaust survivor hit
in a particularly, I guess, strong way. Or differently because
you yourself, you come from what you call Holocaust survivor stock.
(01:40):
So this is something you're very familiar with.
S2 (01:42):
Well, it's something particularly poignant when you read that one
of the victims who died was a Holocaust survivor and
had been through all of that horror at the time
as a much younger person, and then had come out
here and recreated a new life, Only to be gunned
(02:03):
down in such a terrible, um, sickening way at a
celebration which is really, you know, one of the most
joyous festivals of the Jewish year, and which people have
sort of taken for granted as a lovely way to
end the year, each year in the Jewish community.
S1 (02:18):
And I should sort of mention here we're talking about
Alex Kleitman. He was a native of Ukraine and reportedly
leaves behind two children and 11 grandchildren, just to sort
of paint a bit of a picture of his life.
And as I mentioned there, you said you are, you know,
you come from Holocaust survivors. So maybe tell me a
bit about that. And I guess, yeah, perhaps even what
(02:41):
your own response was when you heard that Alex had died. Obviously,
it goes without saying it's a tragedy, no matter who
died in his massacre.
S2 (02:49):
So my own background, Samantha is of Hungarian Jewish stock,
and my father's family were in concentration camps during the war.
My grandfather was in Mauthausen in Austria, and my father
and his mother were in Auschwitz. My grandmother was killed there,
(03:09):
but my father survived, obviously. And then he and his
father came to Australia after the war and started a
new life here. Uh, that has weighed very heavily on
me all my life, really. I sort of have breathed
in the shadow of their experience and then heard about
it as I grew older. And it has sort of shaped,
I guess, the way that I see myself and the
(03:31):
way that I've looked at Australian society. And that's been
true for a lot of, uh, young Jewish people here
in Australia because of the, the background of the community.
I always felt that there was this, uh, sort of
bigger story hanging over me, and it defined I, I
(03:52):
guess the way that, uh, I would look at myself
as a, as a young boy in Australia, I would,
I guess, gravitate towards, um, other Jewish kids, and there
was a sense of something very strong in common in
our backgrounds without really being explained properly, because many of
us had had very similar experiences in terms of what
(04:15):
their parents had gone through. Uh, and so really growing
up like that, you have a sense of being a
Jew and then everybody else being not a Jew. And
it's not very articulated when you're a young person, but
that feeling develops as you get older. And in the
last 10 or 15 years it's taken, I guess, much
(04:39):
more difficult and confrontational types of, um, expressions because of, uh,
what's been happening in Australia.
S1 (04:54):
And so, Michael, I really wanted to speak to you
today because of something you recently spoke about to the
New Yorker magazine, and that is that Australia has a
higher proportion of Holocaust survivors than any other country besides Israel.
So by how much is this the case in comparison
to other countries and why?
S2 (05:12):
Well, that's certainly true. It is the second highest proportion
of Holocaust survivors in the Jewish population now besides Israel.
I can't tell you what the exact difference is between
us and the next country, but it is very significant,
and it has had a crucial role in shaping the
identity and the the spirit of the community here as
(05:33):
to why it happened as it did. Well, part of
it is distance. At the end of the war, so
many Holocaust survivors and refugees from Eastern and Central Europe,
all across the continent, wanted to get as far away
from Europe as they could. It was just a visceral urge.
Many of them went to America, but a lot of
(05:54):
people were denied entry into America. So in my own
family's case, my father was allowed entry, but his father
and later his stepmother were denied a visa. And so,
like many other people, they heard that Australia was taking
refugees and Holocaust survivors, stateless people. And so what that
(06:17):
meant was that it made the community here very sensitized
to threats of anti-Semitism, to the spectra of hostility towards Jews,
whether it was minor, accumulated or sporadic. And so that
has shaped the ethos of the community over the generations
(06:38):
as survivors themselves have died, their children, like myself and
their grandchildren, who have breathed in their grandparents experiences and
and fears, then have expressed them, I guess, more openly
as a community. And so this has shaped the way
that the community responds to threats and incidents, and it
(06:58):
also shapes the way that the communal leadership of the
community also responds because they are speaking to their community.
S1 (07:07):
And I really want to ask you about how this
ethos in the community, how this might impact the way
a lot of Jewish people here respond to this massacre
on Sunday, because you and I, we may be a
generation apart, probably less than a generation apart, but we
we would have grown up, I imagine, with the exact
same refrain which every Jewish person I know knows which
(07:27):
is never again. Right. It's something it's drummed into you.
If we don't heed the lessons of the Holocaust and
other genocides, it could happen again. You know, if we
don't respond to the early warning signs, it could happen again.
So do you think that many Jews in Australia are
now viewing this attack as proof that the government, or
Australians in general, perhaps haven't been taking the signs of
rising anti-Semitism seriously enough?
S2 (07:51):
Well, I would say the, uh, the way that we've, um,
the community has responded to it has reflected that Holocaust
survivor background and the vigilance about anti-Semitism and the sense
that the threat is ever present. Speaking for myself when
I was a young boy in the 60s, 70s, and
(08:12):
then as a young man in the 80s, it didn't
feel that it was very real or imminent. But I
must say that in the last 10 or 15 years,
that situation has changed, and everybody else in the community
would have felt the same way. And so there's a
combination of factors at work here. There's the sensibility of
(08:33):
older and then younger people in the community who have
been brought up with that feeling of always being vigilant
and looking for signs that something terrible could happen. And
there's been the, uh, the gradual build up even before
the events of October 7th and the Hamas attacks in Israel,
which I guess showed signs that there was rising anti-Semitic, uh,
(08:59):
views and activities by groups. The Covid lockdown and the
anti-government lockdown movement also gave a lot of support to
some of these groups and feelings. And I guess over
the last couple of years, many people in the community
have looked at what's been happening with the rise of
anti-Semitic attacks and outbursts and even violence, with a rising
(09:26):
feeling of dread and feeling that something worse could happen. Now,
that doesn't mean anything is inevitable. A lot of people
have said that, but tragically, those feelings have been borne out.
S1 (09:41):
We'll be right back. And you mentioned just before that
you feel like this sort of ethos of, I guess,
Holocaust survivor, you know, the legacy of that. You could
see that in the responses of people within the Jewish
community to the Sunday attack. Are there any particular responses
(10:03):
that you're thinking about in that regard?
S2 (10:06):
Well, there's the sense that the community feels that it
hasn't been listened to sufficiently by the government, but the
federal government, because they have been at all levels, both
at a communal but also leadership level, pointing out the
threats that they have seen through activity, incidents, violence and intimidation,
(10:31):
that they've been pointing this out. Uh, and they feel
that the government hasn't been doing enough to support them
or protect them. It does raise a question about what
the limits are of what a government can actually do
to prevent attacks like the one we've seen on Sunday,
because governments create policies and climates and environments in which
(10:53):
the whole society operates to try and deter and minimise
social violence and anti-Semitic and other racist behaviour. However, I
think there's a very strong sentiment in the community that
the government could have done more. My own view is
that the government has acted responsibly. It could have done more,
but I thought that certainly in the last two and
(11:16):
a bit years it has reacted responsibly. Perhaps a a
faster and more emphatic response to the encampments on the universities,
which became such a fault line for Jewish students during
the height of the encampment movement in the early part
of last year. Would that have made a difference to
what happened on Sunday? I don't think so. But certainly
(11:39):
from the Jewish community's point of view, there was a
strong feeling that the government and also university leadership in
certainly some universities could have been more responsive and more
emphatic when they responded.
S1 (11:52):
And there was something that you recently said again in
that interview with The New Yorker that you've just given
to that magazine, which has covered this horrific attack on Sunday. Obviously,
it's made global headlines. I think it's safe to say
it's shocked Countless people around the world. And you said
it's something you referred to before. You said personally, growing
up in Australia, this feeling that we've always got to
be very vigilant about anti-Semitism, that this was perhaps being
(12:15):
overstated and a bit of crying wolf. But since October 7th,
you said you felt that you were mistaken and proven wrong.
And that hit me, frankly, right in the heart, because
that's been me for most of my life. And now
I'm sort of thinking, since the Sunday attack, well, maybe
my antenna hasn't been sufficiently, you know, attuned, I guess,
to warning signs. So do you think people are going
(12:37):
to be just far more panicked?
S2 (12:40):
I think this is going to change everything in ways I,
I can't yet predict. But, uh, this has borne out
the the worst fears and anxieties of, uh, everybody in
the community, whether left, centre or right. It's just a
naked attack of pure evil, really. And this will make
(13:01):
all Jews, and I hope other Australians feel not just vigilant,
but they will feel anxiety about how they then go
about their life, the way they congregate, the things they do,
the demands they will make of government for protection, and
whether it will. That protection will take away the sense
(13:21):
of freedom that we've enjoyed in Australia for so long,
because we will always be treading on eggshells about what
we say and how we gather and the things that
we want to do. I think that will certainly be
a very powerful legacy of what's happened on Sunday for
quite some time. It saddens me to be talking about this,
(13:42):
because I've had such a happy life in Australia as
a Jewish person and some of my friends and my family,
and it is very hard for me to digest exactly
the enormity of what happened on Sunday. And people I know,
Jews and non-Jews who have been sending me messages from
all around the world are Uh, dumbstruck, uh, that this
(14:06):
has happened here and particularly at Bondi Beach, which is
the spiritual home of Jewry in Sydney. I also had
a personal experience, uh, about Sunday, which, uh, has been
quite powerful for me. So my son is a journalist
at the Sydney Morning Herald. And when I heard the
(14:27):
first news of the shootings, I rang him to see
if he knew anything that I didn't know yet. And
then it dawned on me that because he has frequented
Bondi Beach quite a lot, he might be down there swimming.
And so I rang him to just get reassurance, and
he didn't answer the phone. And I rang twice and
three times and he didn't answer. And so it was
(14:47):
about perhaps 10 or 15 minutes that I hadn't heard
from him. And I had this absolutely sickening feeling of dread, uh,
which is one that I know that parents all around
the world, in countries where violence is much more part
of their social fabric, have come to feel that feeling.
But I never expected to feel it here in my home. And, um,
(15:07):
that has really rocked me and and our family. We're
very lucky he escaped to safety. He was swimming in
the water at the time, but he got away. Um, but, uh,
we count our lucky stars for that.
S1 (15:23):
Yeah. Michael, it's it's. I have to take a moment because, uh,
I knew your son had been there, and, um, one
of my children was planning on going, and he was
the one that called me to tell me that he'd
heard this news. It was the first I'd heard it,
and therefore he didn't go. And I had friends. I'm
sure you also had friends who were there. I had
friends who were there. And. Yeah, it's it's certainly it's
(15:47):
rocked me. It's rocked everyone I know actually, who's in
the Jewish community and people that aren't I mean, and
that's the reality, isn't it? I mean, obviously it's a
tragedy no matter who dies. And of course, non-Jews have died, obviously,
in that attack as well. And yeah, it feels like
maybe it's it's ripped something away, you know, I guess
a security perhaps that I don't know that perhaps non-Jews
used to feel here. Maybe I don't know.
S2 (16:09):
Well.
S1 (16:10):
I think or many non-Jews I should say. Obviously there
are other Australians who are members of communities who are
also persecuted.
S2 (16:16):
Yeah, I think there are all Australians will be rocked
by this. Something like this happening at Australia's best known
beach on a beautiful summer's afternoon, where people go all
year round. It has heartened me that I've had so
much support from people I know from not just within
the Jewish community, but from all parts of Australia and
(16:39):
and certainly non-Jewish. And I think the Jewish community will
be looking for tangible evidence of support and love from
the broader community, uh, in the weeks and months ahead
for visible signs of support at rallies, uh, and at
(16:59):
meetings and, and at all different levels of society, informal
and formal, to show that, um, they are us and
we are them.
S1 (17:09):
And, Michael, I just wanted to ask you. I know
you are a noted writer on Australian Jewry and on
various topics, including incredible history of your own family. Uh,
you had a relative who was a noted antiquarian bookseller
who sold fragments of the Gutenberg Bible, and it's one
of the biggest controversies, I think, in literary history. So
you're no stranger to writing and speaking about, uh, Jewish topics,
(17:33):
but is it difficult at all to speak about this?
S2 (17:37):
Well, uh, it has been a difficult subject, certainly when
I was much younger, uh, as I said, from my
father's own experiences and that of my family, uh, I
think I always had a little voice of my father
and his friends in my ear every time I was
asked to speak about Jewish identity, about anti-Semitism and about Israel.
(17:57):
And the voice has never really left me. But as
I've done it more and more, the sensitivity of speaking
about it has softened a bit, but it's still not
an easy thing to talk about. And and many Jews
in the community feel almost frozen about talking about it
(18:18):
to people outside the community. And I think this stems
in large part from the Holocaust survivor background of the
community that we spoke about earlier.
S1 (18:29):
And tell me what underpins that. Is it fear? Is
it the sort of like, don't don't make yourself a
spectacle like you could be a target? Is that what
it is or is it something else?
S2 (18:38):
Uh, I think it goes back to this feeling that
if you speak outside, you can make yourself a target.
You may add dirty washing and that anything that puts
you up over the horizon on the radar then makes
you vulnerable. And historically, Jews have always felt like targets.
(19:00):
And so that that feeling plays into a very ancient
sentiment that you don't want to do anything that attracts
trouble or attracts attention, and better to turn inwards and
deal with it amongst yourselves. Uh, and so that has
led to very different views about, uh, how Jews want
(19:21):
to engage with broader society. And I think we've seen
that played out in, um, the very difficult public discourse
and debate that occurred after October 7th, where most people
have felt like they're on eggshells whenever they even mention
the subject of anti-Semitism in Israel.
S1 (19:41):
Yeah. Well, Michael, it's horrible to reacquaint myself with you
during a time like this, but thank God your son
and the rest of your family and you are safe.
And thank you so much for your time.
S2 (19:53):
Uh, I won't say it's been a pleasure, but it's
been good to speak to you again, Samantha. Thank you.
S1 (20:19):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by myself
and Kai Wong. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Our
head of audio is Tom McKendrick. The Morning Edition is
a production of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
If you enjoy the show and want more of our journalism,
subscribe to our newspapers today. It's the best way to
support what we do. Search the age or Smh.com.au. Subscribe
(20:45):
and sign up for our newsletter to receive a comprehensive
summary of the day's most important news, analysis and insights
in your inbox every day. Links are in the show. Notes.
I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris. This is the morning edition. Thanks
for listening.
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Seelinger Morris. It's Wednesday,
December 17th. When Michael Visconti heard of the shootings at
Bondi Beach on Sunday. His first instinct was to call
his son, who often swam there. Then came the sickening
(00:23):
feeling of dread when he didn't answer his phone. Again
and again, something that thickened his dread even further was
a family history that taught him to always be alert
to possible threats. His father and grandfather survived the Holocaust
after living in concentration camps. His maternal grandmother was killed
in Auschwitz. And he's far from alone. Australia has a
(00:47):
higher proportion of Holocaust survivors than any country in the
world besides Israel. Today, Michael Visconti, author of the book
Noble Fragments about his family history and a former senior
editor at the Sydney Morning Herald on how this unique
makeup of Australian Jewry is coloring how the community is
feeling now. So, Michael, welcome to the Morning Edition. It's
(01:11):
a bit surreal because we've known each other a very
long time, and yet you've never been on.
S2 (01:15):
No. Thank you, Samantha, it's lovely to be here with you.
S1 (01:18):
Okay, so I have to ask, first off, of all
the conversations you've had with members of the Jewish community
since Sunday's horrible attack at Bondi Beach has the reality
that one of the victims was a Holocaust survivor hit
in a particularly, I guess, strong way. Or differently because
you yourself, you come from what you call Holocaust survivor stock.
(01:40):
So this is something you're very familiar with.
S2 (01:42):
Well, it's something particularly poignant when you read that one
of the victims who died was a Holocaust survivor and
had been through all of that horror at the time
as a much younger person, and then had come out
here and recreated a new life, Only to be gunned
(02:03):
down in such a terrible, um, sickening way at a
celebration which is really, you know, one of the most
joyous festivals of the Jewish year, and which people have
sort of taken for granted as a lovely way to
end the year, each year in the Jewish community.
S1 (02:18):
And I should sort of mention here we're talking about
Alex Kleitman. He was a native of Ukraine and reportedly
leaves behind two children and 11 grandchildren, just to sort
of paint a bit of a picture of his life.
And as I mentioned there, you said you are, you know,
you come from Holocaust survivors. So maybe tell me a
bit about that. And I guess, yeah, perhaps even what
(02:41):
your own response was when you heard that Alex had died. Obviously,
it goes without saying it's a tragedy, no matter who
died in his massacre.
S2 (02:49):
So my own background, Samantha is of Hungarian Jewish stock,
and my father's family were in concentration camps during the war.
My grandfather was in Mauthausen in Austria, and my father
and his mother were in Auschwitz. My grandmother was killed there,
(03:09):
but my father survived, obviously. And then he and his
father came to Australia after the war and started a
new life here. Uh, that has weighed very heavily on
me all my life, really. I sort of have breathed
in the shadow of their experience and then heard about
it as I grew older. And it has sort of shaped,
I guess, the way that I see myself and the
(03:31):
way that I've looked at Australian society. And that's been
true for a lot of, uh, young Jewish people here
in Australia because of the, the background of the community.
I always felt that there was this, uh, sort of
bigger story hanging over me, and it defined I, I
(03:52):
guess the way that, uh, I would look at myself
as a, as a young boy in Australia, I would,
I guess, gravitate towards, um, other Jewish kids, and there
was a sense of something very strong in common in
our backgrounds without really being explained properly, because many of
us had had very similar experiences in terms of what
(04:15):
their parents had gone through. Uh, and so really growing
up like that, you have a sense of being a
Jew and then everybody else being not a Jew. And
it's not very articulated when you're a young person, but
that feeling develops as you get older. And in the
last 10 or 15 years it's taken, I guess, much
(04:39):
more difficult and confrontational types of, um, expressions because of, uh,
what's been happening in Australia.
S1 (04:54):
And so, Michael, I really wanted to speak to you
today because of something you recently spoke about to the
New Yorker magazine, and that is that Australia has a
higher proportion of Holocaust survivors than any other country besides Israel.
So by how much is this the case in comparison
to other countries and why?
S2 (05:12):
Well, that's certainly true. It is the second highest proportion
of Holocaust survivors in the Jewish population now besides Israel.
I can't tell you what the exact difference is between
us and the next country, but it is very significant,
and it has had a crucial role in shaping the
identity and the the spirit of the community here as
(05:33):
to why it happened as it did. Well, part of
it is distance. At the end of the war, so
many Holocaust survivors and refugees from Eastern and Central Europe,
all across the continent, wanted to get as far away
from Europe as they could. It was just a visceral urge.
Many of them went to America, but a lot of
(05:54):
people were denied entry into America. So in my own
family's case, my father was allowed entry, but his father
and later his stepmother were denied a visa. And so,
like many other people, they heard that Australia was taking
refugees and Holocaust survivors, stateless people. And so what that
(06:17):
meant was that it made the community here very sensitized
to threats of anti-Semitism, to the spectra of hostility towards Jews,
whether it was minor, accumulated or sporadic. And so that
has shaped the ethos of the community over the generations
(06:38):
as survivors themselves have died, their children, like myself and
their grandchildren, who have breathed in their grandparents experiences and
and fears, then have expressed them, I guess, more openly
as a community. And so this has shaped the way
that the community responds to threats and incidents, and it
(06:58):
also shapes the way that the communal leadership of the
community also responds because they are speaking to their community.
S1 (07:07):
And I really want to ask you about how this
ethos in the community, how this might impact the way
a lot of Jewish people here respond to this massacre
on Sunday, because you and I, we may be a
generation apart, probably less than a generation apart, but we
we would have grown up, I imagine, with the exact
same refrain which every Jewish person I know knows which
(07:27):
is never again. Right. It's something it's drummed into you.
If we don't heed the lessons of the Holocaust and
other genocides, it could happen again. You know, if we
don't respond to the early warning signs, it could happen again.
So do you think that many Jews in Australia are
now viewing this attack as proof that the government, or
Australians in general, perhaps haven't been taking the signs of
rising anti-Semitism seriously enough?
S2 (07:51):
Well, I would say the, uh, the way that we've, um,
the community has responded to it has reflected that Holocaust
survivor background and the vigilance about anti-Semitism and the sense
that the threat is ever present. Speaking for myself when
I was a young boy in the 60s, 70s, and
(08:12):
then as a young man in the 80s, it didn't
feel that it was very real or imminent. But I
must say that in the last 10 or 15 years,
that situation has changed, and everybody else in the community
would have felt the same way. And so there's a
combination of factors at work here. There's the sensibility of
(08:33):
older and then younger people in the community who have
been brought up with that feeling of always being vigilant
and looking for signs that something terrible could happen. And
there's been the, uh, the gradual build up even before
the events of October 7th and the Hamas attacks in Israel,
which I guess showed signs that there was rising anti-Semitic, uh,
(08:59):
views and activities by groups. The Covid lockdown and the
anti-government lockdown movement also gave a lot of support to
some of these groups and feelings. And I guess over
the last couple of years, many people in the community
have looked at what's been happening with the rise of
anti-Semitic attacks and outbursts and even violence, with a rising
(09:26):
feeling of dread and feeling that something worse could happen. Now,
that doesn't mean anything is inevitable. A lot of people
have said that, but tragically, those feelings have been borne out.
S1 (09:41):
We'll be right back. And you mentioned just before that
you feel like this sort of ethos of, I guess,
Holocaust survivor, you know, the legacy of that. You could
see that in the responses of people within the Jewish
community to the Sunday attack. Are there any particular responses
(10:03):
that you're thinking about in that regard?
S2 (10:06):
Well, there's the sense that the community feels that it
hasn't been listened to sufficiently by the government, but the
federal government, because they have been at all levels, both
at a communal but also leadership level, pointing out the
threats that they have seen through activity, incidents, violence and intimidation,
(10:31):
that they've been pointing this out. Uh, and they feel
that the government hasn't been doing enough to support them
or protect them. It does raise a question about what
the limits are of what a government can actually do
to prevent attacks like the one we've seen on Sunday,
because governments create policies and climates and environments in which
(10:53):
the whole society operates to try and deter and minimise
social violence and anti-Semitic and other racist behaviour. However, I
think there's a very strong sentiment in the community that
the government could have done more. My own view is
that the government has acted responsibly. It could have done more,
but I thought that certainly in the last two and
(11:16):
a bit years it has reacted responsibly. Perhaps a a
faster and more emphatic response to the encampments on the universities,
which became such a fault line for Jewish students during
the height of the encampment movement in the early part
of last year. Would that have made a difference to
what happened on Sunday? I don't think so. But certainly
(11:39):
from the Jewish community's point of view, there was a
strong feeling that the government and also university leadership in
certainly some universities could have been more responsive and more
emphatic when they responded.
S1 (11:52):
And there was something that you recently said again in
that interview with The New Yorker that you've just given
to that magazine, which has covered this horrific attack on Sunday. Obviously,
it's made global headlines. I think it's safe to say
it's shocked Countless people around the world. And you said
it's something you referred to before. You said personally, growing
up in Australia, this feeling that we've always got to
be very vigilant about anti-Semitism, that this was perhaps being
(12:15):
overstated and a bit of crying wolf. But since October 7th,
you said you felt that you were mistaken and proven wrong.
And that hit me, frankly, right in the heart, because
that's been me for most of my life. And now
I'm sort of thinking, since the Sunday attack, well, maybe
my antenna hasn't been sufficiently, you know, attuned, I guess,
to warning signs. So do you think people are going
(12:37):
to be just far more panicked?
S2 (12:40):
I think this is going to change everything in ways I,
I can't yet predict. But, uh, this has borne out
the the worst fears and anxieties of, uh, everybody in
the community, whether left, centre or right. It's just a
naked attack of pure evil, really. And this will make
(13:01):
all Jews, and I hope other Australians feel not just vigilant,
but they will feel anxiety about how they then go
about their life, the way they congregate, the things they do,
the demands they will make of government for protection, and
whether it will. That protection will take away the sense
(13:21):
of freedom that we've enjoyed in Australia for so long,
because we will always be treading on eggshells about what
we say and how we gather and the things that
we want to do. I think that will certainly be
a very powerful legacy of what's happened on Sunday for
quite some time. It saddens me to be talking about this,
(13:42):
because I've had such a happy life in Australia as
a Jewish person and some of my friends and my family,
and it is very hard for me to digest exactly
the enormity of what happened on Sunday. And people I know,
Jews and non-Jews who have been sending me messages from
all around the world are Uh, dumbstruck, uh, that this
(14:06):
has happened here and particularly at Bondi Beach, which is
the spiritual home of Jewry in Sydney. I also had
a personal experience, uh, about Sunday, which, uh, has been
quite powerful for me. So my son is a journalist
at the Sydney Morning Herald. And when I heard the
(14:27):
first news of the shootings, I rang him to see
if he knew anything that I didn't know yet. And
then it dawned on me that because he has frequented
Bondi Beach quite a lot, he might be down there swimming.
And so I rang him to just get reassurance, and
he didn't answer the phone. And I rang twice and
three times and he didn't answer. And so it was
(14:47):
about perhaps 10 or 15 minutes that I hadn't heard
from him. And I had this absolutely sickening feeling of dread, uh,
which is one that I know that parents all around
the world, in countries where violence is much more part
of their social fabric, have come to feel that feeling.
But I never expected to feel it here in my home. And, um,
(15:07):
that has really rocked me and and our family. We're
very lucky he escaped to safety. He was swimming in
the water at the time, but he got away. Um, but, uh,
we count our lucky stars for that.
S1 (15:23):
Yeah. Michael, it's it's. I have to take a moment because, uh,
I knew your son had been there, and, um, one
of my children was planning on going, and he was
the one that called me to tell me that he'd
heard this news. It was the first I'd heard it,
and therefore he didn't go. And I had friends. I'm
sure you also had friends who were there. I had
friends who were there. And. Yeah, it's it's certainly it's
(15:47):
rocked me. It's rocked everyone I know actually, who's in
the Jewish community and people that aren't I mean, and
that's the reality, isn't it? I mean, obviously it's a
tragedy no matter who dies. And of course, non-Jews have died, obviously,
in that attack as well. And yeah, it feels like
maybe it's it's ripped something away, you know, I guess
a security perhaps that I don't know that perhaps non-Jews
used to feel here. Maybe I don't know.
S2 (16:09):
Well.
S1 (16:10):
I think or many non-Jews I should say. Obviously there
are other Australians who are members of communities who are
also persecuted.
S2 (16:16):
Yeah, I think there are all Australians will be rocked
by this. Something like this happening at Australia's best known
beach on a beautiful summer's afternoon, where people go all
year round. It has heartened me that I've had so
much support from people I know from not just within
the Jewish community, but from all parts of Australia and
(16:39):
and certainly non-Jewish. And I think the Jewish community will
be looking for tangible evidence of support and love from
the broader community, uh, in the weeks and months ahead
for visible signs of support at rallies, uh, and at
(16:59):
meetings and, and at all different levels of society, informal
and formal, to show that, um, they are us and
we are them.
S1 (17:09):
And, Michael, I just wanted to ask you. I know
you are a noted writer on Australian Jewry and on
various topics, including incredible history of your own family. Uh,
you had a relative who was a noted antiquarian bookseller
who sold fragments of the Gutenberg Bible, and it's one
of the biggest controversies, I think, in literary history. So
you're no stranger to writing and speaking about, uh, Jewish topics,
(17:33):
but is it difficult at all to speak about this?
S2 (17:37):
Well, uh, it has been a difficult subject, certainly when
I was much younger, uh, as I said, from my
father's own experiences and that of my family, uh, I
think I always had a little voice of my father
and his friends in my ear every time I was
asked to speak about Jewish identity, about anti-Semitism and about Israel.
(17:57):
And the voice has never really left me. But as
I've done it more and more, the sensitivity of speaking
about it has softened a bit, but it's still not
an easy thing to talk about. And and many Jews
in the community feel almost frozen about talking about it
(18:18):
to people outside the community. And I think this stems
in large part from the Holocaust survivor background of the
community that we spoke about earlier.
S1 (18:29):
And tell me what underpins that. Is it fear? Is
it the sort of like, don't don't make yourself a
spectacle like you could be a target? Is that what
it is or is it something else?
S2 (18:38):
Uh, I think it goes back to this feeling that
if you speak outside, you can make yourself a target.
You may add dirty washing and that anything that puts
you up over the horizon on the radar then makes
you vulnerable. And historically, Jews have always felt like targets.
(19:00):
And so that that feeling plays into a very ancient
sentiment that you don't want to do anything that attracts
trouble or attracts attention, and better to turn inwards and
deal with it amongst yourselves. Uh, and so that has
led to very different views about, uh, how Jews want
(19:21):
to engage with broader society. And I think we've seen
that played out in, um, the very difficult public discourse
and debate that occurred after October 7th, where most people
have felt like they're on eggshells whenever they even mention
the subject of anti-Semitism in Israel.
S1 (19:41):
Yeah. Well, Michael, it's horrible to reacquaint myself with you
during a time like this, but thank God your son
and the rest of your family and you are safe.
And thank you so much for your time.
S2 (19:53):
Uh, I won't say it's been a pleasure, but it's
been good to speak to you again, Samantha. Thank you.
S1 (20:19):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by myself
and Kai Wong. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Our
head of audio is Tom McKendrick. The Morning Edition is
a production of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
If you enjoy the show and want more of our journalism,
subscribe to our newspapers today. It's the best way to
support what we do. Search the age or Smh.com.au. Subscribe
(20:45):
and sign up for our newsletter to receive a comprehensive
summary of the day's most important news, analysis and insights
in your inbox every day. Links are in the show. Notes.
I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris. This is the morning edition. Thanks
for listening.
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