Call for support
Yesterday I listened in complete disbelief and shock to a teacher admit the school she worked at was covered in swastikas in all the classes and corridors and also scrawled on some of the students’ knuckles and faces…writes Sharon Kuperholz.
Matthew Kaplan (right) and Liam Arnold-Levy outside the Federal Court of Australia, in Melbourne Photo: Diego Fedele TAP
She did not work in Germany or Poland in 1939. She works in Brighton Secondary School today in Melbourne, Australia. And the swastikas, Heil Hitler salutes, jokes about Jews in ovens and poems glorifying Hitler were just an everyday occurrence. She couldn’t remember most of them and certainly never punished anyone for any of it. Nor did she check that the Jewish students felt safe at school.
Yesterday I heeded the call of Matt Kaplan, who posted in j-seek, a community noticeboard, asking for individuals to come and support him and his fellow Jews who have experienced years of anti-Semitic abuse at Brighton Secondary School.
I wrongly assumed that a few solitary students had picked fights with them, I never expected that the whole institution reflected anti-Semitic scrawling and accepted Nazi glorification.
I listened in confusion as the barrister asked about someone who stood up at assembly and spoke proudly about his grandfather who was in the Wehrmacht. I leaned across and asked the mother of two of the Jewish boys who this student was. She informed me this was not a student but the principal.
Please go to Federal Court on Thursday or Friday at 9.45 am or 2.00pm and also next week. Don’t let these boys sit alone. Federal Court is 305 William St, right on top of Flagstaff Station.
The State Government funds the organisations that should be promoting the welfare of the abused Jewish students, so instead of doing their job, their silence is deafening.
If you live in Melbourne, please get on the train, get off at flagstaff and gather in court 8c and stand with these brave boys who are blowing the whistle and making the school defend in public what they do in private.
Thanks to AJA being the only Jewish org to try to help the Jewish students who have been thrown under a bus by Melbournes Jewish establishment .