Swastika (illustration)
Swastika (illustration)Thinkstock

An aged care facility that is home to Holocaust survivors in Australia has been defaced with swastikas by a neo-Nazi organization, reports The Daily Mail.

The extremist group, Antipodean Resistance, vandalized the front gates of the Emmy Monash Aged Care in Caulfield, southeast Melbourne, with their swastika-laden logo, according to the report.

The vandalism was discovered by Sam Seigel who was visiting his parents, both aged 94, on New Year’s Day.

Seigel, who was shocked at the find, called it “disturbing”.

“I saw it stuck to the front gates. I just stood there and looked - it knocked me about,” he told the Herald Sun newspaper.

“You don't expect to see those sorts of things, especially at an aged-care residence,” said Seigel, who added that many of the home's residents were Holocaust survivors and that they would be horrified to see the logo outside their home.

The chairman of the Anti-Defamation Commission, Dvir Abramovich, also condemned the vandalism and described it as “cowardly and evil”.

“We are appalled by this latest attack, made all the more despicable as there are Holocaust survivors living in this aged-care home who lost family relatives and suffered under Hitler's regimen,” he said, according to The Daily Mail.

The Antipodean Resistance are a group of radicalized neo-Nazis who describe themselves as “the Hitlers you've been waiting for”.

The group’s logo, which clearly shows the swastika, has been spotted at various locations around Australia, including The University of Queensland and on a park sign in Sydney.

In September, the group targeted the electoral office of Mike Kelly, an Australian member of Parliament whose wife is Jewish, throwing pig’s entrails at the front door.

The attack followed an earlier attack by the Antipodean Resistance on September 1 on another office belonging to Kelly, in which the group plastered swastika stickers on the door.

Last May, two Jewish siblings were wounded in a stabbing attack in Melbourne. Abramovich suggested the victims were likely singled out as Jews, and called for authorities to investigate the assault as a hate crime.

Meanwhile, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Saturday night slammed "ugly racial protests" in Melbourne, after some far-right demonstrators were seen making Nazi salutes, according to AFP.

An anti-immigration rally at St Kilda Beach in Melbourne drew hundreds of demonstrators and counter-protesters on Saturday, but a large Victoria Police presence was broadly successful in keeping the two groups apart.

"I thank Vic police for their efforts dealing with the ugly racial protests we saw in St Kilda yesterday. Intolerance does not make Australia stronger," Morrison tweeted.

"Australia is the most successful migrant country in the world... Let's keep it that way, it makes Australia stronger," the Prime Minister added.

Victoria Police Superintendent Tony Silva said Saturday there was three arrests but no officers or member of the public were known to have been hurt.

The rally was organized by founders of the United Patriots Front, which conducts anti-immigration demonstrations in Melbourne from time to time.

They said Saturday's protest was against alleged African gang violence and youth crime in the city.