A large wooden swastika was discovered in the backyard of a house in the main Jewish area of Melbourne, Australia, with the Jewish community shocked that there are no legal means to have it removed or charge whoever is behind it.
The swastika was discovered by a man who is the son of a Holocaust survivor in back of a house in Caulfield, NCA reported.
Caulfield is heavily Jewish, which is estimated at 41 per cent of its population.
While the Victoria government said in 2021 that it would ban public displays of Nazi symbols – part of a comprehensive package of reforms designed to eliminate “hateful behavior” and discrimination based on race, religion, orientation, illness, or disability, including a recent rise in neo-Nazi activity – the legislation has so far not been enacted.
Anti-Defamation Commission chair Dvir Abramovich called for the government to take action, describing an “epidemic” of antisemitism in the state of Victoria, where Melbourne is located.
“No Jewish person should be confronted with the emblem of evil in their own neighbourhood,” Abramovich told the news wire. “This malicious act, dripping with venomous and dangerous hate, is a punch in the gut of every Holocaust survivor and a spit on the memory of the victims.”
A similar incident occurred in late December 2021 in the heavily Jewish Melbourne suburb of the City of Glen Eira, which has the largest Jewish population in Australia.
In that case, a swastika was discovered in a city park. The Nazi symbol was found by a Jewish woman etched onto a large rock at Harleston Park, which is popular with children.
At the beginning of December, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry released figures showing that anti-Semitic incidents in Australia had soared over the past year, with 447 reported cases amounting to a 35 percent increase over the same period in 2020.
Julie Nathan, research director of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, told the organization’s annual conference that the number of incidents was an increase of 167 versus national average of 280 recorded between 2013 and 2020.