Three Victorian students have revealed personal experiences of antisemitic bullying so extreme that their parents decided to pull them out of the three separate state schools involved.
The families approached Dr Dvir Abramovich, Chairman of the Anti-Defamation Commission, Australia’s leading civil rights organisation fighting antisemitism and all forms of hatred, to share their stories.
For all three students, the impact of encountering swastikas, name-calling, slurs, Nazi salutes and even physical assaults during school hours was devastating, with two teenagers refusing to go to school and struggling to simply get out of bed. A third student tried to deal with the abuse by avoiding discussing his Jewish background with people he met.
All families involved expressed disappointment at the response they received from the respective schools and the Education Department – with the parents telling Dr Abramovich that the schools did not take appropriate action to stamp out the behaviour or treat the matters as seriously as they should have. One family subsequently took the matter to the police.
Although Ms Rozen said the school did investigate, she believes they did not go far enough to protect her daughter or discipline the students involved.
She removed her daughter from her place in the school’s prestigious accelerated learning program and remains disappointed the school has not made a firm stance against antisemitic bullying that included students who were passive bystanders.
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Dr Dvir Abramovich told EducationDaily “these cases are just the tip of the iceberg and are symptomatic of something very troubling that is taking place in Victoria”.
“They are another example of what happens when antisemitism spirals out of control and is allowed to grow toxic and unchecked by teachers, coordinators and principals,” he says. “The unsettling episodes detailed here are another blow to any trust Jewish parents may have had in our educational system, which keeps falling short.”
Schools, Dr Abramovich says, are supposed to “provide an inclusive and nurturing environment in which our young people can learn, free from religious and racial harassment -that is unless you are Jewish”.
“Sadly, we are not in a better place since the shocking revelations of the last few years, with no substantive reforms instituted to directly tackle this escalating crisis, and with schools continuing to minimise and ignore acts of hate against Jewish pupils. We know that that there is a whole underbelly of antisemitism taking place in Victorian schools with too many Jewish students feeling that they are outsiders and don’t belong,” he told EducationDaily.
The antisemitic bullying of a former Brunswick Secondary College student, 13, began at the start of the current school year, after a group discussion about cultural backgrounds revealed the boy’s Jewish heritage.
Another student, 12, who attends Rowville Secondary Sports Academy, said antisemitic attacks began on the third week of February this year.
The boy’s father, who asked not to be named to protect his son’s identity, said his son was called a “filthy Jew” and saw students doing the heil Hitler salute.
“Lives have been ruined because school administrations and the Department of Education failed us all,” says Dr Abramovich. “I fear that such a hostile environment and the proliferation and cumulative effect of the slurs, Holocaust taunts, harassment and violence against Jewish students will lead to suicide.”
The Department of Education, he says, has “not fixed the wrongs of the past and have not brought about the systematic change needed to deal with the endemic antisemitism that still pervades Victorian schools”.
“And though nothing will take away the injury, the brave students and parents who were willing to bring the light the injustice they suffered are still waiting for the schools to acknowledge the hurt they have caused,” says Dr Abramovich. “If we don’t want current and future Jewish students to suffer the same trauma, the culture of schools, and the attitude of teachers and principals, who often look the other way and are deliberately indifferent to the suffering of Jewish students, must be seriously addressed.”
In unrelated incidents, Brighton Secondary College and the Education Department are awaiting a Federal Court judgment on a case against the state in which five former students alleged the school did not protect them from antisemitic discrimination and bullying.
In June 2022, Victoria banned the public display of the Nazi symbol – the first Australian state to do so. Under proposed federal laws, anyone displaying or trading Nazi hate symbols would also face a jail sentence of up to 12 months.
But even as laws designed to punish promotion of Nazi hate symbols are being introduced, reported antisemitic incidents across Australia last year were the highest in a decade. The 478 incidents reported during 2022 represented a 6.9 per cent increase since 2021.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive officer Peter Wertheim believes Victorian state schools need stronger policies to support Jewish students.
“These horrific and gut-wrenching stories of antisemitic harassment and abuse should break the heart of every Jewish parent who will wonder what is happening in Victorian schools and whether it safe to send their kids every morning to class,” he said.
