The Blog of
Holocaust and Antisemitism Foundation Aotearoa New Zealand
Guest Post: They Tried to Kill Us
If we read our calendar not as liturgy but as a field manual, a pattern emerges. Across three thousand years of attempted annihilation, Jews have survived in roughly five ways: through the courtier, the insider who bends the ear of power; the fighter, who refuses to yield; by fortune, the improbable turn that saves a people who could not save themselves and who some attribute to God; by keeping our heads down, practising in secret; and we have survived by leaving.
Guest Post: We Can Finally Dance Again
The nightmare began as Israelis woke on a Jewish holiday to the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Families were murdered in their homes. Young people were hunted through the fields around the Nova festival. Children saw their parents killed. Parents saw their children killed.
Why You Dislike Jews
Recently, Kim Dotcom — founder of Megaupload and one of New Zealand’s most recognisable controversial public figures — posted the following prompt on X: “Why you dislike Jews – Go.”
And yet, in New Zealand’s mainstream media environment, the reaction was… silence.
Media release: Bondi Terror Attack on Jewish Community
The Holocaust and Antisemitism Foundation, Aotearoa New Zealand expresses its deep grief over the 14 December attack on the Jewish Community in Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia. Antisemitism has risen at an alarming rate worldwide since October 7 2023. Australia experienced a fourfold increase in antisemitic acts in the year following. New Zealand has not been immune to the global trend…
Auschwitz. Now. staged in Birkdale, Auckland, NZ
Auschwitz. Now. was staged in Birkdale, Auckland, August-October 2025. Next staging will announced in due course.
“They’re afraid to be Jewish”
‘What the hell Is happening in America?' These are the words of Holocaust survivor Barbara Bendler Steinmetz. She escaped the Nazis as a child and is now 88. Steinmetz became the victim of a firebomb attack in the USA recently. 'People are afraid to wear a Star of David. They’re taking down mezuzahs. They’re afraid to be Jewish,’ she said.
“Never Again” in a World That Forgets
To honour the victims of the Shoah, we must do more than mourn them. We must take seriously what their absence demands of us. As Elie Wiesel warned, “To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”
Robert Narev ONZM: Destined for Auschwitz
I cannot of course testify from personal knowledge that six million of our people were murdered during the Holocaust. I leave that to the records which the Nazis themselves largely kept.
Perry Trotter: Speech at IHRD 2025
Eighty years. So much has changed. And yet nothing has changed. Today there are many entities eager to resume the task interrupted by the allied victory in 1945. And just as a cooperative general populace in Europe was essential to the success of the Nazi death scheme, antisemitic ideas and actions proliferate today because so few are willing to speak up.
Dame Lesley Max: Speech at IHRD 2025
First came the ‘Holocaust by bullets’ – where Jews were herded into forests and fields and shot. Others were packed into sealed trucks and gassed to death by carbon monoxide. But all this was not efficient enough. So in January 1942, high-ranking officials gathered at a villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee to coordinate the implementation of what they called ‘The Final Solution of the Jewish Question’.
200 Attend IHRD Event in Rural Community
It was heartening to see a full Community Centre in Wellsford, New Zealand, as the local community and wider district gathered to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Prof Wayne Horowitz on the Holocaust
Prof Wayne Horowitz recently visited NZ. Wayne has worked for 30 years at the Hebrew University, as a teacher of Sumerian and Akkadian texts and traditions.
Wayne agreed to be filmed by the Holocaust Foundation as he described the way his family was impacted by the Holocaust. Watch.
Tabarovsky on Antisemitism since October 7
Izabella Tabarovsky is a scholar of Soviet antizionism and contemporary left antisemitism. We interviewed Izabella and asked her to comment on antisemitism since October 7 and the current state of academia.
Zuroff steps down: comments on education, October 7
“Holocaust education was the best cure for antisemitism,” he stated in an interview with Australian actor Nathaniel Buzolic, who has been vocal in his support of Israel since October 7. He immediately followed that statement and said, “It turns out it’s not true.”
Call for Special Envoy to combat antisemitism
The Holocaust Foundation supports the recent call for the appointment of a special envoy to combat antisemitism. Quoting a recent media release by NZJC and HCNZ, it is time for New Zealand to get “serious about battling the world’s oldest hatred – antisemitism. We call on the government to appoint a special envoy…”
Pogroms and Press Complicity
Retired Associate Judge of the High Court, David Robinson, writes: “If the press is to avoid having blood on its hands it must be very careful not to inflame a very volatile situation and go down in history as causing a pogrom.”
Media Release: Auckland Museum’s Apology
In response to the antisemitic thuggery of Hamas supporters, Auckland Museum has now apologised for the lighting of its building in expression of solidarity with the Jewish nation. This is shameful.
Media Release: Suggested Moral Equivalence Repugnant
Our grief is further compounded by the equivocation of several New Zealand leaders, in their response to Hamas’ attack… This is a time for moral clarity. Antisemitism is virulent and knows a multitude of expressions. It must be called out.
Statement on Hamas attack on Israel
A pogrom is conventionally defined as a mob attack resulting in a massacre, with the approval of authorities, against the persons and property of a religious, racial, or national group. As the details of the barbaric acts against Israelis become clear, the leadership of Hamas, the Iranian Regime, and the Hamas paymasters, the Qatari Regime, are guilty of carrying out and supporting a pogrom, and actually celebrating these unspeakable crimes…
Antisemitism and the Funding of Higher Education
Narratives that prevail in academia soon filter down to politics, media and culture more broadly. The founder of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, Dr Charles Asher Small, recently spoke of his findings concerning Muslim Brotherhood funding of many of the world’s finest universities. The implications for antisemitism are significant.