SYDNEY, Australia (JTA) – Australia’s first Jewish lawmaker for the federal Liberal Party paid homage in his maiden speech to family members who perished in the Holocaust and one who survived.
Speaking Monday in the House of Representatives in Canberra, Joshua Frydenberg, 39, and a graduate of Bialik College in Melbourne, said that “My great-grandparents, and many relatives on both sides, perished in the Holocaust, but one who survived is with us today. My great-aunt Mary Frydenberg spent two years at Auschwitz. She was transferred back to Germany by the Nazis and then sent on a death march, but she escaped with the assistance of a humane German guard.”
The former adviser to former Prime Minister John Howard told the chamber that “Like so many other immigrants to our great shores, all of my grandparents came here with nothing … but in Australia anything is possible. We are only limited by our imagination.”
Frydenberg, a graduate of Oxford and Harvard universities, invoked the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famed “I Have A Dream” speech when he said, “I want to see an Australia where the only relevant consideration is the content of a person’s character.”
Frydenberg was elected in the Aug. 21 national elections. Two other Jews, Michael Danby and Mark Dreyfus, join him in the 150-member lower house.
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