SYDNEY (JTA) — Vandals drew Hitler moustaches on election posters featuring a Jewish politician.
The vandalized posters were discovered Thursday in the Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn within Frydenberg’s electorate of Kooyong.
Some posters featuring Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg were defaced with the words “right-wing fascist.” He is also deputy leader of the Liberal Party, which in Australia is considered right of center.
“‘Regardless of one’s political persuasion, vandalism is unacceptable,” said Frydenberg, 47. “It’s one thing for these cowards to graffiti a sign, but it’s another thing altogether to invoke the horrors of the Holocaust and the evils of Hitler and the Nazis. These people should be ashamed of themselves.”
Frydenberg’s mother, Erica Strausz, survived the Holocaust and arrived in Australia in 1950 from her native Hungary.
The chairman of the Anti-Defamation Commission, Dvir Abramovich, called the vandalism “sickening and chilling.”
“We decry in the strongest possible terms these actions for what they are: a cowardly and hateful attack on our democracy and on our values. It is sickening and chilling that seven decades after the Holocaust Jewish members of our community continue to be targeted by vilification and Nazi imagery,” he said in a statement.
Frydenberg delivered his first national budget this week but the parliament met for its last day on Thursday.
Australia will go to the polls next month.
