Greens MP told to go back to history books and apologises for Holocaust photo posted on Facebook

 Email this story

Print

1 Comment

A post depicting images of children Holocaust prisoners next to an image purported to be of incarcerated refugee children being detained in the USA has been removed from the Facebook belonging to Ballina NSW Greens MP Tamara Smith.

Facebook The post now removed

In an interview with 2GB’s Ray Hadley the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies CEO Vic Alhadeff pointed out that image of the supposedly US-held children was actually an image of children in Hebron taken 1n 2010

Tamara Smith has apologised unreservedly.

Tamara Smith Facebook

In the interview Ray Hadley said Smith has been accused of trivialising the Holocaust by spreading an appalling meme comparing the US to Nazi Germany. Hadley said Smith has been told to go back to history books after putting an offensive picture below a photo of children in concentration camps.

He reveals the image was not a picture taken in the US but showed Palestinian children waiting to be fed at a soup kitchen in Hebron.

Hadley says it is outrageous when people compare modern-day situations with the Holocaust.

Vic Alhadeff told Ray Hadley his own grandparents were murdered in the Holocaust. He argued Smith’s action shows an absolute lack of knowledge of today’s happenings in the US and the Holocaust. Hadley admitted it angers him that those from the Left, who trot out horror pictures when they want to make a point, do not think about the impact on people who have lost family members during World War II.

Alhadeff says Smith should have known a lot better

NSW Labor frontbencher Walt Secord, who is a patron of the Labor Israel Action Committee and Deputy chair of the NSW Parliamentary Friends of Israel said the Greens MP Tamara Smith’s Facebook post was “sickening and repulsive”.

He told J-Wire: “Using the death of six million Jewish people including 1.5 million children being murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust is one of the most repugnant and vile posts by a NSW Parliamentarian I’ve seen in years.”

“There is no way a sensible MP could make such a modern-day comparison with the Nazi death camps of the Holocaust. Once again, this shows the NSW Greens have no understanding of the Holocaust and its impact on the Jewish community.”

Tamara Smith is reported to have told her followers before removing the post  that ‘it’s a metaphor’. The Daily Mail reported she later explained her motive, stating it was ‘directed at the atrocious and appalling behaviour of the Trump administration and its detention of children’. There was no intention to offend Holocaust victims,’ she said.