Australia’s B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC)has decried the comparison made by South Australian Liberal MP Adrian Pederick between allowing voluntary euthanasia in Australia and Hitler’s Nazi regime.
During a recent debate in the SA parliament whether to allow voluntary euthanasia, Mr Pederick recalled a conversation he had with a woman about the subject who had asked about the funding of aged care in the future. This was Mr Pederick response: “I said to her if that is your reason for promoting voluntary euthanasia I cannot live with that. This is the sort of thing that was done in the 40s in Nazi Germany.”
Dr Dvir Abramovich, Chair of The B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC), said: “While I understand and acknowledge that there are profound convictions and emotions regarding this issue, and that reasonable people hold passionate opposing views, Mr Pederick’s comparison to Nazi Germany is insensitive, outrageous and deeply hurtful.
It is a gross distortion to compare Hitler’s barbaric “euthanasia” killing operations, as well as the hideous perversion of science and ethics as represented by the conduct of Nazi physicians, to a parliamentary debate about a law to legalise euthanasia under certain conditions.
This egregious analogy is just the latest example of a worrying epidemic of routine comparisons to Nazi Germany and Hitler that are occurring with alarming frequency. Such tasteless equations, often used to score political points, diminish and trivialise the memory of the six million Jews and the millions of others who perished at the hands of the Nazis.
The victims, survivors and their families deserve better. There is no place for such divisive and painful and divisive words in our civil discourse, and we urge Mr Pederick to repudiate his statement and to refrain from employing such analogies in the future.”