Bondi royal commission live updates: Jewish Australians share harrowing lived experiences of anti-Semitism

Dr Engelman’s testimony has concluded.

That wraps up the hearing for the day.

Dr Engelman is the co-founder of the Community Health Support Charity.

He says people were scared after the Bankstown hospital incident to go to public hospitals.

He also says the group was preparing for a mass casualty event post-October 7.

He says demand for emergency m,edical training has risen dramatically since December 14.

Dr Engelman says he never truly felt anti-Semitism until after the events of October 7.

“She saw hatred, she saw vitriol, she saw people attacking the Jewish people without any provocation,” he says.

She became concerrned about the welfare of the wider Jewish community, he says.

This re-traumatised his mother and provoked “many more sleepless nights”.

Dr Jeffrey Engelman is the final witness for the day.

He says his father was also a survivor of Auschwitz.

Dr Engelman says both his parents were “very proud Australians”.

They were both involved in the establishment of the Sydney Jewish Museum.

He says two weeks before his mother died, at the age of 97, she was still educating students about the holocaust.

Mrs Engelman says she arrived at Auschwitz with her parents as a child and was “roughly” separated from her parents.

That was the last time she saw them. She found out later they were taken straight to the gas chambers.

The children were made to shave their heads and were also sent to the gas chambers.

But by a miracle, the gas wasn’t effective.

In the morning they were put to work.

She said the way the guards treated the victims was horrific.

“The hatred. You have no idea,” she says.

“They can do anything to you but they cannot break your spirit. They never succeeded to break my spirit.”

She says with the passage of time, she knows she is the victor. She survived and now has four generations of Australians to her name.

The court is now seeing a video testimony from the late Yvonne Engelman.

She is a holocaust survivor telling her story.

Her son Jeffrey will be the last speaker for the day.

Mr Halas says his greatest fear if the current trajectory continues is that if the country is not safe for his children or their children then “we will have to leave”.

He asked the royal commission to help fight for this outcome.

Mr Halas is the director of the Jewish Centre for Law and Justice.

He says that a lot of Jewish people are afraid to come forward to the royal commission.

He’s telling a story about a board member at a company he worked with complaining about being “sick of white Jewish power”.

The comments were made during a discussion about the October 7 attacks, when a staff member at the company was describing how they had impacted her family.

The board member resigned a few days later.

Mr Halas says he had a “wonderful childhood” and experienced very little anti-Semitism growing up.

He says he started to see anti-Semitism grow during COVID, when far right groups would circulate conspiracy theories that Israel was responsible for COVID.

He says on the left, he saw a new movement of “being a good person” being equated with opposing Israel.

Mr Halas is Peter Halasz’ son.

He says he has applied for his Hungarian citizenship as a “plan B” in case things “don’t improve” in Australia.

“Who would have thought that Hungary would be seen as a safe alternative,” he says.