In December 1938, Yorta Yorta man William Cooper took part in a protest organised by the Australian Aborigines’ League to deliver a letter to the German consulate in Melbourne condemning the “cruel persecution of the Jewish people by the Nazi government”.
The protest came weeks after Kristallnacht, an outpouring of violence against Jews by the Nazi regime in Germany, which resulted in the burning of synagogues, damage to Jewish businesses, imprisonment of tens of thousands of Jews and many killings.
Holocaust educators in Australia have taken up Cooper’s march as an example of being an “upstander”, rather than a “bystander” during the Holocaust.
