The silence that fell upon the Bondi Pavilion forecourt was not the silence of peace, but the heavy, leaden quiet that follows an explosion of hate.
Under the gathering dusk, a community stood bowed, its grief focusing on the most poignant loss: 10 year-old Matilda, the youngest victim of Sunday’s terrorist attack by two gunmen that has so far claimed 15 innocent lives.
Valentyna and Michael (surnames withheld on family request) who came to Australia as Ukraine immigrants before the invasion by Russia, articulated a heartbreak too vast to fully comprehend.
“I didn’t expect to say anything, but I kind of end up here next to the microphone,” said Matilda’s father, tears strangling his voice.
“We came here from the Ukraine … and I named her Matilda because she was our firstborn in Australia. And I thought that Matilda was the most Australian name that could ever exist.
“So just remember – remember her name.”
At this he broke broke down and turned to his wife.
“I couldn’t imagine I would lose my daughter here,” Valentyna told the crowd, which was steadily swelling to more than 1,000. Later the crowd had grown to more like 2,000.
“I can’t imagine what is a monster that stands on that bridge, and seeing a little girl running for her father to hide with him, and… and he just pulled the trigger on her... it wasn’t an accident, it wasn’t just a bullet, fired from a hill ... it stays here” – she pressed the palm of her hand to her heart, hard – “it just stays here and here.” She cannot continue to speak.
Earlier in the evening, Rabbi Yossi Friedman informed the crowd at the Bondi Pavilion memorial that the Jewish community would start burying their dead the following morning. He read the names of the nine victims so far identified: Rabbi Eli Schlanger, assistant rabbi at Chabad of Bondi; Peter Meagher, a retired detective sergeant and freelance photographer who was working at the event; Tibor Weitzen, who reportedly died shielding his wife; Alex Kleytman, a Holocaust survivor who was also reportedly killed while shielding his wife, Larisa; Dan Elkayam, a Frenchman; Marika Pogany, a longtime local community volunteer; Reuven Morrison, a businessman and member of the Chabad community; Rabbi Yaakov Levitan, secretary of the Sydney Beth Din; and Matilda.
“Throughout the day, I’ve been standing and reading out the names, the names of the victims,” Friedman told the mourners. “There are more victims, as we know, and no doubt their names will keep coming.”
And they did. Two hours later another victim’s name was revealed to the crowd. Edith Brutman, the vice-president of NSW’s anti-prejudice and anti-discrimination committee at B’nai B’rith.
Somewhere in the throng, a woman’s anguished cry pierced the silence.
A young woman sat weeping alone on a park bench.
“I’ve come to rip off the Band-Aid,” she said, asking not to be identified. A close friend of her mother’s was one of the victims, and her cousin, who attended the Hanukah celebrations with her two children, aged 6 and 4, escaped narrowly with their lives.
“She dodged bullets – on her birthday,” the woman said through her sobs.
But the experience had hardened her resolve: “I’ve always kept my religion quiet, because I run a tech business, but not today. It’s time to stand up to those bastards.”
At the entrance to the grieving site, Rivky Shuchat, from Jewish Education Matters, had not left her post since early morning for the second day running. An A-frame sandwich board bore the photos of two of her close friends, the slain Jewish community leaders Rabbi Eli Schlanger and Yaakov Levitan, each pictured with their five young children. The board showed two QR codes, and Shuchat was urging everyone to scan and make a donation. Many skipped the technology and forced $20 and $50 bills into her hand.
In the past 48 hours, almost $400,000 has been raised for the rabbi and almost $200,000 for Levitan.
“And I won’t stop until we get to a million for each – these men had young families,” said Shuchat, who attended Sunday’s festivities but left about two minutes before the shooting started.
“I don’t know why,” she said of her miraculous escape along with her husband, Rabbi Yossi Shuchat. “All we can do now is kindness. That’s the only thing we can do. There’s nothing more, nothing less.”
Later in the evening, the community had to absorb another blow as the names of two more victims emerged: Boris and Sofia Gurman, a popular local couple who had emigrated to Australia from Russia, and who had died after trying to tackle one of the gunmen.
A Sydney Anglican minister, Mark Leach, who is of Jewish heritage, addressed the crowd in a passionate speech, telling the Jewish people they cannot fight antisemitism alone.
“I want to say to all the Jewish people here, as a Christian Australian, we are so sorry that we allowed this country to become a place where you would be slaughtered,” he said. “Forgive us. You are a tiny, tiny minority, and the majority of this country has allowed this to happen, and we beg your forgiveness.”
Leach assured the crowd that churches were being filled with everyday Australians gathering to pray and stand with the Jewish community.
“But the fight against antisemitism is not yours to win. You cannot win it. You are too small. It is a fight for all of Australia to win. What we need to do when our season of mourning and grieving is over, we must build a citizen movement in this country that extends from the north to the south and the east to the west, and includes people of all faiths … a citizen movement that will hold ourselves and our governments and our leaders to account for the decisions they make, so that never again will the Jewish community pay in blood for the public policy decisions of any government of this country.”
As the people came and went, and gathered in number as darkness descended, the sea of flowers continued to grow. Leading figures in Sydney’s Jewish community led the people in traditional Hebrew songs of struggle and peace, interspersed by Advance Australia Fair and the Israel national anthem.
Preparing to light the menorah for a second night, Rabbi Motti Feldman issued a message of spiritual defiance:
“We grieve, we mourn, we cry. But we will not be silenced,” he said.
“Hatred must be extinguished, hate in all of its forms, and that is the message of the hanukkiah, the menorah, the candles that we light on this Jewish festival, which they tried to extinguish.
“They tried to extinguish it before it even began … but we refuse to stop lighting that candelabra. We will increase in light.”
