A new Holocaust Education Centre has formally opened at Perth’s JHub Maccabi Community Centre, with political and Jewish community leaders stressing the importance of education in confronting antisemitism, racism and prejudice.
Thursday night’s event in Yokine also marked the formal opening of the redeveloped JHub, which has been operating since June 2024.
The Holocaust Education Centre, developed by the Holocaust Institute of Western Australia, will provide programs for students, educators and the wider community, using exhibitions, multimedia and survivor testimony to teach the history and lessons of the Holocaust.
The WA Government provided $1.8 million for the centre’s internal fit-out, including exhibition construction, art installations, lighting and graphics. That followed $6 million each from the WA and Commonwealth governments towards the wider JHub redevelopment.
In January 2025, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced a further $2 million Commonwealth grant over four years to support the Holocaust Institute’s education programs and ongoing operation.
WA Premier Roger Cook said Holocaust education remained vital.
“Educating future generations will help ensure the horrors of the Holocaust are never forgotten and never repeated,” Cook said.
Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister Patrick Gorman told Thursday’s gathering the project was the result of years of work by Perth’s Jewish community and support from both sides of politics.
“This truly is a bipartisan achievement,” Gorman said.
Former federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg attended the opening.
Gorman recalled meeting Frydenberg in Melbourne in the days after the October 7 attacks and discussing their hope that they would one day attend the centre’s opening together.
He also noted that construction had finished ahead of schedule, requiring the Commonwealth to bring forward infrastructure payments.
Gorman paid tribute to Holocaust Institute president Sol Majteles and his commitment to education as a way of confronting hatred.
“I thank Sol Majteles for his belief that child by child, human by human, we can eliminate hate,” he said.
The site has served Perth’s Jewish community for more than 70 years.
Gorman also remembered Joe Berinson, who helped raise money for the original community centre by door-knocking across Perth suburbs in the 1950s and attended its opening in 1973.
Berinson later served as the federal Member for Perth before becoming a WA attorney-general and state minister.
Quoting Berinson’s words from a parliamentary debate, Gorman said: “I am only interested in the substance of the problem and the substance is antisemitism, racism, prejudice.”
The Holocaust Institute of Western Australia was established in 1990 by the Council of WA Jewry in response to Holocaust misinformation and has since provided education programs for secondary students, adults and professional groups.
JHub also includes a lecture theatre, function and meeting spaces, classrooms, youth facilities, a commercial kitchen and other community facilities.
Albanese said when announcing the federal funding last year that Holocaust education helped reinforce a simple message about prejudice, hatred and violence: “No place here. Not now, not ever.”