Monash university students filmed TikTok dances in the car parks of Auschwitz and concentration camps during a 10 day study tour, the Royal Commission into Anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion has heard.
Monash graduate Paris Enten told the inquiry she’d been “clinically traumatised” from the 2024 university trip to the Netherlands, Germany, and the Czech Republic, where some of the other student attendees mocked her and atrocities committed against Jews.
Ms Enten, who is the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, was one of several witnesses to appear before the inquiry on Tuesday in Melbourne as it hears from students, academics and universities about experiences of anti-Semitism on campus.
She described the behaviour of fellow students on the trip as “disgusting” and “abhorrent” while she had an “really emotionally intense few days” travelling through concentration camps, ghettos and memorials.
“People were filming TikTok dances in the car parks of Auschwitz and concentration camps,” Ms Enten said.
“People complained about having to go to visit camps and ghettos where people were mass slaughtered because it was too early in the morning and they were still hungover from the night before.
“They were just there for their Euro summer.”
Ms Enten said while the Monash trip facilitators tried to intervene, “there was just nothing that could be done to reel in this behaviour”.
“I made it known really early that I found it abhorrent, and people didn’t care. It was just terrible.”
“For so much of the trip I was being laughed at, and my family was being laughed at, and I really just didn’t trust anyone who I met.
“I genuinely would describe myself as probably clinically traumatised. It took a really long time for me to return to a normal state.”
An Australian university professor also told the royal commission that he feared he was the target of a “terror attack” when 20 masked pro-Palestine students marched his office and staged a sit-in.
Melbourne University physics professor Steven Prawer said the intruding students wore keffiyehs, carried signs, chanted and some covered their faces in a “classic terrorist pose” during the office takeover in October 2024.
“I had no idea at that stage if it was a protest, if it was a terrorist attack,” he said on Tuesday.
Professor Prawer described the anxiety that followed with extra security and an Uber account so he could avoid public transport provided by the university.
“I don’t know what their intentions were, but when a Jewish person with some experience of what happens in Israel sees a masked person, you could only see their eyes,” he said.
Australia-Israel and Jewish Affairs Council policy analyst Bren Carlill reiterated details of a 2023 survey about the experiences of Jewish students at Australian universities.
Dr Carlill warned the reported number of anti-Semitic incidents on campuses across Australia was likely the tip of the iceberg as students had doubt that universities would follow up or had lost faith complaints would change behaviour.
“Jewish students weren’t submitting complaints because they didn’t think it would work,” Dr Carlill said.
The survey found 64 per cent of Jewish students had reported at least one incident of anti-Semitism during their time at university, and 88 per cent of those reports had occurred within the previous 12 months.
The most reported type of incident was people or events which made the student feel intimidated because of their Jewish identity.
The second-most reported type of perceived anti-Semitism was based on perceptions of how Jews relate to money, power or influence.
The royal commission was also told about the frequent “doxxing” of Jewish students and graduates, with third-year Monash student Jeremy Suss explaining how some elements of the pro-Palestine movement would share their personal and workplace details online.
“A number of my predecessors have been doxxed online. Their current workplaces have been published online,” the Australasian Union of Jewish Students president said.
“It’s a really distressing reality when taking on a position in the only Jewish student union in this country, it is treated as an inherently amoral or nefarious act.”
Several witnesses shared how they hide being Jewish or Zionist in fear of being attacked and how constant protests and encampments scared them as they tried to attend classes.
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