Australia’s Reckoning: From Post-War Amnesia to Present-Day Vulnerability
The chilling massacre at Bondi Beach in December 2025 cast a stark, immediate shadow over Dan Goldberg’s SBS documentary, The Hunt For The Last Nazis. Initially conceived as an exploration of “Australia’s shameful past,” Goldberg found himself grappling with a horrifying collision of history and the present. The immediate aftermath of the attack, which claimed 15 lives at the Chanukah by the Sea gathering, was a blur of journalistic urgency, with Goldberg filing dispatches for his former publication, Haaretz, in Israel.
Returning to his film in early January, the journalist faced a profound challenge: how to address the “elephant in the room” – the brutal reality of violence impacting the Jewish community on Australian soil. The massacre, he explains, forced a re-evaluation. “My first instinct was no, it’s a different story, it’s a different time, it’s a different place, it’s a different context, it’s too fresh, it’s too raw, it’s too confronting,” Goldberg recounts. However, a producer’s pointed question underscored the undeniable connection: “Dan, can you please explain the difference between 850 Jews massacred in Soviet-occupied Ukraine in 1942 and Jews massacred on Bondi Beach in 2025?”
While the complexities of the ongoing conflict in Gaza and the Israeli government’s response to the October 2023 Hamas attacks are a separate, albeit related, discussion, Goldberg’s documentary masterfully illuminates the long-held sense of vulnerability within Australia’s Jewish community and the historical underpinnings of these anxieties.
The film’s core narrative centres on a disturbing post-World War II reality: Australia’s decision to accept over 4,000 individuals with Nazi pasts among its displaced persons intake. This lax approach to security screening, as academic Ruth Balint explains in the documentary, stemmed from a national preoccupation with nation-building rather than scrutinising the histories of new arrivals.
“Populate or Perish”: A Pragmatic, Predatory Policy
Australia’s post-war immigration policy was driven by a dual fear of communism and the perceived threat of Asian expansion. The prevailing mantra, “populate or perish,” underpinned an agenda prioritising pragmatism over humanitarianism. Historian Jayne Persian further elaborates on the deeply ingrained racism of the era, revealing that immigration officers were explicitly instructed to avoid selecting Jewish individuals. Nationalities were ranked, with those from the Baltic states at the top and Jews at the bottom.
“There was a profile Australia was selecting for,” Persian states. “They were supposed to fit in on Bondi Beach … white, young, not Jewish, anti-communist. Hitler could not have done better.” This initial laxity, laced with overt prejudice, solidified into policy when Attorney-General Sir Garfield Barwick declared in Parliament in 1961 that it was “time to close the chapter on war crimes.”
This decision effectively made Australia the first nation to grant amnesty for war crimes, a move that occurred concurrently with Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Israel for his role in the Holocaust. It wasn’t until 1987, under Bob Hawke, that a dedicated Special Investigations Unit was established to examine the presence of Nazi war criminals in Australia. Despite conducting 841 investigations and incurring significant costs by its closure in 1993 (under Paul Keating), the unit recorded zero convictions.
Unanswered Questions and Lingering Threats
Goldberg delves into the specific cases of three accused Nazi war criminals who found refuge in Australia: Konrad Kalejs, Karlis Ozols (who notably became the Australian chess champion in 1959), and Ivan Polyukhovich. Polyukhovich, arrested in 1990, was found to be in possession of his identification card, complete with a swastika.
Only Polyukhovich faced trial. Despite compelling testimony from eyewitnesses flown in from Ukraine, who identified him as a perpetrator of killings, he was acquitted in July 1993. Goldberg clarifies that the issue was not a lack of evidence, but rather the passage of time. The accounts were deemed too distant to establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt, and any conviction was considered unsafe. This, Goldberg argues, was a direct consequence of government policy prioritising national development over accountability for past atrocities. “We just wanted to build the country, and to hell with whether people had blood on their hands,” he observes. “They were young, they were fit, they were men – and crucially, they were white men.”
Goldberg highlights a sobering contemporary parallel: while Australia’s last Nazis have now passed away, war criminals from other conflicts, including Rwanda, Sudan, and the Balkans, may still reside within the country, equally likely to evade prosecution as their predecessors.
“We’re one of the few Western countries that doesn’t have a permanent war crimes unit,” Goldberg states emphatically. “This is not just the past, it is the present. We can’t allow history to repeat itself. It’s just criminal, and it’s on us.”
The Hunt For The Last Nazis airs on SBS on Sunday, May 31, at 7:30pm and is available on SBS On Demand.
