Historic Synagogue in Australian Outback Is Vandalized

Image by Synagogue of the Outback Museum
A historic synagogue in the Australian outback mining city of Broken Hill was defaced with Nazi and Islamic symbols.
The curator of the synagogue arrived at work Monday to prepare for a visit by tourists and found the front of the building had been vandalized.
Margaret Price, the coordinator of the Synagogue of the Outback Museum told JTA: “I arrived at work and found the symbols and slogans across the front of the building which is under the ownership of the Broken Hill Historical Society.”
Price said the synagogue last was vandalized about 10 years ago, when it was painted with swastikas on Hitler’s birthday. In 2010, a local bookstore that featured promotional Chanukah material in its window was defaced with Nazi symbols as well.
“Although there is no Jewish presence in the city these days, I grew up with Jews and my family worked with them. They were Broken Hillers and a strong part of our community. We are dismayed by this scurrilous attack on the building on the very day of its 105th anniversary,” Price told JTA.
She added: “People are asking why this is happening now and one man offered me $50 to help clean it up.”
The Broken Hill Synagogue was established in 1910 to meet the spiritual needs of a small but vibrant Jewish community serving the booming mining town. When the mining boom slowed down, most of the Jewish community left. Broken Hill is situated in far west New South Wales, hundreds of miles from other Jewish communities in Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne. It is the first city in Australia to be heritage listed. “The presence of the synagogue played a part in the listing,” Price said. It last functioned as a synagogue in 1962.
Detective-Inspector Michael Stoltenberg of Broken Hill police told JTA that police are investigating the attack on the synagogue. “These sorts of incidents are not common in our area and we want it to stay that way,” he said.
The CEO of The New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, Vic Alhadeff, said he visited the Broken Hill Synagogue two years ago while on the Board’s annual bridge-building tour of Regional New South Wales. “The bigotry inherent in any such attack is exacerbated by the idiocy of the perpetrators. The Broken Hill Synagogue, which is 105 years old, is cared for by the same dedicated group of volunteers who take care of a mosque and two museums in the city, so attacking it impacts those other institutions too as funds will now have to be raised to remove the graffiti,” he said.
“All acts of racism are strongly condemned, and how much more so in a city which was built on its multicultural ethos, with Jews having a long and proud history in Broken Hill until recently,” he added.
The synagogue, which houses prayer books, ark curtains, tallitot and an Israeli flag, is visited by over 800 tourists annually.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward ‘Another Jewish warrior’: Fine wins special election for U.S. House seat
-
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
-
Opinion In Trump’s war against campus antisemitism, hate the tactics but don’t ignore the problem
-
Yiddish כ׳בענק נאָך די וועלטלעכע ייִדן וואָס האָבן אָפּגעריכט אַ טראַדיציאָנעלן סדר Longing for those secular Jews who led a traditional seder
מײַן פֿעטער יונה האָט נישט געהיט שבת און כּשרות אָבער בײַם אָפּריכטן דעם סדר האָט ער געקלונגען ווי אַ פֿרומער ייִד
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.