My father has a photograph of Albert Ransenberg taken in the yard of the railway station in Wiesbaden, Germany, in 1942. It was secretly taken by a local policeman.
The photograph shows Jews from Wiesbaden being deported to the "east".
Albert Ransenberg died in Theresienstadt, a ghetto and transit camp. His wife, Ida, was murdered at Auschwitz, on 13 October 1942, just six weeks later.
Albert and Ida were my father's grandparents. My great-grandparents.
They were two of the 6 million Jews who were victims of the Holocaust. One million of them, including Ida, were murdered at Auschwitz.
My other German great-grandmother, Paula Dreyfus, took poison on the night of 18 July 1942, just days after she was told of her imminent deportation.
On Monday, as attorney general of Australia, and the great-grandson of Ida, Albert and Paula, I attended a commemoration at Auschwitz marking the 80th anniversary of its liberation.
In the shadow of the main gate at Auschwitz, survivors remembered the horrors of the camp and reflected on the lives they have lived since their liberation.
As Holocaust survivors grow ever fewer in number, the memory of history's greatest evil will dwindle without careful tending.
Last week a report by the Claims Conference, which represents Jewish victims of Nazi persecution and their descendants, found knowledge of the Holocaust was fading across the world.
Nearly half of American adults and a third of young adults in the UK could not name the site of a single death camp. More than half of people surveyed in Romania believed the 6 million death toll had been "greatly" exaggerated, and almost half of young adults in France couldn't even say what the Holocaust is.
The survivors who spoke at the commemoration at Auschwitz implored the world not to forget. To ensure their past did not become their children's future.
In Poland I joined my colleague Penny Wong to represent all Australians. We attended the commemoration with Jillian Segal, Australia's first special envoy to combat antisemitism, and Robert Goot SC, the deputy president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.
I am only able to honour the memory of those who died, and bear witness to their loss, because my father, George, escaped Nazi Germany as an 11-year-old boy. George is now 96 and one of a small number of people still alive who lived through the Holocaust. He bears witness to Kristallnacht and other horrors unleashed on the Jews of Europe by the twisted, hateful ideology of the Nazis.
As Elie Wiesel said on a visit to Buchenwald in 2009: "Memory has become the sacred duty of all people of good will."
I understand all too well the shocking rise in antisemitism in Australia and, indeed, right across the world. My family's history make its rise personal and painful.
We've all got to work together to combat this scourge - the oldest hatred in the world. That includes government and the community, together.
That is why we must reject attempts to politicise the Holocaust and to politicise antisemitism. Combating antisemitism and remembering the Holocaust does not belong to the left or the right. It does not belong to the progressive side of Australian politics, or the conservative side of Australian politics.
Today I say never again.
For Ida. For Albert. For Paula. For the million Jews murdered at Auschwitz. For the 6 million Jews murdered during the Holocaust. For survivors who found refuge in Australia. For all Jews. For all humanity.
This opinion piece was originally published in The Guardian .
