'It'll never be the same again': Bondi Beach attack shatters life for Australia's Jewish residents

SYDNEY — The sense of anger is palpable among members of the Jewish community in and around Bondi Beach as it reels from the attack on a Hanukkah celebration that killed 15 people

SYDNEY — The sense of anger is palpable among members of the Jewish community in and around Bondi Beach as it reels from the attack on a Hanukkah celebration that killed 15 people.

Much of their fury is directed at the government, which has been accused of failing to heed warnings about antisemitic threats ahead of the Dec. 14 attack. But there has also been sadness and soul-searching about the place the community has in a neighborhood well known for its Jewish roots, and in Australia’s wider society.

Linda Royal said her parents fled Poland after the invasion by Nazi Germany in 1939, arriving first in Lithuania. They landed in Sydney two years later, aided by illegal transit visas issued by a Japanese diplomat.

“Like many migrants, they came to Bondi because it was working-class and inexpensive,” she told NBC News last week close to the site of the shooting, on a hill where thousands of flowers had been laid in tribute to the victims.

In the years since her parents’ arrival, Royal said, the Jewish community has swelled in the neighborhood and its surrounding suburbs, first with Holocaust survivors and later with refugees known as refuseniks from countries in the former Soviet Union, some of whom had been denied permission to emigrate to Israel.