The ACT Jewish Community invites you to join us on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Special guest speaker Ernst Willheim.

Ernst Willheim is an honorary professor at the ANU College of Law. Between 1967 and 1998 he worked for the Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department where he headed several policy and professional Divisions, established the office of general counsel and was its first head, led Australian delegations to international conferences and appeared as counsel for the Commonwealth in the High Court and other appellate courts. after joining the University, he has undertaken research in several public law areas including native title, racial discrimination administrative law, judicial accountability, constitutional law, international law, sovereign immunity, refugees, access to courts, protection of indigenous religious beliefs and the role of amicus in the high court.

He has published widely particularly in the areas of constitutional law, administrative law, international law, environmental law and Aboriginal issues. Ernst has also made submissions to Parliamentary Committees on a wide range of issues including indigenous issues, religious discrimination, human rights, nuclear matters and the power to go to war, given numerous media interviews, appeared as counsel on a pro bono basis and prepared a successful complaint to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on behalf of an Aboriginal Australian.

Ernst is active in Canberra U3A groups and recently gave a talk on the ICJ genocide proceedings contending that the pleadings failed to establish jurisdiction and genocidal intent.

Ernst’s parents came from Vienna, Austria.

Ernst’s father was a prisoner in two notorious Nazi concentration camps, Dachau and Buchenwald. Grandparents, an uncle and an aunt were murdered in the holocaust.

The family came to Australia in 1948 (via Norway and Sweden). Other family members went to Bolivia, the United States, Israel and Australia.