Israel honours Australian aboriginal with a memorial

An Aboriginal elder is to be honoured for his unique role in opposing Nazi Germany's persecution of Jews, with a memorial to be unveiled at Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum.

Eighty-two years ago, William Cooper, then aged 77, led a protest march in Melbourne a month after the notorious "Kristallnacht" co-ordinated attacks on Jews carried out by the Gestapo and Schutzstaffel (SS).

I'm not so sure that this indigenous Australian man would have experienced similar oppression to that of the Jews in Europe during the war...

"He would've experienced a similar oppression ... a similar genocide right here in Australia, so he had a very firm empathy with the Jewish people," Mr Cooper's grandson, Kevin Russell, told AAP on Saturday.

He is uncommon in his protest as he was defending the rights of others rather than completely concentrating on the "poor me" and "my ppl" focus of later "activists", who seem determined to blame everyone for their failings.

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