Rachel Lang
A group of neo-Nazis in Australia have publicly celebrated Adolf Hitler's 133rd birthday by dining and drinking together at a Melbourne Bavarian Beer hall.
The group made a booking under a false name at The Hof Downtown in Melbourne's Docklands, according to the Herald Sun. However, once they took their seats, they didn't mind taking photographs of themselves dining, drinking, and doing Nazi salutes.
The group also brought along a cake, adorned with a swastika and a picture of the brutal dictator responsible for the Holocaust.
When staff at the Bavarian restaurant realised what the group was celebrating, the police were called, but the neo-Nazis had already paid their bill and were leaving.
The group has been condemned for their vile birthday celebration, with chairman of the Anti-Defamation Commission Dvir Abramovich lambasting the group for their actions.
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"Looking at those images one could think they were taken at a tavern in Nazi Germany of the 1930s, not in Melbourne 2022,” Dr. Abramovich told News Corp.
"These Hitler worshippers, who fantasise about a Fourth Reich and an Auschwitz in Melbourne are a growing threat to our safety, and if we don’t act, it will cost lives.
"No one can sleep easy knowing that such homegrown extremists are amongst us and are trying to recruit young, disaffected young men to their twisted cause."
He also told 7News: "I think that Hitler, from that special place reserved in hell for monsters like him, is probably smiling."
The Hof Group managing director Marcel Moodley revealed he took the incident very personally.
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"I am non-white individual originally from South Africa and was subjected to the atrocities of the apartheid system," he said in a statement.
"We are also deeply horrified and saddened that this exists in modern day in a beautiful free country we all get to call home."
Moodley claimed the group of more than 20 men and women had hidden the cake and photo of Hitler from staff, and if Hof employees had seen them, they 'would have acted directly'.
The co-owner added: "We did not know about the intentions of that specific group, nor did we want them in our venue."
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The bill paid by the neo-Nazi group will now be donated to a local charity as a gesture to condemn the group's racist views.
No wartime documents detail a precise figure of the loss of life during Hitler's war and the Holocaust, however data from the Holocaust Encyclopaedia estimates the death toll sits at about 20 million Jews, Romani travellers, LGTBQI+ people, disabled people and more.
To put that figure into greater perspective, Australia has a current population 25.69 million people.