AMA representative claims asylum seekers on Nauru are worse off than Holocaust victims

The paediatric representative from Australia’s peak medical body has suggested asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru are in a worse situation than Jews in Auschwitz because people who knew they were going to be gassed by the Nazis “found some sense of relief in knowing what was happening”.

Paul Bauert of the Australian Medical Association was among dozens of doctors who came to Parliament House in Canberra today to push Bill Shorten and his Labor team to stand firm in support of the Kerryn Phelps-inspired bill.

Mr Bauert said the mental health of detainees in Manus and Nauru had deteriorated because there was no certainty about their future.

“The main reason for the impairment of mental health — as Viktor Frankl the psychiatrist from Auschwitz described very well in his book Man’s Search for Meaning — the main problem that these people have is a lack of meaning, a lack of any end to what is going on, a lack of certainty,” Dr Bauert told Sky News.

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