William Cooper Kristallnacht protest 1938

It's 72 years since the terrible night in Germany and Australia called Kristallnacht - the Night of Broken Glass. The organised mass violence against Jews saw rampaging Nazis smash Jewish stores and properties, kill nearly 100 people and intern 36,000 others in camps.

William Cooper

A month later, across the other side of the world in Melbourne, a remarkable elderly man organised a protest march to the German consulate, the only private demonstration against the pogrom of that night. The man was William Cooper, now recognised as one of the founders of modern Aboriginal activism, who fought for the plight of many oppressed groups as well as his own people.

Shmuel Rosenkranz was only 10 when the Nazis stormed his hometown of Vienna in the terrifying attacks of Kristallnacht. He and some of his family were among the relative few to escape the destruction of that night.

Decades later, he was to discover in his new home on the other side of the globe that back in 1938, an Australian man had stood up for the Jews in the only known private protest against Kristallnacht.

Shmuel Rosenkranz: "In my opinion, the man was a great humanist, above all."

William Cooper wasn't just half a world away from the Nazi horror, he was a man disenfranchised in his own country, the founder of the Australian Aborigines' League.

Aged 77, William Cooper led a delegation from his house in Melbourne's inner-west to the German consulate in the city to deliver a resolution, "... against the cruel persecution of the Jewish people by the Nazi Government of Germany and asking that the persecution be brought to an end."