Holocaust survivor Eddie Jaku, who last year published his best-selling memoir, The Happiest Man on Earth, has died in Sydney, a Jewish community leader said. He was 101.
“Eddie Jaku was a beacon of light and hope for not only our community, but the world,” New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies chief executive officer Darren Bark said in a statement.
“He will always be remembered for the joy that followed him, and his constant resilience in the face of adversity,” Bark added.
Photo: AP
Jaku died on Tuesday.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison paid tribute to Jaku’s decision to “make his life a testimony of how hope and love can triumph over despair and hate.”
“He will be sadly missed, especially by our Jewish community. He was an inspiration and a joy,” Morrison said.
Treasurer of Australia Josh Frydenberg, whose Jewish-Hungarian mother also survived the Holocaust and arrived in Australia in 1950 as a stateless child, said: “Australia has lost a giant.”
“He dedicated his life to educating others about the dangers of intolerance and the importance of hope,” Frydenberg said in a statement.
Jaku said in a speech in Sydney in 2019: “I do not hate anyone. Hate is a disease which may destroy your enemy, but will also destroy you.”
“Happiness does not fall from the sky. It’s in your hands. I’m doing everything I can to make this world a better place for everyone,” he said.
Jaku was born Abraham “Adi” Jakubowiez in April 1920 in the German city of Leipzig. His parents and many of his wider family did not survive the war.
He was tossed out of school in 1933 at the age of 13 because he was Jewish, but managed to finish his high-school education in another city under an alias in 1938 with a qualification in precision engineering.
Jaku said his qualification spared him the gas chambers in the years that followed because he worked as a slave laborer.
He was sent to and escaped from concentration camps, including Buchenwald and Auschwitz, where his parents were gassed on arrival.
He escaped from what he suspected was a death march as an Auschwitz prisoner as Allies approached. He spent months in hiding before US troops found him near-starved and sick with cholera and typhoid.
In 1946, he married in Belgium his Jewish wife Flore, who had spent a comparatively uneventful war in Paris pretending to be Christian, and they migrated to Australia in 1950.
He worked at a Sydney garage and his wife as a dressmaker before they went into real estate together.
Forever marked with an Auschwitz prisoner number tattooed on his left arm, he also became a volunteer at the Sydney Jewish Museum, sharing his experiences and philosophies of life with visitors.
“When anybody left Eddie having spoken to him, they really just felt as if their whole outlook on life had changed,” museum chief executive Norman Seligman told Nine Network television.
Jaku said with the birth of his first son, Andre, “I realized I was the luckiest man on Earth.”
He is survived by his wife of 75 years, his sons Andre and Michael, four grandchildren and five great grandchildren.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in