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.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS