Eddie Jaku: May his memory be a blessing

Eddie Jaku, the Holocaust survivor who died in Sydney on Tuesday at the age of 101, delighted in saying he was the “happiest man on earth”. But he was much more than that. As NSW Jewish Board of Deputies chief executive Darren Bark said, Mr Jaku “was a beacon of light not only for our community but the world”.

His life, as Scott Morrison remarked, was “a testimony of how hope and love can triumph over despair and hate”.

That truly was the message of Mr Jaku’s life, both before and after he arrived in Australia as a refugee in 1950. It is a message that could hardly be more appropriate as the world confronts challenges of racism, religious intolerance and resurgent anti-Semitism. The horrors Mr Jaku experienced in four concentration camps, including Buchenwald and Auschwitz, were unimaginable. His parents died in gas chambers. He had every reason to hate. “I know what it is to stare evil in the face,” he said when he turned 100. “I have seen the very worst of mankind, the horrors of the death camps, the Nazi efforts to exterminate my life, and the lives of all people.”

But the conclusion he drew was the pointlessness of hate. “I do not hate anyone,” he said. “Hate is a disease which may destroy your enemy, but it will also destroy you.”

As Josh Frydenberg, whose mother survived the Holocaust, said: “Australia has lost a giant.” He is right; Mr Jaku was that. Sadly, his death marks the loss of another of the 27,000 Holocaust survivors who found refuge in our country. Australians, Jewish and non-Jewish, have reason to mourn the death of a remarkable man and to keep alive his legacy of hope and compassion.