92-Year-Old Auschwitz Survivor Cited in Aussie
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
A 92-year-old Auschwitz survivor was among more than a dozen Jews to be honored on Australia Day.
Eddie Jaku, a guide at the Sydney Jewish Museum since 1992, received a Medal of the Order of Australia in Saturday’s awards that featured 425 men and 146 women.
Jaku travels frequently to the country’s capital of Canberra to recount his story to newly commissioned officers at the Defense Academy.
“I survived Auschwitz but I lost so many family and friends,” he told J-Wire, a local Jewish website. “My life was spared in the concentration camp, so now I feel it is my duty to give something back to humanity.”
Among the other Jewish award recipients were Mark Tedeschi, chair of the Jewish Cemetery Trust in Sydney; Jack Fisher, a former president of the New South Wales Board of Jewish Education and former board member of The Great Synagogue; Pamela Mendels, the founder of the Adelaide Women’s Chapter of B’nai B’rith International and president of the South Australian Division of the Australian Friends of Hebrew University; and businessman and philanthropist Graham Smorgon.
The awards are given twice a year – on Australia Day and on the queen’s birthday.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
