In the photo, Amber, a curly-haired little girl, sits beaming on the man’s knee while teenager, Phoenix, wraps his arms around his shoulders. It is an image filled with affection. It could be a proud grandfather with his adored and adoring grandchildren. Yet Peter Halas, the man in the picture, had never met these children before that day’s photo shoot.
The photos were taken for the Sydney Jewish Museum Community Stories book I met A Survivor. The book connected young children with Holocaust survivors to bridge generations and be a starting point for conversations about the Holocaust. Halas appears in one spread. His wife, Yvonne, in another.
This is a conversation and a connection the couple feels passionately about.
Halas is the low-key founder of arguably Australia’s most famous swimwear brand, Seafolly, which he sold to the private equity owners of global luxury giant LVMH in 2014.
An immigrant from Hungary, Halas is a national entrepreneurial success story from a time when the potential to create a fortune out of business and marketing savvy felt limitless.
He has rarely if ever spoken to the mainstream media about his heritage and background as a survivor of anti-Semitism. But increasingly concerned about the dangers posed by extremism and in support of the Museum’s project, he has agreed to an interview with the Wentworth Courier.
Read the account by Tess Durack in The Daily Telegraph (Wentworth Courier).