Non-Executive Director of SBS and former CEO of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies (JBOD), Vic Alhadeff, has always been extremely proud of his Greek roots.
Speaking with The Greek Herald back in May 2021, Mr Alhadeff explained how not only was the Alhadeff family ‘one of the largest Jewish families on the Greek island of Rhodes,’ but both of his parents were also born there.
This all changed in 1938 – a year before World War II erupted.
Anti-Semitic decrees were passed in many parts of Europe banishing Jews from civil society. There were approximately 4,000 Jews living on Rhodes at the time and approximately half of them left for places such as the United States and South Africa.
Mr Alhadeff’s father, Salvatore, left Rhodes and went to Zimbabwe, then known as Rhodesia, with the aim of bringing out his parents, his teenage sisters aged 14 and 16, and his fiancé Becky.
“But then WWII erupted and he wasn’t able to bring them out. In 1943, German forces arrived on the island and in 1944 they sent the Jews who were still on Rhodes island to Auschwitz. That included my father’s parents, sisters and his fiancé,” Mr Alhadeff tells The Greek Herald.
“His parents were murdered at Auschwitz, his sisters both survived and what happened to Becky? He was told that she had been killed and she was told he had been killed.”
Approximately 40 years later, Salvatore was on holiday in Cape Town, South Africa, when he overheard his fiancé’s name in a restaurant.
Read the article by Andriana Simos in The Greek Herald.