Amid a resurgence of anti-Semitism, an unassuming Sydney businessman is now telling his remarkable story of surviving an infamous Nazi death camp— a reminder that we must not forget.
Lately I’ve been helping my mum sort her old photos and letters. We came across some impressive glamour photos on her on dates at various nightclubs like Chequers in Sydney in the swinging early sixties.
“Who’s this handsome guy?” I asked, closely looking at several images. It wasn’t my dad.
She told me his name was Eddy Boas. He’d lived at Coogee when she met him as a young girl of 17, and they had gone out for several years.
He’d been a Holocaust child in a concentration camp, she said. Goodness, I thought.
“Eddy was very charming, carefree, happy-go-lucky,” she said.
How could that be, I asked myself. I looked him up.
Turns out he’s written a memoir about his experiences, called “I’m Not A Victim I Am A Survivor”.
Wow I thought, what a powerful statement. I decided I had to meet him.
Eddy, now 82, was a successful businessman for many years. He’s rubbed shoulders with the rich and famous, used to commute on the Concord between New York and London and owned champion racehorses. He’s met prime ministers, from John Howard to Margaret Thatcher and worked with the elite executives who ran Adidas and Saatchi and Saatchi.