Moment that spanned a half century of turmoil THE AUSTRALIAN NOVEMBER 18, 2014 Helen Trinca Managing Editor Sydney WHEN Frank Lowy rose to his feet yesterday to introduce German Chancellor Angela Merkel to a packed ballroom at the Westin Hotel in Sydney, you could almost hear the wheels of history turning. The extraordinary moment was not lost on the Holocaust survivor, who came to Australia in 1952 and became one of the country’s richest and most influential citizens, not just through business but through his founding of the Lowy Institute dedicated to international affairs. At 84, Mr Lowy has lived through immense personal and global change but even he could never have imagined that, almost 70 years after the death of chancellor Adolf Hitler, he would host a German leader to deliver the annual lecture that bears his name. Looking down from the podium, the co-founder of the Westfield empire told his guest: “Madam Chancellor, the Second World War had a profound effect on both our lives. For you it led to the partition and the reunification of your homeland. For me, as a Holocaust survivor, it was the reason for my immigration to Australia.” Later, Mr Lowy told The Australian that the moment had been “memorable and intriguing” for what it said about life and human possibility. It was that kind of a day in Sydney. After she left the Lowy event, Ms Merkel laid a wreath at the Anzac War Memorial in Sydney’s Hyde Park. Beside her, laying the wreath on behalf of the federal government was Liberal MP Josh Frydenberg, one of a handful of Jewish members of parliament, whose extended family also suffered throughout the Nazi regime. It is almost two decades since a German leader visited an Australian war memorial. In May 1997, Helmut Kohl used his visit to the war memorial in Canberra to reflect on the past and suggest the coming 21st century would be “a century of peace and of freedom in Europe”. Seventeen years on, his successor told the Lowy Institute that Russia’s annexation of Crimea had “caused the whole of the European peaceful order to be brought into question”. “Who would have thought 25 years after the fall of the Wall, after the end of the Cold War and the division of Europe … that something like this could happen right at the centre of Europe?” she said. As she spoke, news came of Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko’s sombre statement that his country was “prepared for total war” against Russia. Ms Merkel, born in 1954 and raised in the old East Germany, was well aware of the personal history of her host for the Lowy Lecture. They have met once before. Mr Lowy told The Australian yesterday that he could not quite find the words to express “how we are on the same page having regard to the history”. Mr Lowy was just a boy in Hungary when his father was taken by the Nazis. He went into hiding with his mother and spent the war evading capture and outwitting the Gestapo and anti-Semitic street gangs. In 1946 he went to Israel and then came to Australia. Yesterday Mr Lowy said: “You can’t forget what I went though and the (family) losses that I suffered … but the other side of the coin is that Germany has changed and it has changed under (Ms Merkel’s) leadership.” She had taken a stand against anti-Semitism and Germany has atoned as far as was humanly possible for the Nazi era, supporting Israel economically and paying compensation to many Holocaust survivors. “She, particularly, has faced the issues honestly,” he said. “She can’t undo the Holocaust but you must give her a bit of credit … I think that Germany has accepted the responsibility that many others have not.” Mr Lowy said the Chancellor’s address showed her calibre: “I have not heard anyone in Australia speak like that and know so much. We were very, very impressed.”
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 22:39:07 +0000