Peter Wertheim, b. 1954, Australia.

“I was born in Australia. Both my parents were born in Europe and experienced European antisemitism, albeit in very different ways, before coming to Australia. My father was born in Germany and came to Australia in 1938 because he could not tolerate living under the Nazi regime. He was fortunate enough to bring the rest of his family to Australia in 1939, just before the outbreak of war.

My mother is a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she lost both her parents, two younger sisters and a younger brother. My mother and her two older sisters, who also survived, each spent the last year of the war in various concentration camps.

When I grew up, the war years and the Shoah were seldom discussed. My mother in particular wanted to shield me from the horrors she had experienced. Nevertheless, the subject did sometimes arise, especially when my mother was in the company of other survivors. I would overhear snippets of conversation about the terrible ordeals my mother and her friends endured. The fact that such horrific events were spoken of only occasionally, and often in cryptic terms, made them seem all the worse to a young child like myself.

Nevertheless, living in a place like Australia made the experiences of my parents' generation seem remote. Then came the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The events that occurred in the four weeks leading up to that war raised the spectre of the world once again being prepared to stand by while Jews were being targeted for mass slaughter. That was also the year I had my Barmitzvah and the whole experience heightened my sense of awareness of being Jewish.

But it wasn't until I was in my mid 30s that I first became active in the Jewish community through the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies. I joined the Board because I thought I could do something useful to counteract the revival of antisemitism and Holocaust denial and to defend Israel against an increasingly hostile media.

On a personal note, I am an only child and I grew up in Australia with only one set of grandparents, no uncles, no aunts and no cousins. When I reached adulthood my only family in Australia consisted of my parents and myself. A few years later I married and have two children, Michael and Jonathan. Being involved with a community as wonderful as the Sydney Jewish community has given me a sense of an extended family which I never had when I was growing up. Perhaps this provides me with an additional edge in my identification with Jewish causes, although I also find the issues facing the community intrinsically interesting.

My participation in the work of the Board of Deputies led to my election as President of that organisation in August 1996 and I still hold that position. It is a demanding role, but one from which I derive enormous satisfaction, as the work I do often overlaps with my professional work as a solicitor. For example, I have been involved with the successful pursuit of racial hatred complaints in both the Human Rights & Equal Opportunity Commission and the Anti-Discrimination Board of NSW. I have also been active in the promotion of Jewish education at both the secondary and post-secondary level, dialogue with other religious and ethnic groups, and have intervened and mediated in internal communal disagreements.

I feel tremendously privileged to be able to be involved as deeply as I have in such a broad range of communal issues. When I think of the generations of Jews who were not free to speak or to act I realise that the fact that I have those freedoms imposes an enormous responsibility on me. It is almost as though I am speaking and acting for the generations who did not have the opportunity to do so and, in the back of my mind and in the depths of my heart, I am aware of their presence.”