A Rose Bay time capsule from the 1950s and ‘60s owned by well known Holocaust survivor Olga Horak is going up for auction on May 4 with a $6m price guide.
The iconic P&O style masterpiece with stunning harbour views at 70 Liverpool St, was bought in 1952 for £10,500 by Olga and her late husband, John Horak.
Daughter Susie Berk says her parents, who’d been living in a flat in Bondi, had been driving around the streets of the east looking at homes with a real estate agent.
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“He was getting exasperated because they didn’t like anything, and he turned around and said: ‘Well, what sort of house do you want?’ ” Susie said.
“My father pointed to this house and said ‘One like that’, because even in those days, it stood out for its style, proudly and prominently on the corner.
“The next day, the agent knocked on the person’s door and they did the deal in five minutes!”
Olga’s tale of survival from the Nazis has been well-documented. When she was 17 in 1944, she and her entire family were sent to Auschwitz and then to Bergen-Belsen. Olga was the sole survivor.
She and John emigrated to Australia in 1949 and established a blouse factory called Hibodress.
Olga, now 97, has been volunteering at the Sydney Jewish Museum since its inception and published her memoir, Auschwitz to Australia, in 2000.
The story of their wonderful home, however, has not been told.
After their fortunate purchase — although, as Susie says, £10,500 was “a lot of money at the time and the house was in a very raw state” — her parents set out to make it their own.
“They did the manicured gardens and put in a lot of what is now highly sought-after inbuilt furniture in the bedrooms by [Paul] Kafka, a well-known cabinet maker at the time,” she says.
“My mother is very artistic and creative and my father was as well, so they created a very elegant home over over the years, with another renovation in 1969 by the well-known architect Henry Kurzer.
“The kitchen features floating cupboards, coloured enamel stove and stainless steal accents.
“And the lounge room was opened it up, and my parents decked it out with the most bespoke furniture at the time, from a company called Decor in Rushcutters Bay.
“They just had such impeccable good taste.”
As Susie says, once they got the home how they liked it, it’s stayed that way.
“My parents maintained their home beautifully, and my mother is an artist, so her sculptures are paintings are on display throughout the home, internally and externally.”
Growing up there with her late sister, Evelyn, Susie has plenty of wonderful memories growing up there.
“It was a real home, in a great location, and I was taught to cherish the things that you work so hard for, to look after them,” Susie says.
“My mother was always very particular about maintaining all of the original features of the home because she knew how popular it was.
“Over the years, we had lots of people knocking on her door to photograph it, buy it, or just to have a look at it.”
Susie says it’s her mother’s wish that the new owner appreciates just how special the property is.
“My mother is so attached to it, and put so much love and care into maintaining it … she would like to see it renovated or added to and made even more grand!”
The three-bedroom, two-bathroom home goes under the hammer via Biller Property principal Paul Biller and his colleague, Ben Torban.