95-year-old Auschwitz survivor wakes up to $20 million Bondi payday
Auschwitz survivor Freda Feuerstein’s block of flats overlooking beautiful Bondi Beach has sold for an eye-watering $20.65 million on Wednesday night.
Feuerstein had originally purchased the £11,000 block in 1958.
Bondi locals told the Wentworth Courier that the man who had won the keys to the beach-view space was the founder of F45 gyms, Rob Deutsch.
It is speculated that the site may be redeveloped into apartments above and a gym in to the retail space below.
The block of four rundown flats had most recently been housing Brazilian backpackers and is just four doors down from where casino mogul James Packer sold his bachelor pad for $29 million in 2018.
Mrs Feuerstein, 95, currently lives in a retirement home in Israel, and told the Wentworth Courier that she had knocked back several offers from Packer to buy the rundown block.
Speaking from Israel, Mrs Feuerstein’s son, Yehuda Engelman, said that his mother slept soundly while her beachfront home was fought over for tens of millions of dollars.
“This is what we were hoping for!” he said.
Engelman added that he wasn’t sad that the property would no longer be owned by the family after 62 years.
“The sadness was when I left Australia … it was time for someone else to have a go,” he said.
“It was a crime to have a building in Campbell Parade just sitting there like that.”
Yehuda explained that his mother Freda and father, Mark Engelman, had both miraculously survived internment in Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
After their misery in Europe, the pair found hope in Sydney and worked with the little they had to make a comfortable living on the shores of the eastern suburbs.