-14th in a series-
Exit 5: Mission Center Road, Westfield Mission Valley Shopping Center
By Donald H. Harrison
(Photo: Wikipedia)
SAN DIEGO — The Westfield Mission Valley Shopping Center is one of more than 100 shopping centers in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States controlled by a corporation owned by the Lowy family of Sydney, Australia, whose story of post-Holocaust success is both motivating and poignant.
Frank Lowy was a teenager when his family moved from Slovakia to Hungary in the hope of keeping safe from the Nazis’ genocidal campaign against the Jews. Eventually, however, the Nazis invaded Hungary and began murdering Jews. They would have slaughtered all of them, but for the fact that the Russian Army drove the Germans back toward the Rhineland and ultimate defeat.
Frank Lowy survived, but when the Germans occupied Budapest on March 20, 1944, his father, Hugo, an Orthodox Jew, went to the train station to see if he could purchase tickets for his family to any safe destination. On that day he disappeared. Frank did not learn what happened to his father until 1991, when Myer Lowy, who had the same last name but was no relation, told of being with Hugo on that fateful day.
As told in the short documentary film Spiritual Resistance by Jill Margo and Laurie Critchley, they were captured by the Nazis at the train station and taken to an internment camp outside the city. Not long afterwards they were crammed into cattle cars with other Jews on the first Hungarian transport to the notorious Auschwitz death camp in Poland. With barely room to move on the cattle cars, little air and no proper sanitation, Hugo Lowy encouraged his fellow passengers to pray, thereby helping to keep up their spirits.
When the train stopped at Auschwitz, the passengers who had survived the trip were ordered to leave all of their belongings on the train platform. When a guard ordered Hugo Lowy to put his tefillin bag on the pile, he refused. The S.S. guard grabbed the bag and threw it onto the pile. When the guard turned his back, Hugo retrieved the bag, despite warnings from fellow Jews not to do it, to leave it there. Hugo responded: “I’m not going anywhere without my prayer shawl and my tefillin!” It’s probable he knew exactly what the outcome would be.
The Nazis beat Hugo to death. His act of defiance, in the eyes of Judaism, was kiddush Hashem, a sanctification of God’s name.
After World War II ended, Frank Lowy made his way to Palestine, but the ship on which he was traveling was caught running the British blockade. Frank and the other passengers were incarcerated on the island of Cyprus, there to stay until the British mandate over Palestine ended and the new state of Israel was born. Frank fought in the Haganah in Israel’s War of Independence. He remained in Israel until 1952 when he immigrated to Australia.
The first business he opened in Sydney was a delicatessen, but later with partner John Saunders he invested in a shopping center in the Sydney suburb of Blacktown. Successful enough to enable investment in other centers, the Westfield Development Corporation eventually grew to over 100 shopping centers. Saunders left the company in 1977, making Westfield a Lowy family enterprise.
Lowy is well known in Australia for his philanthropy and for his love of soccer. In addition to supporting research into cancer and heart disease, the billionaire is admired for a $30 million gift that established the Lowy Institute for International Policy, in which scholars focus on Australia’s place in world politics. After learning how his father died, Lowy became a sponsor of the Auschwitz historical memorial, donating to the former death camp a refurbished railroad car like the one in which his father had been forced to travel. Just inside the doorway of the railroad car, Lowy placed a textile bag with a prayer shawl and tefillin inside.
The Mission Valley Shopping Center at 1640 Camino del Rio South was already 33 years old when Westfield acquired it. Built in 1961, it was the second major shopping center to be constructed in San Diego County, one year later than the College Grove Shopping Center off State Highway 94. Between the time of its construction and its acquisition by Westfield, Mission Valley Shopping Center was expanded once and remodeled once. Westfield expanded it again, adding a 20-screen multiplex and some more stores in a northeast wing, bringing the total number of stores to 131. The company had announced plans to add yet another 50,000 feet of commercial space and to develop another 450,000 square feet of land for residential use.
The Mission Valley Shopping Center is on the frontage road on the north side of Interstate 8, east of the exit.}
Next: Morris Casuto and the ADL
Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. You may comment to donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com or post your comment on this website provided that the rules below are observed.
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