My Father's Horrific Secret

Angela worked with the SBS show and spoke to Noni Hazlehurst to uncover her family’s truth.

- Emma Babbington

It was 10 years after her father’s death, while sifting through his personal documents, letters and photographs that Angela Hamilton, 66, began to first suspect he might have had Nazi links.

Pal Rozsy was originally from the region now known as northern Romania and arrived in Australia in 1950 as a refugee.

He had been a violent man throughout her childhood and Angela couldn’t help wondering if he’d always been that way.

“I wanted to know if he was a brutal man before he came to Australia,” Angela tells New Idea. “Was it us that angered him or was he a cruel man before, in Europe?”

Growing up in postwar Perth, Angela, her siblings and mother were frightened of Pal.

“His outbursts were unpredictable and for the most trivial of reasons,” she says. “We were constantly on edge. We were physically punished for things like forgetting to open the gate for him or not picking up a piece of litter that he had noticed for a few days. I was always wary and fearful.

“Mum bore the abuse he meted out to her in silence. For us she was a model of dignity, strength and resilience. She couldn’t leave him because social benefit at the time was non-existent. It was simply not an option.”

And Pal’s anger wasn’t limited to his family.