Klimenko inherited her fortune from her adoptive father, John Saunders, co-founder of the Westfield shopping centre empire. Possibly some of her chutzpah, too. Saunders, born Jeno Schwarcz, survived Nazi concentration camps, then fled the postwar Communist regime in his native Hungary before migrating to Australia with his wife, Eta, in 1950.
In Sydney, he opened a hole-in-the-wall delicatessen in the Town Hall railway station underpass. There he met another European immigrant, Frank Lowy, who delivered smallgoods to him. The two went into business together, opening a delicatessen and coffee shop in the western Sydney suburb of Blacktown in 1954. By the end of the decade, they had moved into property development and built their first shopping mall, Westfield Place, also in Blacktown.EPISODE 1: INSIDE LINE: A SEASON WITH EREBUS MOTORSPORT Betty K was the daughter (adopted) of the man who Started Frank Lowy in Malls.
Klimenko inherited her fortune from her adoptive father, John Saunders, co-founder of the Westfield shopping centre empire. Possibly some of her chutzpah, too. Saunders, born Jeno Schwarcz, survived Nazi concentration camps, then fled the postwar Communist regime in his native Hungary before migrating to Australia with his wife, Eta, in 1950.
In Sydney, he opened a hole-in-the-wall delicatessen in the Town Hall railway station underpass. There he met another European immigrant, Frank Lowy, who delivered smallgoods to him. The two went into business together, opening a delicatessen and coffee shop in the western Sydney suburb of Blacktown in 1954. By the end of the decade, they had moved into property development and built their first shopping mall, Westfield Place, also in Blacktown.