Every Family Has a Secret

Every family has its secrets.

Locked away behind our front doors are the hidden pasts,

the buried scandals. And the life-changing decisions

that have shaped our families and our nation.

Dad was a rabid anti-Semite...

..and I suspect he was helping the Nazis.

So, your father was under surveillance in 1959.

The spying story doesn't end with the FBI.

Jesus.

The big question - who is my father and how do I find him?

I just desperately want to know why she ended up in Fremantle jail.

Every Family Has A Secret uncovers the extraordinary stories

behind our everyday lives.

This time, two Australians question everything they know

about their fathers.

Everyone deserves to know their story

and to know the truth of their story.

Acclaimed actor David Field

seeks the truth behind a deathbed confession.

Who was his real father?

Are you saying that that's confirmation that that's family?

And Perth woman Angela Hamilton

follows the trail of her father through war-time Europe

to unearth the shocking secret he took to his grave.

The torture is repeated twice more.

It's horrible, isn't it?

This is the landing spot where many thousands of migrants came to settle

in Australia after World War II.

One of them was a Hungarian refugee named Pal Rozsy.

I'm meeting his daughter, Angela Hamilton,

because after her father's death,

she discovered some disturbing evidence

that seemed to suggest that he was hiding secrets.

Angela, hello. Noni.

Nice to meet you. How lovely to meet you.

This place is probably a bit different now

to when your father first set foot in Australia.

I imagine that most of the refugees

were delighted to leave behind the ravaged Europe,

but you never felt that your father quite fitted that picture.

He never seemed to embrace Australia or praise Australia.

I think with Dad, it seemed that he was fleeing something.

There was quite a curious occupation

that he might have had during the war.

And now you really wanna get the answers about what it was he did.

It would be great to have the full story.

Not only good news, but possibly bad news.

Are you prepared for that?

Shall we go and start? Here we go.

Let's go.

Come in, Noni. Thank you.

Ooh, lots of stuff. Lots of stuff.

Oh, gee. Lots of intrigue in there.

Now, I'll show you a picture here.

That's my father, probably in his 30s.

He looks like a movie star.

Well, I think he thought he was a movie star. (LAUGHS)

To other people, he was just the most amazing charmer.

But we grew up just experiencing this brutal, cruel man.

Mmm. Explosive and unpredictable.

You're just on guard every second of every minute of every hour.

This is supposed to represent some sort of a happy family.

Yeah. Well, this is a very staged photo.

Do you see how I've got to look that way,

my sister's got to look that way.

No-one looks relaxed. No, no. No, we don't, do we?

Particularly your mother.

She was tiny, like a little bird,

and I can remember Dad had beaten up Mum rather badly.

He was kicking her round on the floor.

That night, when we all went to bed, I said, "That's it. I hate him.

"I'm never gonna forgive him.

"I know I'm his daughter and he's my father

"and I have to be obedient, but I hate him."

And I had as little as I could do with my father

that I could get away with.

So, he didn't mellow in any way, shape or form as he got older?

No, he didn't.

What did emerge, as we were growing and becoming more aware,

was that Dad was a rabid anti-Semite.

We might all be watching TV in the lounge.

A man might be interviewed, Jewish. Mm-hm.

And Dad catapults out of his chair and is at the front of the TV going,

"Zsido! Zsido! It is a vermin! It is a vermin!"

meaning, "Jew! Jew! You're vermin!"

And we wouldn't say anything. No.

Because you didn't know what that was going to ignite

or not going to ignite.

Lo and behold, when I'm going through his papers years later,

what do I find?

He was married to a Jew.

She died in 1943, aged 29, of a weak heart.

Mm-hm.

In Hungary, at the time, there were laws.

You're not allowed to be married to a Jew.

You weren't allowed to have sexual relations with a Jew.

So Rozsa's death was so critical to his survival and safety,

because of this office that he held,

and then we find this, Dr Rozsy Pal, which is how he was known.

He's got a uniform.

I suspect he was a collaborator, sympathiser.

Yeah. That he was helping the Nazis.

We all knew Dad to be a cruel and violent man.

What made him like that?

When did he become like that?

It takes immense courage, Angela, to want to confront this.

It's taken me all this time...

..to actually face it.

Mmm. You can't deny it.

No.

Just gotta meet it.

Did Pal Rozsy flee Hungary in a bid to bury a dark past?

Angela has never felt an attachment to her father's homeland,

but she knows that's where the answers lie.

For the first time, she's headed to his birthplace,

Sighetu Marmatiei,

in the northern Transylvanian region of what is now Romania.

I've come here looking for what made my father the man

that we knew him to be -

a brutal father and husband.

The family's hometown, like Pal himself,

has an explosive history.

In 1914, when Pal Rozsy was born,

it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

But after World War I, it was handed to Romania.

Pal, a proud Hungarian,

grew up in a town that was now under Romanian rule.

Despite this, he enjoyed a life of privilege -

an adored only child, becoming a lawyer,

like his father before him.

Got some letters that have his family home address.

And I'm hoping to find the place that my dad lived in

when he was going to school as a young boy.

Oh! I think I've found it.

This is number 1, Andrea Muristrand Strasse.

It's so amazing to find it.

This is where he was a young, innocent boy.

Oh, my goodness!

Oh!

Oh, wow.

I think my dad would nod his head and he'd say, "This was my home.

"Now you understand a little bit more about me."

Angela has photos of her father's Jewish wife Rozsa Grun,

taken here in her grandparents' home in 1939.

And there's a corner and there's Rozsa, Dad's first wife,

and Bellar, my grandfather.

Rozsa stood here with her arm around him.

Rozsa and Bellar look close.

There's a fondness between them.

It was a real surprise to find that Dad's first wife was Jewish.

It raised so many questions.

Because all my life,

I've known my father to be a rabid anti-Semite.

And these photos were actually sent to my father in prison.

Rozsa is living with my grandparents while Dad is in jail.

Pal Rozsy's jailing in 1939

came as political passions in Hungary were boiling.

Nationalists like Pal saw themselves as freedom fighters,

keen to reclaim lands they'd lost to Romania.

We sort of knew that Dad had been to prison,

but we never really got the why.

And because of our relationship and his demeanour,

you sort of didn't question, you just listened.

History researcher Scott Alsop

has found that the most notorious prison in all of Romania...

I've got goose bumps all over me.

..loomed large in Pal Rozsy's life.

This is the prison where your father was held.

Oh, my goodness!

On the NSW south coast,

another Australian is searching for the truth about his father -

actor and director David Field.

David has appeared in dozens of Australian films

and television series,

most recently The Secret Daughter,

which centres on the search for a true father -

a storyline which mirrors David's own life.

I've known David for many years.

We worked on the television drama City Homicide together,

but I knew nothing about his astonishing family secret.

When David was 25 years old,

his world was rocked by a deathbed confession

that brought his whole identity into question.

Hello?

Hello.

How are you? Hello.

My favourite actress! Oh, it's been a while.

You're the best. Come in. Thank you.

Oh, this is great. Come on, dog.

This way. You sit down, my darling. Thank you.

Well, David, I know very well that you're a loving father

and you've created a beautiful family for yourself.

Thanks, Non. What sort of upbringing did you have?

It wasn't a warm, lovey, touchy, feely type of family,

you know what I mean?

It was sort of tough country people. You know, working class.

Mm-hm. Housing commission.

For example, the dinner table was quiet.

Mmm. Dad was a tough man.

Very much that '40s-'50s male that sort of ran the show.