New Zealand’s Prime Minister John Key, whose mother was a Jewish refugee from Austria, resigned on Monday to spend more time with his family, The Australian Jewish News reported Thursday (not a typo, do the math). Key received an urgent text message from Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, reading, “Say it ain’t so, bro.”
The 38th Prime Minister of New Zealand, Key, 55, took office in 2008, and has been the head of the New Zealand National Party since 2006. It’s possible that Key, a former Merrill Lynch executive, has just had enough. He told a press conference on Monday that he had never wanted to be a career politician and had no idea what he would do next.
“Throughout these years I have given everything I could to this job that I cherish, and this country that I love,” Key said in a statement. “All of this has come at quite some sacrifice for the people who are dearest to me — my family.”
Key’s late mother, Ruth Lazar, fled Austria in 1938 to Britain where she married an Englishman and then immigrating to New Zealand in the 1950s. in 2013, at an International Holocaust Remembrance Day exhibition in Auckland, Key spoke about his mother’s escape from Nazi Austria in 1938, the New Zealand Herald reported. He recalled his mother was “crying in the corner” after hearing news reports about the Holocaust.
Key is often asked why he didn’t speak any German, considering his Austrian roots, and his response is: “The simple answer is my mother refused to teach me. She did not want to reflect on her history.”
After growing up in poverty – his father died when he was six – Key joined Merrill Lynch in 1995 as head of Asian foreign exchange in Singapore. He was quickly promoted to Merrill’s global head of foreign exchange, based in London, earning an estimated $2.25 million a year including bonuses.