Lessons from El Alamein
IF it had not been for the Allied victory in the battle of El Alamein in 1942 the Jews of the Middle East would have been victims of the Nazi Holocaust, author Kelvin Crombie argued in Canberra last week. The brunt of the fighting was borne by Australian troops. “This is part of our national history,” he said. “We helped stop the Holocaust entering the Middle East.”
IF it had not been for the Allied victory in the battle of El Alamein in 1942 the Jews of the Middle East would have been victims of the Nazi Holocaust, author Kelvin Crombie argued in Canberra last week. The brunt of the fighting was borne by Australian troops. “This is part of our national history,” he said. “We helped stop the Holocaust entering the Middle East.”
The same incitement to genocide was still with us today, he said. Singling out Iran, he called on Australia to take action. “We should be doing something nationally against Iran,” he said. “Incitement to genocide is a crime.” He commended Canada for breaking off relations with Iran, and stressed that we had an individual and national responsibility to take action. Crombie was speaking at Parliament House in Canberra, where Shadow Minister for Families, Housing and Human Services Kevin Andrews launched Crombie’s new book El Alamein: Halting a Possible Holocaust in the Middle East.
“The Jewish community understood full well the significance of the victory,” Crombie said. The German high command had ordered the formation in 1942 of an Einsatzkommando Egypt, an SS killing squad that would have worked with local collaborators to murder Jews.
Crombie brought with him an ornate silver and ivory Tanach (Jewish Bible) which had been presented to Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery after the war by the Vaad Leumi, the general council of the Jewish community of Palestine. It records the “everlasting gratitude of Palestine Jewry to the gallant leader of the victorious British forces by whose hand God has placed salvation in Zion in the days of El Alamein”.
Among those present at the launch were Shadow Cabinet Secretary Philip Ruddock, Member for Kooyong Josh Frydenberg, Israeli embassy deputy head Meir Itzchaki and Australian War Memorial council chairman Rear Admiral Ken Doolan. The book has also been launched in the UK House of Lords in the presence of Montgomery’s son, by the Friends of Israel Western Australia in Perth, and at Melbourne’s Beth Weizmann by Australian Christians Supporting Israel.
Crombie lived in Israel for 25 years and served as a guide, historian and researcher at Christ Church, an evangelical Anglican church inside the Old City of Jerusalem, where the Montgomery Bible is a museum centrepiece. He has led historical tours, including on the role of the Light Horse, and is the author of several books on the Middle East, particularly on Australia’s part in Israel’s history.
SYLVIA DEUTSCH
Kelvin Crombie (left) showing the Montgomery Bible to onlookers at Parliament House in Canberra.
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