Saluting Jewish soldiers
IT has been more than a century since the first Jewish soldier donned the khaki uniform to fight on behalf of Australia.
IT has been more than a century since the first Jewish soldier donned the khaki uniform to fight on behalf of Australia.
Since the Boer War from 1899-1902, thousands of Jewish men and women have fought on the front-line and have provided valuable services to protect, in the early years, the British Empire, and, more recently, their own countrymen.
This valuable contribution is being commemorated in a new permanent exhibition at the Sydney Jewish Museum entitled Serving Australia, which was opened on Tuesday by former Australian defence forces chief General Peter Cosgrove.
Covering major conflicts, including the two world wars right through to the modern-day operation in Afghanistan, it has been dedicated by Margo and David Lowy in honour of Margo’s late father Bob Adams, who enlisted in 1945 at the age of 18.
“It really is about the individual soldiers and each story is unique, but they do all intertwine,” curator Shannon Maguire said.
“From interviewing and speaking with a lot of these servicemen and women, they are very, very Australian, but they’re also very fiercely proud to be Jewish and I think both are very important in their lives.”
Exhibition highlights include a program used by General Sir John Monash in the first Anzac Day commemoration in Cairo in 1916, as well as replicas of medals earned by Lone Pine hero Lance Corporal Leonard Keysor.
Lance Corporal Keysor used his skills learnt playing cricket to catch grenades for 36 straight hours and throw them back at the Turks during the Great War. He was awarded a Victoria Cross for his efforts, but the medals were burgled from his house, returned only after the thief felt guilty and sent them back, together with an apology note.
A particularly memorable aspect of the collection is a series of badges with personal dedications scrawled on them for fallen special forces soldier Private Gregory Sher, who was killed in action in Afghanistan last year.
“We’ve tried to select people from every theatre in which Australia has been involved starting from the Boer War,” said educational consultant Susi Brieger.
“We tell the story of individuals, people who came up and had a story to tell and we selected some topics that we thought would be of interest, both to support the NSW Board of Studies syllabus and also to illustrate Australian Jewish contribution to the fabric of Australian society.”
Curator Maguire said deciding what to include in the exhibition was a challenge.
“It was actually quite a difficult process because as we were doing our research we found that the contributions were so great,” she said. “I would have liked to say so much more about each soldier, unfortunately because this is an exhibition, we were constrained by the space of the walls.”
Every item and story on display also had to be verified by the appropriate expert.
“In this museum we don’t put anything up unless it’s been checked by a historian,” she said.
Brieger added that representatives of the Australian War Memorial and Department of Veteran’s Affairs have verified the information in the displays, but she was quick to point out that the exhibition doesn’t attempt to give a full Australian military ¬≠history.
“Why would we when it’s been told so wonderfully well by the Australian War Memorial?” she asked. “We tried to tell the story of Jewish individuals and how they fit into the larger Australian narrative.”
It’s also an exploration of how Jewish soldiers managed to maintain their unique identity in a culturally diverse military.
“We hope that by doing this we’ll be able to show how much Australian Jews have contributed to Australian society and continue to contribute to Australian society,” Brieger said.
For Margo Lowy, to see the finished exhibition is very special.
“To come in here and see the photo of my father as a young man is just amazing,” she said. “It’s very emotional for me to come here and see this project coming to fruition because I’ve been working on it for quite a while.
“Really, it’s an exhibition for everyone who’s been related to war, it’s for everyone to experience this.”
GARETH NARUNSKY
comments