VAJEX ANZAC service draws record crowd

Almost 300 people attended the Victorian Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women’s annual ANZAC Day commemoration at Glen Eira Town Hall on Sunday, around double the number from last year.

The service, held on 26 April, featured a keynote address from bestselling author Professor Roland Perry OAM, a man with more than 40 published books, including the definitive biography of General Sir John Monash.

Perry was introduced by Major General Jeffrey Rosenfeld, who drew a direct line between the service’s themes and contemporary antisemitism, citing the recent removal of plaques from Caulfield Park as “a disgusting act of anti-Australian and antisemitic behaviour.”

“To many Australians, that many thousands of Jews have served this nation with distinction and continue to serve in the ADF remains more relevant today than ever,” Rosenfeld said. He urged attendees to join VAJEX, describing the organisation as “a combat mechanism against antisemitism.”

Perry paid tribute to Monash’s extraordinary range of achievements beyond his military career.

As a construction engineer, Monash’s company built 120 bridges and culverts across Australia, including Princes Bridge at Flinders Street Station and the Anderson Street Bridge in South Yarra.

He was also a highly successful barrister, a dynamic educator and Chancellor of the University of Melbourne.

Perry described Monash as the first commander in modern warfare to deploy combined arms, coordinating infantry, aircraft, tanks, machine guns and artillery in a single assault.

Under Monash’s command from June to October 1918, the attrition rate among Australian troops fell from as high as 50 per cent to just one per cent.

“I engineer bridges to stay up. I engineer battles to win,” Perry quoted Monash as saying.

Over five months of campaigning, the Australian Army under Monash took 30,000 prisoners and liberated 116 French towns and villages.

Perry declared him “the most outstanding commander of World War One, and the greatest Australian achiever in history.”

Many Jewish community organisations and schools laid wreaths at the service, and relatives of deceased service people lit memorial candles.

Australian Army chaplain Rabbi Dovid Gutnick and Royal Australian Navy chaplain Rabbi Sammy Brygel recited El Malei Rachamin and Psalm 23 in Hebrew and English respectively.

Rabbi Brygel, who  is a descendant of Sir John Monash, said the occasion carried special resonance.

“I think in these times, it’s even more special to gather as a Jewish community in honour of not just the Jewish Anzacs, but all the Anzacs and continue to show our community and the Australian public that we stand proudly as Jewish Australians.”