AUSTRALIA

Australia

Sydney Jewish Museum's Heroes

In 2002 I visited Sydney Jewish Museum whose entrance hall has a memorial to WWI hero Sir John Monash (1865-1931) who led the ANZAC troops at Gallipoli and Normandy. His slogan was 'Feed the troops on victory'. He was knighted in the field by King George V. Melbourne's Monash University is named after him.

The museum has an entertaining and elightening exhibition about convicts. On the First Fleet was pregnant fifteen-year-old Esther Abrahams (1171-1846) who had been accused of stealing lace. On board she met Lieutenant George Johnston and later they married. George arrested Captain Bligh, and then in 1808 became temporary governor - elevating Esther to first lady of New South Wales.

Another 'lucky' convict was Joseph Samuel, known as 'The Man They Couldn't Hang', because in 1803 they tried three times to execute him and each time the rope broke. One might presume it was a piece of old rope. But tests showed no reason for this, so Governor King deemed it divine providence and reduced the thief's sentence to life imprisonment.

The character elevated to immortality in literature was infamous Londoner Isaac Solomon who inspired the character Fagin in Oliver Twist (published in 1837-8). Dickens was criticised for promoting anti-semitism because his book repeatedly referred to the fact that Fagin was Jewish. Belatedly, more than twenty-five years later, Dickens tried to make amends by writing about a good Jew, Mr Riah, in Our Mutual Friends (1864).

Out of 145,000 convicts only 1,000 were Jews. One early arrival, John Harris, became the first policeman. Another was called the most honest man in Sydney.

Upright Jews arrived as settlers. One established Sydney's first theatre. The first composer, Isaac Nathan, was the grandfather of Harry Nathan believed to have written the music for walzing Mathilda. Melbourne residents joke than convicts went to Sydney but free men went to Melbourne. Don't repeat that in Sydney!

The museum's Holocaust Exhibition included two interesting statues. Korzac, the non-Jewish head of the Warsaw orphanage, instead of escaping, accompanied his children to Treblinka.

Another hero, Swedish Raoul Wallenberg, saved 100,000 Jews in Hungary.