Jewish Anzacs from Russia: Challenging stereotypes

There were nearly one hundred and fifty Jewish Anzacs among the thousand First World War Anzacs born on the territory of the Russian Empire, whose stories are recorded in my book Russian Anzacs in Australian History (2005). Like the other Russian Anzacs, these men are subsumed into the Anglo-Saxon majority in most traditional First World War histories of Australia; they also disappear among the mass of all other Jewish-identifying Anzacs in Australia. Among them were, of course, some well-recognised heroes, but many are Jews whose military service did not go well, who had a chequered history in the army, or even just men whose service was not especially noteworthy. This paper will explore a number of individual and social narratives in the histories of these otherwise almost invisible and forgotten Jewish lives, working towards the construction of a prosopographical portrait of this ethno-confessional group.