Stop Press! - Lemnos Square Announced - Congratulations to the City of Port Phillip

Members of the Lemnos Gallipoli Commemorative Committee with their guests at the commemorative service. Photo Peter Ford 2017

The Lemnos Gallipoli Commemorative Committee is glad to announce that the location of the Lemnos Gallipoli Memorial has been named Lemnos Square.The announcement was made today by the Mayor of Port Phillip, Cr. Bernadene Voss.
The Mayor was welcoming the visit of a number of important guests from Greece to our Memorial, who came to take part in a short commemorative service.

The Mayor of Port Phillip, Cr. Bernadene Voss, announces the naming of Lemnos Square. Photo Jim Claven 2017

The naming has been one of the key objectives of our Committee ever since we erected our Memorial at the reservation at Foote Street in Albert Park. Since late 2015, the Committee has been pursuing this outcome, myself preparing our major submission to the Council in support of naming the square - Lemnos Square. The Council supported our proposal and in the last few days was successful in having the new name gazetted.
Lemnos Square now joins the township of Lemnos, near Shepparton, as two locations connected to Lemnos in the northern Aegean through the Gallipoli story and post-war migration.
There were shouts of bravo in the air around our Memorial when the Mayor surprised the assembly with her announcement.
Cr. Voss said that she was proud to announce the naming on behalf of the Council given the strong connection between Lemnos, Gallipoli and the local area - from 1915 on to the waves of post-WW2 migration.
She pointed to the many diggers and nurses who had departed from nearby Princes Pier who served on Lemnos during the Gallipoli campaign – diggers like Port Melbourne’s Corporal George Finlay Knight of Port Melbourne and nurses like Elwood’s Clarice Daley.
The President of the Committee, Mr. Lee Tarlamis, congratulated the Mayor on behalf of our Committee and noted the strong support that we have received from the Council ever since we originally proposed the erection of the Memorial.
Lee - along with our MC for the days event - Ms Christina Despoteris, our Vice-President - pointed out that not only did they both have Lemnian heritage but that their families had indeed arrived in Victoria at nearby Princes Pier - from where the diggers and nurses had departed in 1915.
The day included the visit of two senior members of the Hellenic Armed Forces - Lieutenant General Konstantinos Floros (Deputy Chief of the Hellenic National Defence General Staff) and Lieutenant Colonel Christos Anastasiadis (Deputy Director of Public Relations Directorate of the Hellenic National Defence General Staff) - as well as two Councillor's from the Municipality of Malevizou on Crete - Cr. Georgios Aerakis and Cr. Kostas Trigonis. The guests are in Victoria as part of the battle of Crete commemorations being organised by the Battle of Crete and Greece Commemorative Council. Also in attendance was Mr Tony Tsourdalakis, Secretary of the Council and members of the Lemnos Gallipoli Commemorative Committee.
The international guests were impressed with the Memorial and the Mayor's announcement.

Lieutenant General Konstantinos Floros addresses those assembled, MC Ms Christina Despoteris on the right. Photo Jim Claven 2017

Lieutenant General Floros addressed the assembly noting the importance of the role of Lemnos in the Gallipoli campaign as well as to the modern history of Greece. He then went on to lay a wreath at the base of the Memorial - a wreath handed to him by Ms Deb Stewart, the grand-daughter of Sister Evelyn Hutt, a nurses who served on Lemnos in 1915.

Lieutenant General Konstantinos Floros salutes the Memorial, Ms Deb Stewart centre. Photo Jim Claven 2017

I was able to explain to the guests the design of the Memorial, including its Hellenic aspects from the face of the nurse figure having been inspired by a sculpture of the Greek God Artemis to the names of the Lemnian villages visited by the Anzac's cut into the memorial’s stone plinth.

Mr. Lee Tarlamis presents Lieutenant Colonel Christos Anastasiadis with a token of the appreciation of the Lemnos Gallipoli Commemorative Committee. Photo Jim Claven 2017

The service concluded with the exchange of gifts.

Lieutenant General Konstantinos Floros presents the Mayor of Port Phillip with the Battle of Crete Commemorative Medal. Photo Jim Claven 2017

Cr. Voss also announced that a formal unveiling of the Lemnos Square sign will take place as part of the coming annual Lemnos Gallipoli Memorial commemorative service in August later this year.
There was much discussion of the need now to have the square planted with olive trees to complete its connection between Lemnos, Gallipoli and Port Phillip! And there was universal support for the proposal for a reciprocal acknowledgement of Port Phillip on Lemnos!
The Memorial has been visited by Ambassadors and other dignitaries but this is the first time that senior representatives of the Hellenic Armed Forces had visited the Memorial. The Committee thanks Mr. Tsourdalakis and the Council for facilitating the visit amongst an otherwise busy schedule.
Thanks to Mr. Peter Ford for again taking such great photographs of the event.
This is indeed a great milestone for our Committee and our supporters - and the wider community both of Hellenic background and the broader Australian community connected to Australia's Anzac tradition.
To read my article from Neos Kosmos on this event, please click here.

Jim Claven
Secretary
Lemnos Gallipoli Commemorative Committee

The Jewish War Memorial at Ripponlea - Remembering the Jewish Anzacs who came to Greece - Lest We Forget

Yesterday I visited the Jewish War Memorial which stands in the gardens next to Ripponlea Railway Station.
It commemorates all those Australians of Jewish faith who served and gave their lives in the First and Second World War, as well as those civilians killed in the Holocaust.
Jewish diggers fought at Gallipoli and served on Lemnos. And they later would served in the defence of Greece in 1941. Below and above are some photographs I took of the memorial.

 

Lemnos and Gallipoli 1915
The Jewish Anzacs who served at Gallipoli included Eliazar Margolin, Samuel Weingott, Sidney Diamond (who won the DCM for his service at the Anzac landing), Harley Cohen. The first Jewish Anzac killed at Gallipoli was 24 year old Private Godfrey Sherman of the 9th Battalion. His body was never found and his name would be etched on the list of the missing at Helles. Also killed on that the 25th was Carlton's 23 year old Corporal Leslie Marks. Ballarat's Herbert Bloustein of the 5th Battalion was wounded on the same day. And of course, there was Colonel John Monash.
All of these men - and many others - would have come to Lemnos to prepare for the landings.
And these men served alongside Jewish members of the Zion Mule Corps who served on the Gallipoli peninsula supporting the Allied forces.

Brunswick's Private Leslie Oldham Hart - A Jewish Anzac on Lemnos
One of the digger's listed on this memorial is Leslie O Hart.
In 2015 I was able to visit the small beach cemetery located near the very spot the Anzac's came ashore on the 25th April 1915.
In this little cemetery and not far from the grave of the famous Private Simpson of donkey fame is the grave of Private 267 Leslie Oldham Hart - a plot 11, row A, grave 17.
He served with the A Company of the 7th Australian Infantry Battalion and died of wounds on the 4th May 1915. The 7th Battalion was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel H. E. "Pompey" Elliott.
Leslie had been a 19 year old shop assistant, living at Brunswick, when he departed Australia aboard the troopship Hororata from Port Melbourne on 19th October 1914.
The Battalion arrived at Lemnos on the 11th April and stayed on the Island, completing its training and preparing for the landings at Gallipoli on the 25th.
It later took part in the ANZAC landing on 25 April 1915, as part of the second wave.The Battalion Unit Diary records that it sustained 400 casualties at the landing - killed, wounded and missing. Even its commander, Pompey Elliot was wounded.
Leslie's service file records him being promoted to Lance Corporal on the 30th April, barely a few days before he would sustain wounds and die. Sadly, this promotion is not recorded on his grave stone or Commonwealth War Grave Commission records.
The Battalion Unit Diary records that on the 1st and 2nd of May, the Battalion was in position at Happy Valley at Anzac.
One of Leslie's comrades in the A Company - Private 189 F.W. Short of Coburg - recorded that Leslie sustained a gun shot wound to the head while in these trenches , on or about the 1st or 2nd of May. He was carried away towards the beach a few minutes after he fell and was recorded dead on the 4th May. Another digger in the A Company - Private 207 Bromley - wrote that Leslie was hit with an "explosive bullet" and that he had dressed Leslie's head wounds - which were severe. He writes that Leslie never regained consciousness and died 24 hours after being hit.
He was buried on the "side of hill, near the landing", the service conducted by Reverend Faires of the British Royal Naval Division.
Initially the Australian Army was unable to contact Leslie's mother regarding the death of her only child - as she had moved. A notice was placed in the press and she contacted the Army only to discover the death of her son.
Strangely enough Leslie's embarkation documents record his religion as "Methodist" yet his grave stone has a Star of David. The Commonwealth War Grave Commission documents show the word "Cross" having been corrected in red with the word "Jewish." And he is also recorded as Jewish in Mark Dapin's Jewish Anzacs.

CWGC burial document extract regarding Private Hart. NAA

Private L Hart grave stone, Beach Cemetery, Gallipoli. Photo Jim Claven 2015

Ballarat's Private Louis William Jacobs

Another of the Victorian Jewish Anzac's who would also have served on Lemnos and who was killed at Gallipoli was Ballarat's Private Louis Jacobs.

Private L W Jacobs grave stone, Ari Burnu Cemetery, Gallipoli Peninsula. Photo Jim Claven 2015

On the eve of the Centenary of Anzac in 2015 I visited the Ari Burnu Cemetery near landings at Anzac - I noticed the graves of one Jewish Anzac - 22 year old Private 1772 Louis William Jacobs.
Louis served with the 7th Battalion and died in December 1915. I placed a stone in remembrance on his grave stone.
He had been a storeman before the war and was unmarried. His parents - Isaac and Rachel - lived in Perth, Western Australia.
We don't know where Louis was born but we do know that he was living in Ballarat when he enlisted. Maybe this is why he is not recorded on the Memorial at Ripponlea.
He had sailed from Melbourne on the HMAT Wiltshire in April 1915. He had died days before the evacuation of the peninsula and the end of the campaign. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission records that it was his mother Rachel who submitted his epitaph - "May his soul rest in peace."

The Greek Campaign of 1941

The Australian Jewish Anzac's who fought in the Greek campaign also served alongside Jewish members of the Palestine Labour Corps.
Below are listed a few of the Jewish Anzac's who served in the Greek campaign:

• Paul Cullen (Cohen), from Sydney, served in the Greek campaign - including taking part in battle of Tempe Gorge - and was eventually evacuated from Sphakia on the southern coast of Crete. He would go on to distinguished service in New Guinea and rise to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
• Wolfe Greenstein, a printer from Sydney, served in the 2/1st Australian Infantry Battalion in Greece in 1941 and was captured. He was held in Thessaloniki POW camp for a time.
• Robert Patkin, a salesman from Caulfield, served in the 2/6th Australian Infantry Battalion in the Greek campaign - including taking part in the defence of Brallos Pass and Corinth Canal. It was here that he was captured along with many of the 2/6th. He would have been incarcerated in both the Corinth and Thessaloniki POW camps for a time.
• Mark Phillips, from Paddington NSW, served in the 2/1st Australian Infantry Battalion in Greece in 1941 and was captured. He was held in Thessaloniki POW camp for a time.
• Hal Finkelstein, from Western Australia, served in the Greek campaign of 1941 and was captured on Crete. He was held in the Thessaloniki POW camp for a time.

Jewish members of the Palestine Labour Corps aboard HMS Kimberely on being evacuated from Greece, 1941. Photograph by Australian Private Syd Grant 1941. Reproduced with permission.

For more information on these and other Jewish diggers see Mark Dapin's recently published Jewish Anzacs and Peter Monteith's POW - Australian Prisoners of War in Hitlers Germany.
Lest we forget

Jim Claven
Secretary
Lemnos Gallipoli Commemorative Committee