I had the immense honor and privilege to recently attend a special centenary Anzac Day service with my father, Ellis Goldberg, aged 94, a WWII veteran, at The Great Synagogue in Sydney, Australia on Sunday 3 May 2015.

My father served in Australia and New Guinea during 1941 – 1946. The centenary anniversary of Gallipoli was for the Australian Jewish armed forces that their lost their lives 100 years ago in Gallipoli Turkey.

Anzac Day for Australians commemorates the sacrifice Australians made in the tragic events in Gallipoli from 25 April 1915 until the end of WWI in 1918.

At dawn on 25 April 1915, Australian Allied Forces landed on the Gallipoli peninsula in present-day Turkey, with the hope of securing the Dardanelles and thus allowing the imperial fleet to go all the way to Constantinople.

If all went well, it was Winston Churchill’s impassioned view that the Ottoman Empire would be knocked out of the war. It did not go quite as they planned. In 1915 there were 20,000 Jews in Aus-
tralia. 2,000 Australia
Jews joined in the First
World War. 300 Jewish Australian armed personnel lost their lives in Gallipoli.

The Prime Minister of Australia Tony Abbott also addressed the audience of 1000 strong. The most moving speech was given by the Governor of New South Wales David Hurley, who spoke of the last Jewish Australian soldier Gregory Sher 2009 who lost his life in 2009 in Afghanistan.