Notes
Born 28/1/1925. Son of Jules and Eugenie Popper, of Barking, Essex, England. Although Sweden retained her neutrality throughout the Second World War, a number of Commonwealth servicemen are buried there, most of them airmen who failed to return from bombing raids over Germany or German occupied territories. Henry George Popper, 19 years old, of the Royal Air Force, and Simon Stanley Solomons, 32 years old, of the Royal Australian Air Force, were both on a Lancaster bomber that was shot down over Sweden on 30 August 1944. They managed to bail out, but the plane exploded above them, and all the crew were found on the ground or suspended in parachutes from trees, dead from the force of the explosion. What were two Jews doing in the skies over Europe in 1944? At that time, RAF and other allied bombers were being downed by German night-fighters guided by ground controllers at radar screens. So the Telecommunications Research Establishment at Malvern developed a method of jamming the enemy's equipment. The only drawback was that it required an eighth member of the air crew - the "Special Duty Operator" or SO - who could recognise not only, in the cacophony of the Continent, who was speaking German, but understood the lingo well enough to pick up on the enemy's quite sophisticated efforts at misdirection. There was no room for the SO in the heated forward section of the Lancaster bombers, so they sat in the back, dressed as best they could to weather temperatures that, at 20,000 feet over Germany, got down to minus 60 Fahrenheit. Because of the language requirement, many of the SOs were Jews of German extraction, for whom being shot down and captured in the Third Reich meant not a PoW camp but certain torture and death. Yet they, like all the other SOs, cheerfully volunteered for the job. One such was 19 year old Henry George Popper, born Heinz George Popper.
John Monash (Monasch) born
in Melbourne, Australia on 27 June 1865, the son of
German Polish Jewish migrants, can be researched in any
military history encyclopaedia or in fact by just
‘Googling’ his name on the internet. His history
and list of achievements are long and far too many to detail
in this brief summary. However, might I say that reading his
history is well worth the effort and I can assure you that
his deeds will amaze you. I have found that the deeds are
better labelled on more than one man and in more than one
lifetime.
An
announcement was made in the weeks leading up to the
Centenary of ANZAC by Judy Landau, President VAJEX Aust.
She stated that it gave her great delight to announce
that VAJEX Aust (Victorian Association of Jewish Ex
& Servicemen & Women Australia Inc) has
successfully raised the required funds to build a new
Victorian Jewish Memorial after the style of the
historic Memorial located in the Jewish section of the
Melbourne General Cemetery. After an extensive two year
process, Judy has single-handedly sought letters of
support, raised the funds, and obtained approval from
the City of Port Phillip.