Writing in his memoir ‘The world is my parish’, American congregationalist minister Loyal Lincoln Wirt, described his feelings as he escorted a shipment of Australian flour ‘passed tragic Gallipoli, where many brave Anzacs from Australia and New Zealand had laid down their young lives, face to the foe’. The flour was emergency aid for survivors of the Genocides of the region’s indigenous Armenians, Assyrians and Hellenes, ‘the unhappy victims of this same foe were to be fed with bread from their homeland, as if to complete the work for which they died. Anzac bread!’
As International Commissioner of the Near East Relief organisation, Wirt escorted the shipment to the Hellenic port of Alexandroupolis, where survivors were assembling in relative safety. The ship was the Hobsons Bay, having departed Port Melbourne in September 1922. The preparation of the ‘Anzac bread’ was conducted by Ballarat-born George Devine Treloar, the League of Nations’ Commissioner for Refugees in northern Greece.
The Australian participation in the world’s largest humanitarian relief effort makes the proposed resolution scheduled to be considered by the Parliament of Victoria a matter of long-overdue recognition of the efforts of Victorians who, for years, donated money, food, clothing, time and other resources to save the survivors of those genocides. This proposed motion is a matter of Victorian history and heritage.
Awareness of the Genocides within Australian society began with media reports about ‘Starving Greeks’, referring to ‘the Greek population of Maidos and Krithia’ on the Gallipoli Peninsula being ‘transported’ across to Asia Minor ‘in a deplorable condition’, according to The Bendigo Independent (Monday 28 June 1915, page 5).
The Australian newspapers were soon filled with reports of the systematic destruction of the indigenous Armenians, Assyrians and Hellenes of the region. Tens of thousands of individual reports were published across the country between 1915 and 1924, documenting in detail the atrocities being committed.
The accuracy of these reports was verified by Anzacs who had been captured by Ottoman forces during World War One. David Curran, a carpenter of Melbourne at enlistment, became an air mechanic in the Australian Flying Corps. Captured at Kut in southern Iraq in April 1916, Curran survived the nightmare desert march to the prison camps. Fellow Melbournian AFC Captain Thomas Walter White recorded in his memoir Guests of the Unspeakable, prisoners ‘were driven along like beasts – to drop out was to die’. Curran died what his mates described as ‘a horrible death’ as a prisoner in June 1917.
The experiences of the Anzac prisoners drove the effort to rescue as many Armenian, Assyrian and Hellene survivors as possible. Victorians like Treloar and Joice NanKivell Loch were on the ground, amongst the survivors in northern Greece, aided by supplies from home.
W.H. Edgar, Treasurer of the Friends of Armenia Committee based in Collins Street, would regularly publish lists of donors in the newspapers. In its Monday 7 May 1917 (page 3), The Argus documented 318 individual donations, amongst them being ‘James Service and Co.’, ‘the Lord Mayor’ of Melbourne and ‘Hawthorn’.
Years later, the ‘Save the Children Fund and Armenian Relief Fund’ was still announcing donations. In its Thursday 21 May 1925 (page 18) edition, The Argus documented 133 individual donations, with a call for ‘further donations’ to ‘be sent to the hon treasurer, the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, Town Hall, Melbourne’. Amongst them was the Kensington Holy Trinity Church of England Sunday School; the Camberwell Congregational Sunday School, and dozens more from across Victoria.
Donations were so great that special relief kitchens were ‘established also in the names of Geelong and Bendigo-Eaglehawk, from which districts contributions exceeding £100 have been received’, according to The Age (Thursday 23 July 1925, page 12).
The Members of the Parliament of Victoria should all be urged to unanimously endorse the proposed resolution recognising the efforts of Victorians who did so much to save the survivors of those Genocides.
*Dr Panayiotis Diamadis, Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
