Biography has always been an important part of historical research, even though there has often been a debate among historians about the exact role of individuals in the historical process and the value of individual biographies. Often family lore clashes with history and occasionally an unusual family story turns out to be true and can add to our knowledge of history. Understanding how the individual impacts on history and visa versa is very important in the historical process. This issue of the journal largely focuses on the history of a number of different individuals spanning the period from early colonial history to individual stories of participants in World War I and World War II, and three Jewish refugee stories, which highlight the challenges and difficulties faced by Viennese Jews who sought to flee Vienna after the Anschluss. As well, two articles focus on the early religious history of Sydney Jewry, one relating to the founding era and the other to the Great Synagogue. (Editorial)
'One hundred years ago, the Great War was still raging. How did those gallant Australian survivors deal with the scars? When I sought to discover why my great uncle vanished between World War I and World War II, I discovered that he had kept his story of service as an ANZAC at Gallipoli a secret from his descendants. The secrets Horace Hyman Fryberg to with him to his grave could not have been uncovered without the online documents that are so readily searchable today : Wikipedia, Trove, War Memorial archives, shipping records, Harris files, the Ancestry Bulletin Board, two books and a bit of luck have enabled me to put together the details of this story.' (Introduction)
'For Australian Jewish History, the story of Henry Topal began when he traveled to Australia in 1914, the first of many trips that would take him across the globe and involve a life full of vicissitudes. When he arrived in Australia in 1914, and almost immediately applied for to join the Australian Infantry Force, Henry Topal claimed that he had spent two years in the Royal Army Medical Corps Militia and five years as a sick berth attendant with the Royal Navy, serving on HMS Canopus, including service in conjunction with the Messina earthquake in 1908 and then in Somaliland in 1909. He had been born in London on 9 January 1889 to Simon and Rebecca Topal of 16a Stepney Green Dwellings in the parish of Newtown, London. According to a letter that he wrote in 1925 to Dr Raphael Cilento, then Director Public Health in Rabaul, he had qualified and trained as a Sick Berth Attendant in the Royal Navy at the Haslar Naval Hospital in Portsmouth before commencing service in the Royal Navy...' (Introduction)
'Although there is an abundance of literature on social life in Austria and especially in the city of Vienna in the interwar years, Lisa Silverman's concept of 'Jewish Difference' brings some fresh illumination to the subject.' (Introduction)
'Half a century ago, in the mid-1960s, my beloved grandfather, Dr Otto Walter, whom I referred to as 'papa' left by ship for overseas for an indeterminate period and, as a young child, I had no idea why. I was distraught. About two years following his departure, Otto returned. Passenger after passenger strode along the gangplank at Circular Quay, Sydney to be embraced by welcoming family, yet there was no sign of Otto.' (Introduction)
