Published: 23 April 2018
Last updated: 4 March 2024
The descendants of General Sir John Monash are supportive of the state-of-the-art $90 million “multimedia centre” but angry about the self-styled “Monash Forum”, a grumble of right-wing MPs around former prime minister Tony Abbott, who have conscripted Monash’s image to support their quixotic campaign for coal-fired power stations.
“We wish the name to be used for activities that we know John Monash would be proud of,” says Michael Monash Bennett, the great-grandson of the general. “All his support for soldiers and the creation of the Shrine of Remembrance [in Melbourne] makes me feel he would greatly approve of a centre of remembrance in northern France.”
However, Bennett was party to a recent statement signed by seven of Monash’s direct descendants, lambasting the Monash Forum. “I have seen other examples where a great name is used to hide the lack of intellectual underpinnings for whatever argument is put,” says Bennett. “This was an extraordinary example of this. Whilst we don’t own the name, we expect those that wish to use it on the wider stage should at least enquire first as a matter of politeness. Most do just that. It, of course, didn’t happen in this case.”
Although the Sir John Monash Centre takes its name from the general, it was never intended to be “about” Monash.
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“The naming of the centre was a decision made by the Australian government several years ago,” says a Department of Veterans Affairs spokesperson, “on the basis that General Sir John Monash was a meticulous planner and engineering genius, whose leadership broke the stalemate on the Western Front in 1918 – a victory that became the template for much larger operations that followed. Monash actively cared for his troops and co-ordinated military operations to minimise the loss of Australian lives.”
Late last year, I toured the site of the then-incomplete centre with a party from the Office of Australian War Graves. It is an impressive and expensive structure adjacent to the 80-year-old Australian National Memorial and built in the grounds of the Villers-Bretonneux Military Cemetery. The centre offers a fashionably immersive experience, allowing visitors to follow the journeys of real people from the past, and to use an app on their phone as a “personal tour guide”.
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Ken Corke, the affable director of the Office of Australian War Graves, said, “We have worked very closely with the Monash family about what’s going in here. They’ve continued to say there’s a lot of focus on Monash the general, but their view is World War I might have been an important part of the whole Monash story, but it’s only a small part of the many great things that he did.”
After the war, Monash ran the State Electricity Commission of Victoria and was a founder of the Zionist Federation of Australia and New Zealand, as well as vice-chancellor of the University of Melbourne.
“I wanted to see the text about John Monash particularly to ensure it made reference to the whole man,” says Bennett. “I have now seen some of the references to John Monash and am happy there is mention of his other attributes.”
Monash was the only Jewish commander-in-chief of any army in either of the two world wars. His successful military career – although slightly impaired by anti-Semitism – was in part made possible by cultural indifference in the Australian military.
'It’s all grossly exaggerated: 'Why can’t we just accept that he was a very competent corps commander?
“There’s a tradition in the Australian army of not caring what religion or culture a person came from,” says Professor Peter Stanley from UNSW, “but to judge them on the job they did – Aborigines experienced the same ‘colour-blindness’ while in uniform. While Monash was subjected to prejudice as a Jew, he didn’t actually suffer for it because his competence won out.”
Stanley, one of Australia’s foremost military historians, and president of the myth-busting Honest History group, has been a critic of the entire Sir John Monash Centre project, which he calls “an extravagant waste that 99 per cent of Australians will never see”.
While Stanley accepts that Monash was “one of the best corps commanders the war produced”, he questions the veneration of Monash above all others.
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“Australians seem to have to believe that he was the best, a war-winning commander who (bizarrely) should have ousted [British Expeditionary Force commander Field Marshal Douglas] Haig, he says. “It’s all grossly exaggerated: why can’t we just accept that he was a very competent corps commander, but one of a group the war threw up?”
The centre’s huge budget “could have been spent on so many more worthy causes in Australia”, says Stanley. “Sticking just with museums, given how the nation’s cultural institutions (except the Australian War Memorial) have been impoverished over the past five years, that money could have saved them from penury, stress and even trauma in the cultural sector.”
To Bennett, the centre is a “place of remembrance for those of us who often have no idea of what the service men and women went through, but need to understand what we can of them, those times, and to try to make some sense of ‘why’ (as well as ‘what’)”. To Jewish servicepeople and ex-servicepeople , it offers a certain historical focus.
The highest-ranking Jewish soldier in the Australian Defence Force, Iraq-veteran Major General Professor Jeffrey Rosenfeld, is a cousin of Monash, third removed. He says the centre is “a fantastic idea”.
“It’ll be a very important focal point for future commemorations,” says Rosenfeld. “Hopefully, it will attract a lot of non-Australians as well, who will be educated about Australia’s contribution and Monash’s contribution to the First World War.
“Monash boosted the standing of the Jews in the Australian community enormously in his time,” says Rosenfeld, “but that has flowed on beyond his life to help the Australian people understand the tremendous contribution of the Jews to Australia.”
As to the Monash Forum, Rosenfeld says he “obviously” agrees with the Monash family’s stated view that Monash today would be “a proponent of the new technologies, e.g. wind and solar generation, rather than revert to the horse-and-buggy era”.
Mark Dapin is the author of Jewish Anzacs: Jews in the Australian Military (NewSouth Books)
Main photo: Herald Sun
