Seas

Jews In The South 6

Interesting Story of Pioneering Enterprises

rpHE story of Jews in the South Seas X is a record of individual pioneers and pathfinders, rather than one of settlements and communities in that vast area, wrote Mr. A. M. Gurau, of Apia, Western Samoa, in a paper that was read on his behalf before members of the Australian Jewish Historical Society in Sydney on July 27.

In tracing the history of the Jews in the Pacific, Mr. Gurau said it was pos sible that, as in the Spanish voyages of exploration to the New World, Maranos or crypto-Jews had also participated in the first discoveries of the South Sea Islands by Spanish galleons in the 16th 17th centuries.

In all probability the first Jewish set tler mentioned in South Seas history was the man called Samuel Pollend, said to have been an escaped convict from New South Wales, whom Bligh met in Tahiti when he returned there in 1792 in HMS “Providence”. He was believed to have been one of the survivors from the “Matilda”, which was wrecked that year at Osnabruck Island.

Mr. Gurau dealt at some length with the history of Alexander Salmon, the English Jew who became the husband of Arii-taimai, famous Tahitian chieftainess (and the. founders of the numerous Salmon clan in French Oceania).

Sir Julius Vogel, New Zealand’s Jewish Prime Minister in the 70’s, he said, made history in the Pacific; and he also made reference to the activities of Colonel A.

B. Steinberger, agent for the US Gov ernment in Samoa in 1873, who became, in effect, under King Malietoa Laupepa, dictator of those islands. In Hawaii, the German Jew, Paul Neumann, became a close friend of the last King.

The phosphate industry of Nauru and the gold-mining industry in New Guinea were both influenced by Jews. The Jew ish supercargo of the “Archer”, which called at Nauru in 1897, took back a piece of rock to Sydney which, on analy sis years later, was found to be high grade phosphate. The late Cecil J.

Levien, of Melbourne, he said, was re sponsible for the pioneer development of the Morobe goldfield, and was a man of extraordinary vision.

Jews settled in Fiji about the middle of the 19th century. Among the most prominent there he mentioned the Hon.

P. S. Solomon, Q.C., Attorney-General, D. J. Solomon (Mayor of Levuka), Sir Henry Marks, S. L. Lazarus, E. A. Ben jamin and Victor Abel.

In Samoa the brothers Abraham and Alfred Hort did an extensive business at Apia. At a later date, the Polish Jew, Moses David, was also prominent there, and he subsequently transferred his business to Vavau, Tonga. Max Rosen berg, another Apia settler, was a former officer in the German merchant navy. G.

A. Kronfeld was manager of the D. H. and P. G. German firm in Samoa, and also had interests in Tonga and New Zealand. Max Raphael, F. Loibl, Percy Isaacs, Spatz, and Butler were other Jews in Apia; while, at Nukualofa, L. B.

Levin, a former British sailor, estab lished himself in business.

Such commercial firms in Fiji as Brodziak, Marks, Lazarus, Joske, Claude Israel, J. I. Cohen, I. Abel. R. Abel, T.

G. Benjamin, A. E. Samuels and C. J.

Moses all played a part in the develop ment of that group.

At Tarawa, in the Gilberts, E. Mayers was established as a trader for more than 60 years. Emile Levy was one of the foremost merchants in Tahiti. A well-known merchant in New Caledonia was Adolphus Unger, a former Melbourne Jew, who was decorated with the Legion of Honour.

Well-known pioneers at Samarai and in the Trobriands were the brothers Auerbach. In the Carolines lived Fried lander, and at Jaluit, in the Marshalls, was Posnanski, a Jewish hotel-keeper.

Ludwig Kramer, a pupil at the Jewish agricultural school at Ahlem, Germany, was a pioneer planter in New Guinea, at Tahiti, and in the Solomons. The Jewish engineer, Hirsch, built the first powerful radio station at Apia.

Among the scientists and explorers in the Pacific he mentioned the geologist Friedlander, in Samoa, Dr. Max. Mosz kowski, in New Guinea, the ethnographer Professor C. G. Seligmann, in Torres

Straits, and Dr. Felix M. Keesing, now in Hawaii. It was in New Guinea, under the German flag, that another Jew, Dr.

Hoffman, distinguished himself during a native uprising and was decorated.

To-day, there are Jewish medical offi cers employed in the administrations of Fiji, Western Samoa, New Hebrides, and the Cook Islands. In recent years there also had been an influx of Jewish set tlers, notably to Fiji and Hawaii.

“It is only natural that a number of Jewish settlers should have married women of Polynesian blood,’’ concluded the writer. “In all the island groups are numerous men and women descendants of such marriages who, apart from a Jewish name and a more or less hazy consciousness of Jewish origin, have no other Jewish associations.”

Sister Hawkes, lately Matron ,at Niue and in Western Samoa, has taken up duty at the Avarua Hospital, Rarotonga.