Eliazar Lazar Margolin

Alias Eliezer Margolin      Russian spelling Лазарь Маркович Марголин

Born 5.02.1875 (or: 26.03.1875)      Place Belgorod-Dnestrovsky (Akkerman), Ukraine    Ethnic origin Jewish            Religion Jewish

Father Margolin, Murdochy (Mordechi) Joseph      Mother Margolin (née Carlin), Llata

Brother Moisei Markovich Margolin, Russian writer, editor of Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopaedia.

Residence before arrival at Australia finished 6 classes of Classical Gymnasium (gimnazia) in Belgorod, ca 1892 migrated with family to Palestine, lived for about 10 years in colony Rehovot, knew ‘intimately the language, habits, and customs of the inhabitants’ (from his letter).

Arrived at Australia

            from Palestine     on 10.04.1902      per Vimare      disembarked at Fremantle

Residence before enlistment Perth, Coolgardie, Kalgoorlie, Lawlers, WA, Sydney, Collie, WA

Occupation 1904 greengrocer, 1914 merchant

Service

service number    enlisted 19.09.1914   POE Perth

unit 16th Battalion,14th Battalion, 16th Battalion

rank 1.10.1914 Lieutenant, 16.12.1914 Captain, 5.05.1915 Major, 8.06.1917 Lieutenant-Colonel; 1.09.1917 relinquished temporary rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, Major

place Egypt, 1915, Gallipoli, 1915; Western Front, 1916-1917      casualties WIA 1915

awards Distinguished Service Order (DSO) (LG 3.06.1916); Mentioned in despatches for distinguished and gallant services (LG 13.07.1916)

discharged 18.03.1918 resigned from the AIF in London in consequence of taking Command of the 42nd (reserve) Battalion Royal Fusiliers Imperial Army.

In March 1918 assumed command of the 39th Battalion; in 1921 - 38th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers (1st Judeans), Ludd, Palestine.

final fate RTA 1921

Naturalisation 1904

Residence after the war Palestine 1918-1921, Perth since 1921

Died 2.06.1944

Wife Hilda Myrtle Margolin (née England), marred 1926

Materials digitised naturalisation (NAA)

digitised service records (NAA)

digitised recommendation for award (AWM)

biographical file (AWM)

digitised file MARGOLIN E L (Lieutenant Colonel) - 38th Battalion Royal Fusiliers (1st Judeans) (NAA)

[Gallipoli] Operation Orders No 2 and 3 by Major Margolin (AWM)

Margolin Major Eliazar Lazar (Intelligence records) (NAA)

[Australian Imperial Force Depots in the United Kingdom Headquarters (Salisbury Plain), Central registry files, Officers' Records:] Major E L Margolin (AWM)

Lieutenant-Colonel E.L. Margolin, DSO, Perth WA [Request for donation of private records] (AWM)

Margolin, Eliazar Lazar. Brief record of service 1DRL/0479 (AWM)

Welborn S. Margolin, Eliezer. – Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol.10, Melbourne, MUP, 1986, pp.408-409.

Longmore C., The old Sixteenth: being a record of the 16th Battalion, A.I.F., during the Great War, 1914–1918, Perth, 1929, pp.46–49, 52, 57.

The Old 16th: Welcome to "Birdie". - Reveille, 1.09.1932, portr. (information from Ben Hirsh)

Colonel Margolin passes. - Reveille, 1.08.1944, portr. (information from Ben Hirsh)

Zhabotinsky V. Slovo o polku. Biblioteka ‘Alia’, 1985. (In Russian)

Rodney Gouttman, An Anzac Zionist hero: the life of Lieutenant-Colonel Eliazar Margolin, London ; Portland, 2006.

Group portrait of the officers of the 16th Battalion. P05772.003 (AWM)

Silas, Ellis. "Stand to arms!". Drawing. Depicts Captain Margolin leading his men in the call to arms in the early light of dawn with mists enshrouding the figures of the men. ART90799 (AWM) (Electronic image currently unavailable)

Russian websites about Eliazar Margolin’s brother Moisei Markovich Margolin 1    2

From Russian Anzacs in Australian History:

[...] Nevertheless, other assimilated Jews, among whom Eliazar Lazar Margolin stands out, maintained a commitment to both heritages — Russian and Jewish — which never faded despite, in Margolin’s case, having successful careers both as a military officer in the AIF and, later, as a businessman in Western Australia. Margolin was born outside the ‘Pale’, in Belgorod, and graduated from an élite Russian high school, after which his family moved to Palestine. He remained there for ten years and migrated to Perth in 1902. In the AIF Margolin became the highest-ranking Russian Anzac, as lieutenant-colonel and commander of the 16th Battalion. Margolin championed the idea of a Jewish state without ever disavowing his Russian background. When the October revolution (1917) occurred, he was on the Western Front and immediately applied to AIF headquarters to be sent either to Russia — ‘I am a native of Russia, and both speak and write Russian with fluency’ — or to his former domicile, Palestine.

    [...] The 16th (Western Australian) Battalion included at least nine Russians and even had a Russian-born senior officer, Eliazar Margolin, who would subsequently become its commanding officer. Margolin was 17 years old when, in 1892, he and his parents migrated from Russia to Rehovot, the settlement Russian Jews founded in Palestine. Margolin was engaged in guarding the settlement and the Russian Jewish journalist Zhabotinsky, when he was in Palestine, heard many tales of Margolin’s daring there. ‘He rides his horse like a Bedouin, and shoots like an Englishman’, local Arabs said of Margolin. In 1902, during hard times, he migrated to Western Australia, arriving with no knowledge of English. He started off as a navvy and teamster, tried his luck goldmining in Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie, and was a greengrocer at Lawlers. Zhabotinsky, who came to know him well during the war, remarks of him: ‘he should have been an Englishman with his temperament. He limited himself to ten words a day. He thought like a man who had spent his life far from big cities, in Palestine in the time of the first pioneers and at the back of beyond in the Australian bush; slow, lofty, terse, and deep, with a keenly instinctive understanding of life.’ Margolin eventually settled in the mining town of Collie, Western Australia, where he ran a cordial factory, but just being a merchant was not enough for him. His combative nature always wanted action and so he formed the Collie company of the 1st Battalion, Western Australian Infantry Regiment, in 1911. When war broke out, he was among the first to enlist and was commissioned with the rank of lieutenant in the 16th Battalion; by December 1914 he had been promoted to captain.

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