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Posted: 27 Mar 2014
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Jewish soldiers in the Australian (sic) Battalion standing next to the Western Wall, 1916. (Harvard Library/Central Zionist Archives) The soldiers were actually from Austria. The photographer, Ya'akov Ben-Dov, moved to Palestine in 1907 from Kiev. He was drafted into the Ottoman army during World War I and served as a photographer in Jerusalem
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World War I was not only waged in Europe, but across the Middle East as well. The armies of Turkey, Germany and Austria fought the British Empire's armies from Britain, Australia, New Zealand and India. The Austrian soldiers in the picture above marched into Jerusalem in 1916.[Another copy of this Kotel photo -- damaged -- appears elsewhere in the Harvard Library collection with the correct caption of "Austrian" soldiers.] The Australians arrived in Palestine with General Allenby's troops in 1917, and were famous for their daring cavalry charge that captured Be'er Sheva before German and Turkish troops could blow up the wells of the oasis.
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in a badly damaged Library of Congress photo
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