George Alexander Petrowski from St Petersburg came to Australia in 1913 from the Russian Far East and lived in Sydney and Orange, working as a watchmaker.
He served with the 3rd Pioneers Battalion on the Western Front, attaining the rank of Lance-Corporal.
While stationed in Armenrieres, he married a local girl, Adele Clemence Decoopman, and stayed in France after the war, working as a watchmaker and jeweller.
Christian Rink had multiple versions of his life. He enlisted in the AIF as the native of Odessa, but in his naturalization he stated he was born in Bordeaux in France, of a French father and a Romanian mother. According to the police investigation, he was actually Christian Lawrence Smidt Rinkoff. He came to Australia in 1899 and lived in different states, working, probably, as an engineer and electrician.
He served with the Field Company Engineers as a sapper on the Western Front, but was returned to Australia as ‘undesirable’, being suspected to be of German origin.
After the war he was a hotel licensee in Albany and, after a conflict with the law, left for New Zealand, where he was arrested for claiming false pretences. Released from prison, he married a local girl, Clare, and worked as an engineer, wine agent and builder.
Abdul Ganivahoff, a Tatar man from Kazan, came to Australia as a seaman and enlisted in the AIF in Melbourne.
He served with the 2nd Pioneer Battalion on the Western Front, being appointed a Corporal. In August 1916 he was wounded at Pozieres but remained on duty. In January 1917 he was transferred to the 19th Battalion.
By the time of Ganivahoff’s enlistment in the AIF, his parents were dead, and an enlisting clerk, Henry Nicholson, offered to be recorded as his next of kin. He cared to make inquiries about his destiny after the war and discovered that his adopted friend was killed during the advance on German trenches in February 1917.
Ben Goffin, a Jewish man from Tulchin in Ukraine, emigrated with his family to the USA in 1912 as a child. In 1916 he came to Australia as a ship’s painter and enlisted in the AIF the next day.
He served with the 22nd Battalion on the Western Front. In May 1917 he was wounded in the back and both shoulders at Bullecourt. Six months later, after recovery, he returned to the front and was severely wounded in the chest and gassed in August 1918 near Villers Brettoneaux.
After the war he worked as a plumber and ironmonger living in Melbourne, where he married an Australian girl, Anne Koodak. They moved to soldiers’ settlement near Albany in Western Australia and had three children. In 1931 Goffin died in an accident on his farm.
Nikalas Kiva, a Ukrainian man from Odessa, came to Australia from the Russian Far East in 1913.
Enlisting in the AIF in Townsville, he arrived with the reinforcements to the 9th Battalion on the Western Front January 1917 and was killed in April 1917 at Bullecourt.
His mother in Odessa was never found, but the photograph of Nikalas survived in the archive of his Russian friend Osiph Rinkevich.
Russian Anzacs