Reinhold “Jack” Shuster was fortunate that he was not interned during both world wars.
He was a German soldier who had entered Australia illegally, and who once signed correspondence with “Heil Hitler”. Yet although he was monitored as an “enemy alien”, community support in the mining town of Broken Hill, where he lived, saved him from deportation and the internment camps.
Silver Lies, Golden Truths, by Christine Ellis, Wakefield Press, $29.95.
Christine Ellis, Jack’s granddaughter, grew up in Broken Hill and worked as a journalist, nurse, TV presenter and mine manager, before moving to Adelaide in 2002 to set up a strategic communications consultancy. In Silver Lies, Golden Truths, her first book, she brings her grandfather’s story to life in a kind of fictionalised narrative biography.
Jack was certainly a remarkable man and much of his story runs parallel to that of Broken Hill. This was a place where unionists stoned troop trains heading off to war, a Victoria Cross recipient wanted to machine-gun the mob, and violence followed the only enemy attack on Australian soil during the Great War.
Almost 7000 people of Germanic descent were interned in New South Wales camps, but by some miracle Jack was not among them – even though he helped prisoners-of-war to escape.
He was even in town when a train carrying picnickers was set upon. In that event, two turbaned men, beside a Turkish flag, fired their rifles indiscriminately and killed four people, including an 18-year-old-girl. When news of the massacre spread, a mob moved on the German Club and set it alight. Jack was there to help his friends escape the riot and for some time the German community was held responsible for the attacks.
Jack Shuster with his family – Maisie, Rose, Jackie and Maxie in 1937.
However, Jack survived and raised a family in the mining town. In some respects, he had seen both the best and the worst of the “lucky country”.
In this readable, engaging and stimulating non-fiction account with a novel narrative, Ellis conveys a good deal of knowledge, observation and perception about the fallacies surrounding the myth that the “Silver City” is the birthplace of Australian solidarity.
Quietly powerful and consistently fascinating, this work is a fine addition to the untold Australian story.
