GOLDBLOOM Samuel Mark

Family Name:

Goldbloom

Given Names:

Samuel Mark

Gender:

Male

Birth-Date:

31 December 1919

Death-Date:

25 May 1999

Marital Status:

Married Rosa Segal, 28 March 1942

Age Range:

24-79 years

Location:

VIC, Elwood; New Zealand, Wellington

Occupation:

Chemical and plastic manufacturer, factory worker, flight mechanic, furrier, travelling sales personnel, wholesaler.

Primary Motivation:

Peacemaker -postwar pacifism, opposed NAZI immigration to Australia, German rearmament, promoted international co-operation and disarmament, opposed the Vietnam War, opposed nuclear testing in the Pacific.

Military Event:

National Service Act 1964 and the Vietnam War 1964-1972

Further Information:

Samuel Mark Goldbloom was born on 31 December 1919 in Middlesex, England. He died 25 May 1999 at Caulfield a suburb of Melbourne. He was Jewish by religion. He was educated at the Elwood Central Primary School and Wellington College in New Zealand. He moved from Wellington to Melbourne in 1936 where he initially worked as a Furrier. Later he worked in a variety of occupations. During the 1930s he moved to the left politically and was particularly influenced by the legacy of unemployment and the misery of the depression and its aftermath. He contrasted that with the seemingly good social and economic progress by the Soviet Union. He was greatly impacted by the rise of fascism in Germany and Spain. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) believe he was a ‘secret’ member of the Communist party. He was frequently attacked in parliament and the media for his alleged communist links. As usual he and his family had to endure constant surveillance by ASIO. He accumulated a large ASIO file of seventeen volumes. He also attracted attacks and abuse associated with his other peace activities aimed at discrediting his grassroots peace and nuclear disarmament campaign.

During 1941 WWII he enlisted as a Flight Mechanic in the Australian Air Force (AIF). He married Rosa Segal on 28 March 1942. Rosa and Samuel established a successful wholesale business in small electrical appliances during the 1950s which was sold in 1972. After his discharge from the AIF, he embraced pacifism and significantly contributed thereafter to peace and reconciliation.

From the late 1940s, Samuel was spokesperson for the Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Antisemitism. One important campaign was against postwar Nazi immigration to Australia. He was a prominent figure in ‘grassroots’ Australian campaigns for peace. In 1955 he was the Victorian Peace Council delegate to the World Peace Council conference held in Helsinki, Finland. In that year Samuel also attended the Paris conference on German rearmament.

Samuel was the founding secretary and chairperson of the Melbourne-based Congress for International Co-operation and Disarmament (CICD). He also led the Congress’s inaugural Frankston to Melbourne Hiroshima Day nuclear disarmament march on 8-9 August 1963. The 40km distance symbolized the radius of the destruction of a nuclear bomb. These marches continued throughout the 1960s. The CICD opposed all nuclear testing, especially those in the Pacific.

Sam was also an opponent of Australia’s participation in the Vietnam War. He was a co-chair of the Melbourne Moratorium Committee. The moratorium march in Melbourne 8 May 1970, led by Jim Cairns, attracted about 100,000. It was a peaceful protest which contributed to persuading people to oppose the war and military conscription under the National Service Act 1964.

Samuel was deeply affected from his visits to Hiroshima, the Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen concentration camps and to a Vietnamese hospital for children disabled by Agent Orange. He authored publications published by the CICD on German Re-armament: The Great Betrayal in 1962, The Arms Race in 1972 and a reflection on his peace campaigning titled Origins of Conflict: A veteran Australian Peace Activist Reflects on Forty Years of the Cold War and the Struggle for Disarmament in 1985. He warned in this publication (p.85), nuclear weapons threaten us with a holocaust. This threat must link us in common actions for survival.

Samuel was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in 1990 for his service as an activist for peace. A contrast to former times when he was denigrated and criticized for such work.

Samuel continued with his peace campaigns until his life’s end but was impacted by ill-health in his last years. He died 25 May 1999. He was survived by his wife and three daughters who shed their father’s commitment to peace and social justice. One daughter, Ruth Maddison, used Sam’s ASIO files and other documents to publish The Fellow Traveller. Another daughter Sandra Golldbloom Zurbo has published a memoir called My Fathers Shadow.

Acknowledgement

Information about Samel Goldbloom is heavily drawn from: Michael Hamel-Green, ‘Goldbloom, Samuel Mark (1919–1999)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/goldbloom-samuel-mark-33662/text42124, published online 2024, accessed online 24 February 2026.

Confirmatory Sources:

Michael Hamel-Green, ‘Goldbloom, Samuel Mark (1919–1999)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/goldbloom-samuel-mark-33662/text42124, published online 2024, accessed online 24 February 2026.

Sandra Goldbloom Zurbo My Father’s Shadow: A Memoir, 2023, Monash University Publishing, Clayton.

Australian Policy and History (APH), Book Review -My Fathers Shadow: A Memoir by Sandra Goldbloom Zurbo by Professor Emerita Joan Beamont. 16 October 2023, https://aph.org.au/2023/10/book-review-my-fathers-shadow/ accessed 24 February 2026.

The Guardian The Communist who raised me: Photographer Ruth Maddison interrogates her fathers Asio file, by Alison Stieven-Taylor, 24 February 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/feb/25/the-communist-who-raised-me-photographer-ruth-maddison-interrogates-her-fathers-asio-file accessed 24 February 2026.Nuclear Power, Nuclear Weapons and Uranium, 1977-1978, Papers of Sam Goldbloom, Melbourne University Archives.