Suffering, Redemption and Triumph

The first wave of post-war Australian immigrants 1945-66

By Peter Brune

Published by Big Sky Publishing Link here
RRP $32.99 in paperback | ISBN: 9781922896476

Peter Brune is one of Australia’s leading military historians. This book has had a very long gestation period, interrupted as it has been by other, more pressing publishing projects, yet it is a topic that has always fascinated him – how the first wave of immigrants to Australia post World War II fared in the ‘new world’.

Between 1946 and 1966 a large number of displaced persons from Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Greece and Hungary came to Australia, escaping the horrors of war-torn Europe.

Inspired by their resilience, their enterprise and their determination to make a new life for themselves in Australia, the author has written about their harrowing war experiences, their reception in Australia and their first responses to an alien culture. Their subsequent reflections on the journeys they undertook and how they fared here are both moving and revelatory.

The Chifley government saw the need for a greater population for economic and security reasons; but they also felt an obligation to alleviate the deprivations suffered by millions of Europeans.

The immigrant experience is a complex one.

Old traditions were often maintained to such an extent that they kept traditions alive as if time had stood still. Others, yearning for home, were disappointed on what they found on return visits.

What is certain is that mass postwar immigration created the modern, multicultural society in which we now live. It is certainly one of the most significant periods in Australia’s social history.