Bonegilla 1947-1948: The First Five Days (December 7-11) by Endrius "Andrew" Jankus

Endrius Jankus, known as Andrew in Australia, was born on 7 July 1929 in Draverna, a village near the Lithuanian coastal town of Klaipėda in the south of the country.  He died in Hobart, Tasmania, on 23 July 2014.  He was a grandson of the 'Patriarch of Lithuania Minor', Martynas Jankus, a printer, publisher and social activist.  Endrius' memories of his first four months in Australia were written in 2012 but based on a diary he had kept in 1947-48.  You may see something of his grandfather's social activism in his views. I would not be surprised if the Commandant of the Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Major Alton Kershaw, had seen a brash 18-year-old who needed to be trained to obey.  Read on...

7 December 1947

We arrived in Melbourne on the dirty old tub, Kanimbla.  It was like a hell ship out of some fantasy.  Dingy quarters, grime-ingrained bunks with food to match.   It was a big letdown after the General Stuart Heintzelman.*  

At 2.30 pm, the then Minister for Immigration, Mr Calwell, arrived with his retinue on the main deck and welcomed us to Australia.  With newsreel cameras whizzing and camera flashes just about blinding everyone, the whole ceremony was over within the hour.  

Estonian Lucia Maksim thanks the Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell,
(centre, in light suit)
on the Kanimbla at anchor in Port Melbourne, 7 December 1947.

Source:  Private collection**

I had volunteered to help load baggage onto the train. There were not that many pieces. While we were loading, a chap approached us and introduced himself as the First Officer of the Danish ship Java berthed on the other side of the pier. Since I could speak English, he told me what a terrible country this was. The exact conversation escapes me after 65 years. 

It would be better if I joined his crew as they were leaving for Europe in the morning. That was a great temptation as I always wanted to go to sea. He showed me a newspaper called the Tribune. This Australian Stalinist rag had a cartoon of people getting off a ship with swastikas and SS armbands. The caption was, "These people will make good Australians". 

But my first reaction to the proposal was no desire to return to Europe, since we had just arrived in Australia. Secondly, we travelled on international refugee papers and were still regarded as stateless persons. We did not belong to any country, since our country had been swallowed up by the criminal Soviet Union. ”Thanks” to the idiotic US President Roosevelt who sold us out and three-quarters of Europe to the Stalinist butchers. 

I had heard stories of stateless persons on ships travelling the seas who were not allowed to step ashore on any land due to lack of a passport or identification. That thought made me decline the offer. 

It was the days when the White Australia policy was strongly defended. We were lily white but not English, which was unacceptable to the population. Most of them had some black blood cruising through their veins but that was ignored. That was why we were discriminated against for many years to come.

Some groups, particularly in Tasmania, of the isolated, inbred, black-brushed population and the Stalinist unionists made our life a misery. We faced strikes on our arrival organised by the Communist-dominated unions and fights in the pubs. 

This antipathy is still alive today in 2012. It’s more gentle because of laws prohibiting discrimination, but it is still being practised by some idiotic clerks in government departments and in businesses and workplaces. Under our breath, we used to call them Anglo-Saxon Nazis and Australia a country built on bullshit. You never struck that many conmen, crooks and criminals in any country as you did in Australia. 

Just like going through the medical in Germany. They looked at our teeth, like the old horse traders did, to make certain that they were healthy. On arrival in Australia, we found out that most people had no teeth at all but had prostheses. 

8 December 1947 

This morning we boarded trains and our journey began towards Bonegilla. We were divided into two groups, one per train. I was in the first one with all our girls. 

This sparsely occupied land already had sunburned yellow grass as far as the eye could see. It was almost the middle of December, in the summer. The train stopped for lunch at Benalla. Some Red Cross Ladies provided us with a meal. 

After about one and a half hours, we were told to board the train again and proceeded. In the rolling northern hills of Victoria, with no signs of life, the train stopped. Had we arrived? 

The girls, some 120 of them, alighted on the dirt ramp which was level with the floor of the train. The rest of us jumped out into the belly-high grass. There was deathly silence interrupted only every now and again by the locomotives snorting. 

Someone suggested that we had arrived at our execution spot. I countered that they would not have sent us halfway round the world to execute us. The suggestion hadn’t been that far-fetched. Those sorts of isolated places were normally used for mass murder in Europe. 

Suddenly, we could hear the noise of revving motors. Khaki green trucks were slowly working towards us. Only a slight wisp of dust rising from the ground indicated the Army trucks’ position as they laboured to reach us. There was no road, just a miserable track between the high grass and a fence. The girls got preferential treatment and went first to the trucks. 

Three of the Lithuanian women, with Viltis Salyte on the left
seated on one of the Army trucks at the Bonegilla railway stop

Source:  Border Morning Mail via Trove

We followed some time later and got a bumpy ride across some paddocks to the main highway. Once we reached the highway, our vision of the countryside improved. We could see Lake Hume and a large conglomeration of barracks on its foreshore. The Hall, a massive barn, stood out amongst the corrugated iron huts, our accommodation. 

Our group from the Flensburg Camp (close to the Danish border) and a few friends had stuck together throughout the journey and now were allocated accommodation on the outskirts of the camp in Block 18, Barrack 33. 

Endrius Jankus as a sea scout in Flensburg, 10 September 1947,
just 3 months before his arrival at the Bonegilla camp

Source:  Europeana

The corrugated iron huts were stinking hot like a sauna. The beds were tubular, folding iron and fencing mesh constructions made up with white sheets. Twenty-two of us took up our accommodation, threw our few belongings under the beds and bolted outside. 

It was cooler there. A group of kangaroos watched us in dumb silence from the High Hill, keeping a respectable distance. 

At 5 pm a loudspeaker blared out that it was teatime and all should proceed to the mess hall. What we ate, I didn’t record in my diary, only that it was sufficient and tasted bland. That seemed to be the norm in this country. We always maintained that the good food was spoiled because of the lack of tasty ingredients. 

9 December 1947 

We were shown a film about the Australian environment. After that we had to hand in our International Refugee Organisations documents. We were told that we had to be photographed for new documents, which never materialised.***  This left us only a red card for identification. 

This is likely to be the photograph of Endrius 
taken in the Bonegilla camp on 9 December 1947,
for use with his 'Bonegilla card'

Source: National Archives of Australia

10 December 1947 

Everyone had to have an x-ray of their lungs. The strict medicals that we went through in Germany were partially checked again. There seemed a suspicion that somehow people had escaped health scrutiny. 

It made the camp authorities and Immigration Department scratch their heads when they found almost 30 people with lung damage, mainly injuries from bullets. We knew about some of our fellows who we had helped smuggle into the country. They arrived here with someone else’s lungs. How it was done shall remain a mystery. Several had only one good eye, but they too were discovered. 

Actually out of 839 passengers this wasn’t such a great number of fraudulent immigrants. We had expected that all of them would be deported back to Germany and discussed what action we could take to prevent this or at least convey our displeasure. 

A few days later, they all were rounded up and sent to Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital. They returned to camp about a week or so later and the whole affair was “swept under the carpet”. They all stayed here. 

In the meantime we just rested, went for walks to the kangaroo vantage points, the hills, and discovered the multitudes of rabbits — black, brown and brindle. The hills seemed alive with rabbits. Someone in our group had a camera and we photographed ourselves on the walks to the hills and the Hume Weir. What happened to these photos, I am unsure. 

11 December 1947

We were called to the camp office and asked what sort of work we wanted to do. This was a strange question as in Germany we had been told that unless we signed up as labourers, we would not be accepted for the interviews. Just like the medical where they scrutinised the status of our teeth. And on arrival here we found that most Australians did not have any but chewed on their falsies. 

This was payday for us. The unemployment benefit at this time was one pound and five shillings. The camp kept the one pound for our keep and handed us the five shillings as spending money. We had to sign that we had received it. 

I spent three shillings at the shop down the road a bit on tobacco, cigarette papers and a box of matches, plus an ice cream. I had one shilling left. These days, the anti-tobacco or anti-smoking campaigns amuse me. I began to smoke at 14 years of age. I found out, like millions of others, that smoking calmed you down and suppressed your hunger pangs. 

In four years of warfare, I can well remember being hungry day after day. It was just like a rat gnawing at your empty stomach. It may be dangerous to your health, but no little Hitler should have the power to ram his ideas down other people’s throat. In my book, they are the “perverts of democracy”. Besides, I stopped smoking 30 years ago. 

To be continued.

Footnotes

* Endrius was not alone in this recollection.  Several of the women have told me too that they regarded the Kanimbla as filthy, and not just in comparison with the General Stuart Heintzelman.  The captains (Army and Navy) of the Heintzelman had figured out, probably through the experience of other troop transports of the same class built before her, that the best way to keep their soldier passengers out of mischief on the high seas was to give them work to do.  Much of it has to do with keeping the ship clean, but there were other tasks as well, such as helping in the kitchen and bakery or the ship's library.  Australia's first post-WWII refugees on the Heintzelman had been subject to the same regimen, but benefited from a clean and orderly voyage.

** There are so many copies of this image in public and private collections that I think it was taken by one of the Heintzelman passengers with their own camera.  These photographers could run something of a business, selling or bartering their prints to cover their costs, and probably make a small profit as well.

*** The new documents were quite likely to have been the 'Bonegilla cards', National Archives of Australia series A2571.  They were for the use of the administration, not the Centre residents.

How a Lithuanian Boy Became a Refugee in Australia

The Melbourne Catholic newspaper, the Advocate, published on 12 February 1948 an article from a Bonegilla camp staff member written on 21 January that year.  Since the Second Transport, the General MB Stewart, did not reach Fremantle until the date of publication, "Robertas Luas" in the article below clearly is someone who came to Australia on the First Transport.

The Advocate's introduction read, "The following account of the experiences in Lithuania of one of the D.P.'s in the Bonegilla camp has been forwarded to us with the accompanying photograph taken in the European concentration (sic) camp. The Monstrance was made in the camp from wood. The names, for obvious reasons, are fictitious."

This evening, when I walked past the "Kinohalle" I heard piano playing and Lithuanian singing.  I entered and saw what I had expected: the young Lithuanian lad again played what he had picked up without any tuition and a few of his friends (were) singing into the microphone. 

I played a few German folk songs for them, showed them views of "beautiful Tasmania", and then asked him what he intended to do here in Australia. He said he would like to go back into a technical school to become an architect, and also take evening lessons in art and music. 

Then I asked him to tell me the story (of) how he got away, from his home so young. And this is what he told me in as good a German as he could command.  "My family name is Luas, and my Christian name Robertas.  I come from (Kalvarija), a place in Lithuania. I am a Catholic and eighteen years of age. My father died when I was three years old.  My mother, sister, and two brothers are still in Lithuania, I believe. 

"It was in 1944, I was at school.  German soldiers came into the schoolroom and asked all over fourteen years to volunteer for making road obstacles against the Russians, who were approaching the village.  But these men had guns and showed them, so we did not go freely, we just had to go.  They told us that when the work was finished we could come back to school. 

"We worked for a whole week, but could not finish; the Russians came too quickly.  We wanted to go home, but the soldiers brought us to the next village to make there a 'Panzergraben'.  We were fifty boys. 

"Soon we started to run away in small groups, but the soldiers shot at us and killed four.  Then we stayed, and were treated as prisoners of war.  They sent us to Istenburg in East Prussia into a camp of the "Arbeitsdient."  In my hut were fifteen men: Poles, Italians and Frenchmen.  Our daily food was 1½ kilo bread and vegetable soup for the whole fifteen.  I stayed about six weeks.

 

"Then I was sent to a farmer in Gustrow.  I had to work hard, and got very little to eat.  Many worked for that cruel man.  We were foreigners.  Everything was forbidden for us.  One day he hanged two Poles, because they had gone with German girls.  He told us the same would happen to us if we did not keep the rules. 

"But then I ran away towards Lithuania, to get home to my mother.  But I had no papers.  When the police caught me they put me in gaol for two weeks.  Then, I think they intended to shoot me.  At the last moment the sergeant asked me my age.  I said I was fourteen.  And my name?  I said Robert.  He said: 'that sounds German, we will let him go!' 

"I was sent to Bonn on the Rhine where it was horrible.  First the work at the railway station, loading cases of ammunition into trucks was not so bad.  But then we had to fill in bomb holes in the city streets, and they gave us rubber gloves to pull out the dead from shelters days after the bombings had taken place.  This lasted for six weeks.  I never knew what day of the week it was.

"Then I went to Essen to work in the factory where they made spare parts for the ME109 fighter aircraft.  The American Army surrounded us there, but I escaped to Haltern, where I worked again loading trains with ammunition.  All the time since I was in Isemburg a guard stood by as I worked. 

"After four weeks I went, partly walking, to Hamburg-Altona, constructing road obstacles against the oncoming British Panzer units.  Later I went to Lubeck, and there the British came on May 17, 1945, and put me in a D.P. Camp at Nuestatt, a fisher village on the Baltic Sea. 

"Soon I went to Buxtehude, to attend the Baltic Technical High School. From there I came to Australia last year." 

This is the story of a Catholic boy who was driven from his home at the age of fourteen.  I asked him what moved him to come to Australia.  And he gave me some more interesting information.

Last year he wrote to his mother asking whether he should go home.  She did not answer in a letter.  But she sent him a picture of St. John baptizing Our Lord, and wrote on the back, "Into the wide world." 

For young Robert this was leave to go anywhere in the world.  He was glad. He did not want to go home, nobody did.  Questioned by the British Occupation authorities, they all answered, 'No, we do not want to go where the Russians are, we prefer to die here in Germany.' 

Robert wanted to go somewhere else, anywhere, because of hunger. He showed me a picture of himself when he was fifteen, and it is a sad reality, hunger impressed on every face in the group.  Robert himself unrecognisable, more like a man of forty.

Lithuanians playing basketball in the Bonegilla camp
show how thin they still were nearly three years after the end of WWII

Source:  Pix, 31 January 1948

He also showed me a picture of Corpus Christi procession in a D.P. Camp of Lithuanians in Germany, which gives a similar impression. Robert weighed only 62 kilo in Germany.  Now he looks strong and sturdy again.  The sun of Bonegilla and the waters of the Hume Weir have tanned his Nordic skin. 

The Advocate's photograph of a monstrance procession, said to have been in a European camp.

Next week he goes fruit picking.  He hopes to save some money to continue his studies later in Melbourne or Perth.

Robertas' story could belong to any one of eleven 18-year-old Lithuanian males on the First Transport.  To whom it belongs doesn't matter much though, as the details are generic for many, if not most, of the Baltic men on the First Transport. Women were conscripted like this too but were more likely, from what I have heard, to be working in factories.

The person who wrote Robertas' story is highly likely to have been Dr Ralph Crossley, the Senior Lecturer in German at the University of Sydney who organised the first English classes at Bonegilla camp.  Not only was his PhD on the German language but he had spent time in Germany in the late 1930s.  I think that he would have been the only English-speaker in the camp in January 1948 whose German was so fluent that he could write 'as good a German as he could command' of someone who had spent the previous 3 years operating in German as well as Lithuanian.  And play German folk tunes for the assembled Lithuanians.  Ralph Crossley has an interesting life story, which I should blog sometime soon ...