Jonas Motiejūnas on How the Lithuanian Scouts in Australia Started, with Ann Tündern-Smith

Back in August last year, we looked at the life of Jonas Motiejūnas, who had been made leader of the Lithuanian men on the First Transport in the Diepholz camp where all had been gathered to await their departure to Australia one week later.

We have also looked at how Borisas Dainutis, chosen by the Lithuanian scouts' organisation in Germany to lead the scouts going to Australia, devoted himself to a campaign of having them recognised as a discrete unit within the Australian scouting movement.  That was in July last year.

Now these two themes come together, in an article written by Jonas for a scouting publication in Germany detailing how the scouts organised themselves while on the General Heintzelman and in their first days in Australia.  It is in English below, with lots of help from Google Translate and Gemini.ai.

The first meeting of the Lithuanian Scouts going to Australia took place on 9 November 1947, on board our ship, General Stuart Heinzelman, passing through the Suez Canal. The scout authorised to take care of the Lithuanian scouts travelling to Australia, Assistant Section Leader Borisas Dainutis, took over the duties of the leader, choosing Assistant Section Leader Algirdas Liubinskas as his deputy.

Here, the idea of dividing the scouts into groups was introduced. It also was decided to strictly monitor the behaviour of the scouts and, if necessary, to immediately remove them from scouting, because our task as the first Lithuanian scouts is to represent our homeland and its culture in the best possible way.

On the evening of 10 November, the next meeting took place on the deck of the ship.  After reading the orders to the group, its leader reminded everyone in warm words of the tasks of the Lithuanian scouts in Australia.  He highlighting the consequences of good behaviour and scouting for our nation and for the future of the country.  

Scout and folk songs echoed on the ship and the waves of the Red Sea, uniting the scouts of the new company in close friendship. It was proposed to think about the name of the group and prepare for a bonfire.

On the evening of November 14, on the deck, while the ship was sailing in the Arabian Sea, there was a joint meeting of the younger scouts and senior scouts. In the official proceedings, order No. 3 was followed by a rendition of the anthem, "Lithuanians we were born".

The leader read a long essay by Lord Baden-Powell about the tasks and duties of a Venturer Scout.  At intervals, there was singing.  On this occasion, the leader once again urged us, in sharp words, to think carefully about remaining in the ranks of the scouts, because the tasks were great and the duties heavy.  Participation in the national dance group was clarified and it was asked to prepare performances for the next meeting.  Finally, the Vyčiai song (the anthem for the Rover Scouts) was performed.

On 15 November, the management met, with the participation of the Girl Scouts' leader, Konstancija Brundzaitė.

The leaders of the groups were ordered to collect personal information and scouting knowledge from the scouts, to repeat all scout knowledge in the groups and to prepare for a joint public bonfire with the Latvians and Estonians. 

After discussion, it was agreed that the Vyčiai (Rover) badge must be worn below the Union badge near the left pocket. The name of the society should express our irrepressible desire to return to the homeland. The meeting was concluded with a minute of silence, remembering our native land and our Vyčiai duties to it.

In the evening of 19 November, a joint meeting of Venturer and Rover scouts was held. Many did not participate.  The songs intended to be sung at the joint bonfire were rehearsed.

The long-awaited joint Lithuanian-Latvian-Estonian bonfire was held on the upper deck of the ship  on 22 November at 7 pm.  All free seats were occupied by passengers interested in the bonfire. The IRO representative, Lithuanian Captain Žibās, and the ship's commander with his team watched the performances from the bridge. 

The countless Estonians performed especially beautifully.  The Lithuanians were weak, especially in singing, although two-thirds of the participants were from our country.  Not enough effort and practice!

I cannot discuss the bonfire program in more detail, because the wind caught hold of my sheet of notes, lifted it to the top of the mast and blew it into the ocean. 

The bonfire was led by Lithuanians, Assistant Section Leader Algirdas Liubinskas and Senior Sea Scout Patrol Leader Aleksandras Gabecas.

In  Fremantle, on 30 November, in order to get acquainted with the newly arrived scouts, the Australian Sea Scouts’ District Commissioner, Brother Jack, arrived at the Swanbourne camp.  There, some of our men had spent a few days of rest after a 10,231 nautical mile (18,948 kilometre) journey.  He invited several senior scouts to go and see the Sea Scout headquarters.  It was agreed immediately to hold a joint bonfire in the evening.

The Australians liked our program at the previous evening's bonfire so much that they invited us to repeat it during the scout hour on radio on the evening of 1 December. The hastily gathered Lithuanians and Estonians went by train to the radio station.  Balanda Dulaityte (already Mrs Liubinskienė, although this was not known to the authorities) explained our origin and arrival in English .

The sailors' march was sung, and Juozas Songaila played a medley of national melodies (on his piano accordion). The Estonians sang several songs. Everywhere we were shown great sincerity.

In the Bonegilla camp, on 18 December, a Chief Scout representative from Melbourne, another scouting official and a Girl Scout leader came to visit. Having greeted the scouts of all three nationalities who had gathered together with kind words, he was pleased that Australia had received many new scout leaders, whom it lacked. A few songs were sung in the visitors' honour.

Later on 18 December, scouts of the city of Albury visited. Unfortunately, due to the long drought, the danger of bush fires was so great that we had to be content with a kerosene lamp.

Here I should note that in Australia, bushfires are quite frequent and cause very great losses, as entire grain farms, sheep and cattle herds burn, and it is very difficult to fight the fire when everything is completely dry. 

Again, there was a singing session.  Aleksandras Gabecas performed excellently with a string of bottles tied to a pole and filled with water.  The Australian leaders were presented with our scouting publications, and they rewarded us with fruit.

On 4 January 1948, there was another meeting, during which a tracking exercise was conducted.

EDITOR'S NOTE:  This story ends abruptly, perhaps due to a decision by the editor of the publication in which it appeared, Skautų Aidas or Scouting Echo, published during 1923-2023 and, in 1947, being edited in a DP camp in Augustdorf bei Detmold, Germany.  I thought it might be because the next item, by Jonas Urbonas, might continue the story without a break.  It does not.  Instead, it is about a campfire on 6 January when the Scouts farewelled their "first swallow", Vytas Kunciunas, who was off to Pyramid Hill.

We've already used some of that article in a biography of Vytas in this blog.

What is missing from this sequence is the drowning of Aleksandras Vasiliauskas on 4 January and his funeral, in which the scouts played a leading role, on 5 January.

CITE THIS AS:  Motiejūnas, Jonas (1948) (How the Lithuanian Scouts in Australia Started) Translation and comments from Ann Tündern-Smith, Skautų Aidas (Scouting Echo), Augustdorf bei Detmold, Germany, 15 June, p 29 https://www.spauda2.org/skautu_aidas/archive/1948/1948-Nr05-06-SKAUTU-AIDAS.pdf, accessed 17 July 2026.

Jonas Antanaitis (1923 -2008), the Canberra one, by Rasa Ščevinskienė and Ann Tündern-Smith

Jonas Antanaitis is or was such a common name for Lithuanians that there were 2 of them born on the same date in exile in post-War Germany. They even had fathers with the same name, Antanas Antanaitis. The birthday they had in common was 16 November 1923. Fortunately, we can tell them apart because their mothers had different names.

That’s even though it is obvious that officials in Germany got them muddled. The one whose mother’s maiden name was Stase Gaspariunaitė had been born in Krekenava and wanted to go to Australia (which actually was a rare first choice). His usual occupation was Farmer. He was sent to the United States with his wife and 2 children on 14 September 1950.

The other one gave his first choice for resettlement as “Democratic Lithuania Free From the Occupation”. He had been born in Surviliškis, Kėdainių County, to a mother whose maiden name was Morta Kaspariniukė, but raised by his grandmother. His usual occupation was Agricultural Worker. As an unmarried man, he was lucky enough to be able to leave camp life in Germany in October 1947, on the USAT General Stuart Heintzelman bound for Australia. One of his forms has been marked with “his” later departure date for the USA.

The wrong Jonas Antanaitis has been sent to the USA
in the Displaced Persons records held by the Arolsen Archives

Source:  Arolsen Archives

There was an older Jonas Antanaitis, born in June 1908, who came to Australia too.  We'll do our best to keep them all separate.

After 5 weeks including Christmas 1947 and New Year’s Eve 1948 in the Bonegilla camp, our Jonas was one of the 26 men, including 12 Lithuanians, sent to work on the Kiewa Hydroelectric Scheme in northeast Victoria on 14 January. This project has been discussed earlier, but we are yet to find any material on their living and working conditions.

Jonas Antanaitis from his 1947 selection papers for migration to Australia

Source:  National Archives of Australia

An obituary published more than 60 years after his arrival in Australia says that he was a painter while contracted to the Australian Government to work where sent. “Where sent” included the city of Geelong in Victoria. He moved to the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme, even larger than the Kiewa Scheme where he had started and located in southeastern New South Wales. Had he been a native bird, he would have found that flying roughly 150 Kilometres due west from wherever he was in the Snowy Scheme would have brought him back to his eastern Australia starting point, the Bonegilla camp.

On Australia Day 1965, Jonas became an Australian citizen from an address in Cooma, New South Wales, that is, from the nearest town to the Snowy Mountains.

It was while he was living in and near the Snowy Mountains that he often came to the Canberra Lithuanian Club to chat with compatriots over a glass of beer. Eventually he moved to Canberra, in 1968 according to the Canberra Lithuanian Community records. 

There he met his Polish friend Stefanie, with whom he lived for over 30 years, until his death on 8 April 2008.

He chose to live in Narrabundah, then a very southern suburb in Canberra and on the highway to the Snowy Mountains.  Presumably, return trips were a priority in his thinking.

The Canberra Lithuanians had scant information about Jonas’ life and family in Lithuania, because he was reserved and did not talk about himself. This was confirmed by his life partner, Stefanie. For instance, they thought that he came from Zarasai County, not the birthplace he had nominated on 1945 American forms.

They understood that Jonas was serving in a Lithuanian army unit on the Eastern Front in 1941. As the Germans moved in, his unit withdrew to Romania. After the war, Jonas settled in the Goettingen refugee DP camp in the British zone, according to what was known to the Canberrans. This is interesting, because the documents which the Arolsen Archives have been able to digitise show him in the American Zone, in Assembly Centre 513, Weilheim, as of 20 December 1945.

There are at least 8 places in Germany called Weilheim. ChatGPT is confident that the Weilheim with Assembly Centre 513 was Weilheim in Oberbayern. You can find more details about this historic town in Wikipedia.

The interview for possible resettlement in Australia recorded that he had arrived in Germany in August 1944, presumably ahead of a Soviet advance. His reasons for coming to Germany were summarised as “to avoid Russian occupation of his country”.

He had 5 years of primary education, so one year more than the minimum, and was seen as suitable for work – would you believe, in the light of our 1 July entry – for “medium work” as a Builder’s Labourer. His application form for Australia says that the work he had done included “Building Appra.” (Building Appraisal or Approval?) and Technical Drawing for one year each in Lithuania, and one year of farm work in Germany. He said that he was fluent in Lithuanian, Polish, Russian and German.

After moving to Canberra, Jonas gradually became involved in community and Lithuanian Club events. When the Club needed a painter, it knew where to turn.

In 1982, he joined the Canberra branch of Ramovė, the organisation for former members of the Lithuanian military. In 1990, when the Ramovė members built an Unknown Soldier monument in the garden of the former Lithuanian Clubhouse, Jonas helped with the construction work and painted the wall. He was also on the Club Board from 1993 to 1995.

This page 1 photograph celebrating 40 years of the Ramove Canberra branch was published
in Mūsų Pastogė 6 weeks after Jonas' death:  He is 3rd from the left and
the Chairman, Liudas Budzinauskas, is next to him, 4th from the left

Source:  Mūsų Pastogė 

Jonas was a sincere, friendly, pleasant person to talk to, but at the same time he openly expressed his opinions according to his obituarist, Liudas Budzinauskas, Chairman of the Canberra Ramovė branch.

In 2008, after intestinal surgery, he felt good, but then died unexpectedly on 8 April.

The photograph of Jonas published with his obituary shows a much younger man
than the one in the Ramove photo

Source:  Mūsų Pastogė

Jonas Mockūnas, Chairman of the Lithuanian Community of Canberra, and Liudas Budzinauskas, both spoke at his funeral in the Tobin Brothers chapel, Kingston. They expressed their deepest condolences to Stefanie, her family, friends and relatives.

His body subsequently was cremated, so his ashes now rest in the Sister Kenny Wall in Norwood Park in Canberra.

In his obituary, Liudas expressed the hope that Jonas Antanaitis would be remembered for a long time. This short biography is another endeavour towards that purpose.

SOURCES

Bonegilla Migrant Experience, Bonegilla Identity Card and Memory Collection ‘Jonas Antanaitis’ https://idcards.bonegilla.org.au/record/203674045, accessed 3 July 2026.

Budzinauskas, Liudas (2008) ‘In Memoriam, A†A Jonas Antanaitis’ (‘In Memoriam, RIP Jonas Antanaitis’, in Lithuanian) Mūsų Pastogė (Our Haven), Sydney, NSW, 30 April p 7 https://spauda2.org/musu_pastoge/archive/2008/2008-04-30-MUSU-PASTOGE.pdf, accessed 1 July 2026.

Commonwealth of Australia Gazette (1965) ‘Certificates of Naturalization’ Canberra, ACT, p 1670 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/241019937?searchTerm=%22Antanaitis%20Jonas%22, accessed 3 July 2026.

Find A Grave ‘Jonas Antanitis’ https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/263467192/jonas-antanaitis, accessed 3 July 2026.

Mūsų Pastogė (Our Haven) (2008) ‘Canberros “Ramovei” — 40 metų‘ (‘Canberra Ramove — 40 years old’, in Lithuanian) Sydney, NSW, 21 May, p 1 https://www.spauda2.org/musu_pastoge/archive/2008/2008-05-21-MUSU-PASTOGE.pdf, accessed 3 July 2026.

National Archives of Australia, Department of Immigration, Central Office; A11772, Migrant Selection Documents for Displaced Persons who travelled to Australia per General Stuart Heintzelman departing Bremerhaven 30 October 1947, 1947-1947; 11, ANTANAITIS Jonas DOB 16 November 1923, 1947-1947 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Gallery151/dist/JGalleryViewer.aspx?B=5005454, accessed 3 July 2026.

Wikipedia 'Weilheim in Oberbayern' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weilheim_in_Oberbayern, accessed 3 July 2026.

Alexander Nõmm (1922-2000): Sportsman, Builder, Family Man, by Ann Tündern-Smith and Silvi Nõmm Simpson

[Silvi Nõmm Simpson is the daughter of Aleksander.]

The photograph below comes from the collection of Aleksander Nõmm. It shows him with 3 Lithuanians, whose names he could not remember.

Aleksander Nõmm is seated on the running board of the truck in this photograph
which we have used 3 times already in this blog, for Edvardas Lapinskas on the left,
Bernardas Matkevičius in the cab and Juozas Nakas on the right

Source:  Collection of Aleksander Nõmm

Fortunately, it matches exactly with a photograph already supplied by Diana Bučiūtė, a niece of Juozas Nakas, who wrote his life story for this blog. There it was 3 named Lithuanians with an unindentified Estonian.

Now identified, Aleksander was born on a farm on the Estonian island of Saaremaa on 8 May 1922. He was named after his uncle, also Aleksander. Estonians often shorten Aleksander to Sass or sometimes Sander. His uncle was known already as Sander so the younger Aleksander got Sass.

Aged 18 or 19 in 1941, he found himself conscripted by the Soviet military machine into servitude in Russia. This was a period of his life about which he did not like to talk much.

He later believed that his loss of taste and smell was due to the freezing winters he spent in Siberia nearly starving, but being a farm boy, he knew what to eat to survive. His work was mainly building barracks, which meant that he developed carpentry skills which he could offer the Australian migration selection team in 1947.

After three years in Siberia, Aleksander was able to return to Estonia when the Soviets used all the manpower they could find to advance against the German occupation of the Baltic States.

Another Estonian who came to Australia in November 1947 on the First Transport with Aleksander, a man maybe 15 centimetres shorter than Aleks (who was nearly 2 metres tall), once told Ann that there was one Estonian on the ship of whom others were afraid. This was because he was a big man who had walked all the way back from Siberia.

At the time, Ann imagined an escapee on a solitary journey, living off the land. Even if the other Estonian was describing someone who had survived a walk from Siberia with a military unit, he still was talking about a massive effort. It could have been an effort which lost many participants under its wartime conditions. It was a walk from Asia, across Europe to an island off its west coast.

Back on Saaremaa, he joined other local men in what was meant to be a surprise attack from the rear on the German occupiers of their island. However, two German machine-gunners were able to fight off the invaders. Most were killed as the seawater turned crimson with their blood.

Sass was among a handful of survivors taken to Germany as prisoners-of-war. They left from the port of Mõntu on Saaremaa's Sõrve Peninsula.

The report of his interview for possible migration to Australia repeats some of this, saying that he arrived in Germany in October 1944, brought as a prisoner-of-war.

The carpentry skills that Sass said he had developed in Siberia were in great shortage at the time of his interview. As we’ve reported in some other entries in this blog, building was minimal during the War. Many of the people with the necessary skills were in the military, the Federal Government had brought in restrictions and the building that did go on mostly was for military needs.

So what did the selection team write on its report of the interview? Occupational suitability: “Heavy general labouring”. This is why “labourer” Nikolai Müristaja landing a first job in his watch-making profession in an earlier entry is so amazing.

The middle of three sons, Sass was the only one who was taken westwards by the Germans. After the Soviet occupation of 1944, his older brother, Heimar, decided to remain in the woods and fight. He became was the Estonians call a “forest brother” or metsavend.

While he participated in a guerrilla war from his forest bunker, the younger brother (Artur) and a sister 10 years younger than Sass (Linda) were the ones who kept Heimar supplied with food from the farm. Heimar and Artur were caught.

Heimar, the metsavend, was sentenced to a mere 10 years in a labour camp for treason. Artur received a 5 year sentence for assisting treason.

The thinking behind the March 1949 deportations from the Baltic States to the Gulag is said to have been, “Your family member is there already so you can join them”. It also was expected to destroy the economic base of the Kulaks, the small farmers, a class to which the Nõmm parents belonged. Thirdly, it was expected to destroy support for the Forest Brothers. Father, Jaan, then 63 years old and mother, Marie, then 56, were rounded up and sent off to Siberia for an indefinite period, the rest of their lives.

Sass’ sister Linda had caught pneumonia and was being cared by family friends. This meant that she was not at home when the authorities came looking for the family of Heimar and Artur. She was not deported.

Heimar and Artur did hard labour, shovelling hazardous materials, and it is believed in the family that this is why they both died young. Artur was lucky enough to have been released in December 1951, from a camp in the Archangel Oblast, having served a 4 and a half year sentence, and no doubt expected to survive as best he could. He died in 1986, still in a Communist country, aged 61.

Heimar was released in July 1955, from a camp in the Komi Autonomous Republic in the northeast of European Russia (around 1,000 Km east of the Archangel area) after 8 and half years of hard labour. He died in January 1981, also aged 61. In contrast, Linda was 78 when she died, her mother was 82, her father was 2 days past his 89th birthday, and Sass lived until he was 98.

As for destroying support for the Forest Brothers, Estonia had a least 2 who died without giving up, in 1980 and 1987, even after the last active one drowned himself rather than surrender when caught fishing by the KGB in 1978. The last Forest Brother of all was Jānis Pīnups, who emerged from the Latvian forests in 1995.

After his liberation in Germany in March 1945, towards the end of World War 2, Sass was in the Oberkassel camp on the Rhine River. He remembers Canadian Red Cross parcels were received by the camp administration but the managers took out the cigarettes, coffee and best clothes for themselves.

By 1947 he had moved to one of the four camps for Estonian displaced persons in the town of Melle. It was there that he heard about the Australians seeking young men and women to work in their country.

Aleksander in Melle, Germany, 1947

Source:  National Archives of Australia

Sass reckoned that he had his first real meal in six years on board the General Stuart Heintzelman. He was employed in the shipboard butcher’s shop for the duration of the voyage. Like other non-smokers, he used the freely issued American cigarettes to barter for other luxuries.

He remembered that the ship had steam turbines and a system which condensed the steam, giving plenty of fresh drinking water and allowing the use of large shower rooms. (Another passenger on a later voyage to Australia told Ann that the showers were hot, something special in those days.)

Those people who had brought musical instruments on board the Heintzelman formed a dance band which played during the evenings. The tables in the Heintzelman mess facilities could be hoisted up to the ceiling to create a dance floor.

Sass learnt modern dances, such as the samba, rumba and tango, while he was in Germany. He said he was best at the tango, but he was not musical or a folk-dancer.

On the train to Bonegilla, Sass thought that his first sight of eastern Australian countryside was “like a desert”. In early December, the fields were dry already. The yellow grass was a shock because he had thought that Australia was going to be mainly tropical.

Bonegilla itself was very exciting for the young Estonian men at first. They even found the local rabbits exciting. Sass remembers letting two of them loose in the barracks. Possums invaded the barracks without human assistance.

They went swimming in Lake Hume and found that they could catch yabbies for meals. There were big fish in the Lake also, near the Hume Weir, but their attempts to catch them were unsuccessful.

Those who returned late to the barracks would be welcomed with a bucket of cold water perched carefully on top of the partially open door.

Busloads of girls turned up from Wodonga and Albury to meet the new young men in the camp. Despite his dancing skills, Sass was afraid to take any of the girls to a dance as they were well dressed, while he “looked like a scarecrow”.

While in Bonegilla, the displaced persons received 5/- per week “tobacco money” for personal spending, after the costs of their board were deducted from their social security payments. At that time, a packet of tobacco cost 2/6.

His first Australian employer was the company of CJ Row, Webb and Anderson which operated what Sass called the Eildon timber mill. We know it from the Bonegilla cards as a timber mill at Thornton, about 12 Kilometres away from the better-known township of Eildon. Both are more than 130 Kilometres away from the company’s headquarters in South Melbourne. Given that much of the trip is on rural roads, it still is around 2½ hours drive between South Melbourne and Thornton or Eildon.

Sass reported Row and Webb were generous Australians, counterbalanced by Anderson, a “stingy Pom”. Sass received a minimum of £5/12/- for a five-day week, from which he paid 16/- tax and 36/- for accommodation and board. This left £3/-/- to spend or save.

Aleksander stacks timber at the Thornton mill

Source:  Collection of Aleksander Nõmm

After three or four months, his weekly wages went up to £7/10/-. Also, he found that he could earn an extra £3 on Saturday mornings doing piecework for Mr Webb. However, the accommodation provided was in barracks which had grass growing through the gaps in the floor. The gaps also permitted lizards to make forays through the barracks.

Aleksander (left) and another employee among the stacked timber

Source:  Collection of Aleksander Nõmm

While he was at Thornton, Sass attended English classes four days a week. Among the other DPs employed by Row, Webb and Anderson were the 3 Lithuanians in the photo above, who spoke to him in German, so he learnt some German there also. He had not picked up the German language while in Germany as he always was in camps with other Estonians.

Three Lithuanians and an Estonian again, with their clothes suggesting that this photo was taken in the same session as the truck photo: from the left, Edvardas Lapinskas, Aleksander, Bernardas Matkevičius and Juozas Nakas, with the CJ Row, Webb & Anderson sawmill in the background

Source:  Collection of Aleksander Nõmm

After finishing his compulsory employment at the Thornton Mill, Sass was able to find other work, but it was “three weeks here, six weeks there”. The Dunlop tyre company provided him with better employment, but best of all was Kraft Foods.

He started work with Kraft in 1953 and stayed with the company more than thirty years, until he retired in 1985. He was employed as a storeman, and a forklift driver and eventually in the company’s office.

At some stage, possibly even in his Estonian youth, Sass took up sport. As mentioned already, he was tall, and of medium build when younger, so he had the right body for a sportsman. His speciality in Australia was the shotput and javelin, until he damaged his shoulder.

Oberkassel, Germany, 1946:  Two volleyball teams with their trainers/managers
in plain clothes in the middle of the front row, with Sass 4th from the left

Source:  Collection of Aleksander Nõmm

In December 1949, a sports writer for the Melbourne Herald listed him as one of 9 javelin throwers invited to tests for inclusion in the Victorian athletics team. Success would lead to the Australian championships and inclusion in the team for the Empire Games (now the Commonwealth Games) in Auckland, New Zealand, two months later.

The Australian Estonian newspaper, Meie Kodu, reported in January 1950 that he had competed in the Victorian Athletics Championships, despite the heat affecting all competitors. Affiliated with the Box Hill Club, he was placed third in the javelin. It looks like Sass just missed out on the Victorian team in the leadup to an Australian team for the Empire Games.

The first Australian Estonian Sporting Games were held in Melbourne during Easter 1954. Sass did well, coming second in the long jump with a leap of 5.78 metres and second also in the shotput, with a throw of 11.53 metres.

In June 1954, Sass was participating in an Estonian volleyball team which was involved in trial games against others to determine the grades in which eventually they would play. The Estonian team had won its 3 games so far. The following month, Meie Kodu reported that they had defeated a Greek team, Olympic (of course), maintaining a record of 5 wins and no losses.

Meie Kodu also reported in the same month that Sass had chaired a meeting of Melbourne sportspeople and was chosen to be the coach of the girl’s handball team.

Another Australian Estonian Sporting Games were held in 1955. Sass came second in the long jump again, with a slightly shorter jump of 5.74 metres. It looks like there was no shotput competition.

He wasn’t just a sportsman. He successfully played bridge as well. As early as July 1954, Meie Kodu was reporting Sass coming second in a bridge doubles competition when partnering another First Transport arrival, Sven Kiviväli.

By 1957, Sass was building his own house in the northern Melbourne suburb of Fawkner, having married Irene Sein who arrived in Australia in 1949. Their only child, Silvi, was born while the house was going up. Silvi worked as a librarian, married and provided 2 grandchildren to Sass and Irene. Mrs Nõmm also had an older son. The family moved into the Fawkner house in 1958.

That year was also the year when Sass became an Australian citizen, with Irene on 5 March 1958.

A turning point must have been reached in 1957-58, with marriage, house-building and citizenship, as there are no more digitised reports of A. Nõmm’s sporting achievements.

At the time of writing in 2026, Melbourne Estonians had held a Last Hurrah weekend to farewell their Estonian House on Melville Road in West Coburg 6 weeks previously. Back in 1971, they were renovating the recently acquired former cinema. A contributor to Meie Kodu listed those who turned up every weekend to help, including Sass and his bridge partner, Sven Kiviväli.

All dressed up and somewhere to go, 9 Estonians from the First Transport, probably in Melbourne's recently renovated Estonian House:  Standing, left to right, Ants Sumberg, Valentin Reesel, Erich Väli, know to all as "Potsa", Lembit Koplus (looking really happy to have left Pyramid Hill), Kalev Veermäe, Sven Kiviväli, and kneeling, left to right, Ralf Knuude, maybe Mihkel Kaige, Aleksander Nõmm 

Source:  Collection of Aleksander Nõmm

After arriving in Australia, Sass has lived and worked only in Victoria, but travelled by car through NSW, South Australia and as far north as Mossman in Queensland. He undertook bus tours of Tasmania and from the centre of Australia to Darwin. He and Irene toured New Zealand.

Ill health, however, prevented travel back to Estonia, even after its second independence in 1991. He didn’t actually want to go, because he wanted the memories of how things were to stay in his mind.

Irene died on 29 March 2008, days short of her 86th birthday. This was the point when Sass had to leave the home he had built himself. He lived with his daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren for nearly 3 years. Then more health issues forced him into retirement care with Claremont Terrace Aged Care, McKinnon, near where his family lived.

Sass stayed there for another 9 years, passing the respectable age of 98 years. The ashes of both Sass and Irene rest in the Estonian section of the Fawkner Memorial Park in northern Melbourne.

SOURCES

Estonia’s Victims of Communism, Search Nõmm https://www.memoriaal.ee/en/search/?q=N%C3%B5mm&f=all, accessed 1 July 2026.

Hayward, Steve (1949) ‘Jack Davey's Test In Six-Mile Event’, Herald, Melbourne, 8 December, p 27 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/244143925, accessed 19 June 2026.

Meie Kodu (Our Home) (1950) 'Melbourneist' (‘From Melbourne’, in Estonian) Sydney, NSW, 26 January, p 4, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article85529847, accessed 10 June 2026.

Meie Kodu (Our Home) (1953) 'Melbourne', (In Estonian) Sydney, NSW, 27 August, p4, https://dea.digar.ee/page/meiekodu/1953/08/27/4, accessed 14 June 2026.

Meie Kodu (Our Home) (1954) ‘Terves kehas terve vaim' (‘A healthy mind in a healthy body', in Estonian) Sydney, NSW, 29 April, p 3, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article85536610, accessed 10 June 2026.

Meie Kodu (Our Home) (1954) 'Melbourne' (in Estonian) Sydney, NSW, 1 July, p 2, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article85536914, accessed 19 June 2026.

Meie Kodu (Our Home) (1954) 'Sport, Melbourne' (In Estonian) Sydney, NSW, 8 July, p 3, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article85536935, accessed 10 June 2026.

Meie Kodu (Our Home) (1954) 'Melbourne' (in Estonian) Sydney, NSW, 15 July, p 3, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/85536971, accessed 19 June 2026.

Meie Kodu (Our Home) (1954) Sydney, NSW, 'Melbourne', (In Estonian) 15 July, p 3 https://dea.digar.ee/page/meiekodu/1954/07/15/3, accessed 14 June 2026.

Meie Kodu (Our Home) (1954) 'Melbourne', (In Estonian) Sydney, NSW, 29 July, p 5, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article85537041, accessed 11 June 2026.

Meie Kodu (Our Home) (1955) ‘Rekordid kõnelevad’ (‘The records speak for themselves’, in Estonian) Sydney, NSW, 10 February, p 3, https://dea.digar.ee/page/meiekodu/1955/02/10/3, accessed 14 June 2026.

Meie Kodu (Our Home) (1971) ‘Eesti Maja’ (‘Estonian House’, in Estonian) Sydney, NSW, 14 October, p 2 https://dea.digar.ee/page/meiekodu/1971/10/14/2, accessed 14 June 2026.

Meie Kodu (Our Home) (1972) ‘Rahvuskapitali Tänu’ (‘National Fund Thanks’, in Estonian, Sydney, NSW, 20 September, p 2 https://dea.digar.ee/page/meiekodu/1972/09/20/2, accessed 16 June 2026.

Meie Kodu (Our Home) (1974) ‘Melbourne, Märkmeid Yarra-Linnast’ (‘Melbourne, Notes from the City on the Yarra’, in Estonian) Sydney, NSW, 11 September, p 3 https://dea.digar.ee/page/meiekodu/1974/09/11/3, accessed 16 June 2026.

Meie Kodu (Our Home) (1981) ‘Rahvuskapitali Tänu’ (‘National Fund Thanks’, in Estonian, Sydney, NSW, 9 September, p 2 https://dea.digar.ee/page/meiekodu/1981/09/09/2, accessed 17 June 2026.

Meie Kodu (Our Home) (1985) ‘Meie Kodu tänab Toetuskaardid’ (‘Meie Kodu Thanks Supporter Cards’, in Estonian) Sydney, NSW, 9 September, p 14 https://dea.digar.ee/page/meiekodu/1985/12/18/14, accessed 17 June 2026.

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, Central Office; A11772, Migrant Selection Documents for Displaced Persons who travelled to Australia per General Stuart Heintzelman departing Bremerhaven 30 October 1947, 1947-1947; 212, NOMM Aleksander DOB 8 May 1922, 1947-1947 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=5005625, accessed 17 June 2026.

National Archives of Australia: Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla], 1947-1956; NOMM ALEXANDER, NOMM, Alexander : Year of Birth - 1922 : Nationality - ESTONIAN : Travelled per - GEN. HEINTZELMAN : Number – 608, 1947-1948 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=203902046, accessed 17 June 2026.

Nõmm, Aleksander (2003) Personal communications, 9 January and 16 September.

The “Heintzelman” Builder’s Labourers by Ann Tündern-Smith

We have noted several times already in this blog that there was a shortage of buildings, especially homes, for those returning from overseas after World War I, let alone newly arriving Displaced Persons. We suggested that this was due to the men who would’ve been building being otherwise engaged during the period of the War.

I’m reading Stuart McIntyre’s book on Australia’s Boldest Experiment, subtitled War and reconstruction in the 1940s. In it, Stuart pointed out that the housing situation before World War II already could have been described as a dire.

I’d rather quote Stuart than try to summarise his careful arguments and his supporting detail. Here we go, from pages 175–78.

“There was mounting concern during the later 1930s with conditions in the inner suburbs and the State governments of New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria all commissioned inquiries. All painted a grim picture of neglect and decay.

“The most substantial, the 1937 report of Victoria’s Housing Investigation and Slum Abolition Board, described ‘congested areas' of inner Melbourne with as many as 49 dwellings an acre crowded into narrow laneways, ‘blighted areas’ where terraces were cheek by jowl with noxious industries, and ‘decadent areas’ where larger houses that had fallen into disrepair were divided by plywood or hessian partitions into sub-lets.”

Little Oxford Street, Collingwood, Melbourne, beautifully photographed
by F. Oswald Barnett about 1935:  Note the tiny size of the nearest home
(Stuart Macintyre says that Barnett was the driving force behind the slum abolition
 movement in Melbourne)

Source:  Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive

[At a density of “49 dwellings an acre”, each dwelling occupied, on average, about 83 m² of land. However, on those inner-Melbourne laneways, many dwellings might have been tiny 19th century cottages or terraces built wall-to-wall, on very narrow allotments (sometimes only 3–5 metres wide), sharing laneways, yards, privies, and other facilities. Some cottages may have stood on only 40–70 m² of land, while the remainder was taken up by the lanes, tiny yards, and shared spaces. Modern housing developments would allow at least 10 times that amount of land for each home, including the garden separating it from its neighbours, although apartment blocks are different.]

“The (Victorian) Board’s external inspection of residences within an 8-kilometre radius of the city centre led to an internal examination of 6390 residences. It found that great majority had no kitchen, a third had no bathroom, and a quarter had neither gas nor electricity. They were disfigured by leaking roofs, unsound floors and defective drainage, poor ventilation, damp, and subject to rat and vermin infestation. Half were judged unfit for habitation without repair, the other half incapable of reclamation.

“New South Wales and South Australia reached similar conclusions and each created an authority with powers to remove slums and build affordable housing. These new dwellings had barely made a dent in the backlog when the onset of the Pacific War brought civilian construction to a standstill.

“… most (slum) residents would respond if removed from their blighted environment and decanted into new, improved accommodation under appropriate supervision. But this could not happen unless the government made good the failure of the housing industry. There was a shortage of houses because construction had come to halt during the Depression, and an insufficiency of rental accommodation at prices those on low incomes could afford. The solution lay in public housing built more efficiently to proper standards and let at subsidised rents.

“The Commonwealth used a variety of war controls on land sales, mortgage borrowing, building permits and materials to prevent house building and restrict renovations to minor repairs. Recruitment and manpower regulations attenuated the construction workforce: 28751 dwellings were built in 1941, just 3548 in 1942.

“By then the housing deficiency was estimated to be 150,000, and the tightening of rent controls in December 1941 added to the strain. It was most acute in the metropolitan areas and in country towns where munitions production was undertaken in vast new plants employing thousands of workers who swamped the rental market. A War Workers Housing Trust erected hostels and temporary ‘wartime cottages’ but many had to make do in sheds, garages, caravans and other makeshift accommodation.”

Another study directed by a University of Melbourne economist looked at the conditions in wartime housing. The investigators were mostly young women with Arts degrees who, between September 1941 and January 1943, interviewed one in 30 of all Melbourne households. They collected data on the dwelling, family structure, employment and income. They found that “that a quarter of the kitchens had no water supply and half lacked a hot-water service. Fewer than one in 10 had a refrigerator; about half used ice-chests and the remainder relied on daily purchases of perishables. The survey also revealed a marked disparity between the crowding and lack of amenities in suburbs such as Collingwood, where incomes were low and the overwhelming majority were tenants, and the more spacious homes across the Yarra in Hawthorn and Kew, where ownership was more common and facilities more advanced.”

The same economist then conducted a closer analysis of Melbourne’s “western suburbs, where the war had a marked effect. In addition to Williamstown’s naval dockyard and Newport’s railway workshop, the Sunshine Harvester agricultural implement works and a steel mill, tyre factory and various engineering works in Footscray, all working at full capacity, there were ordnance, ammunitions and explosives factories with more than 20,000 hands. The number employed in secondary industry grew from 23,000 in 1938-39 to over 53,000 in1941-42.

“Earnings also increased: the average household income was 9 pounds 5 shillings by the beginning of 1943 — but then a quarter of all households included relatives or boarders. Because of rent control, the average weekly cost of a four-room house in the area was low, just over 18 shillings — if you could find one vacant.

“These suburbs had not been included in the earlier Board inquiry and their housing stock differed from that of the inner suburbs: it consisted overwhelmingly of single-storey, detached residences, most of four or five rooms. While … only 5 per cent (were seen as) uninhabitable, a fifth had no sink or running water in the kitchen, half lacked a refrigerator or ice-chest, half again had no hot water in the bathroom and a tiny minority provided an internal toilet. With no possibility of remedying these deficiencies and a shortage of such basic materials as paint, most householders did what maintenance they could and saved for future improvements.”

Inner northern Melbourne was where our First Transport passengers were looking for accommodation as soon as they left employment where it was provided. We’ve looked at several who lived and worked in those western suburbs, which is why I’ve used a quote from Stuart Macintyre to describe the conditions that they still might have found in 1949 and into the early 1950s.

I have quoted from Stuart because I had not been factoring in the impact of the 1930s Depression on housing construction in Australia, nor Federal WWII controls on building activity, let alone realising the lack of amenities that we now take for granted in the housing that did exist.

I think that Stuart concentrated on studies of housing in Melbourne because that was where he lived and taught. He has noted already that the findings of the investigations were similar in Sydney and Adelaide.

Stuart was a professor of history at the University of Melbourne, who retired from that position in 2013 and died in 2021. One reason why I am reading his book on Australia’s Boldest Experiment is because Stuart and I were contemporaries at the University of Melbourne in our student days. I remember him well from our joint activities for the Amnesty International groups at that university. The other reason should be obvious to followers of this blog: it is about Australia in the 1940s, about the Australia into which our First Transport passengers found themselves entering in the hope of new lives.

It is quite possible that those living on Baltic farms before World War II lived in conditions similar to those described in 1937-1943 Melbourne, probably without running water, certainly without hot water services, without refrigeration and with external toilets. Since the DP camps often were in military barracks or similar communal accommodation, at least they might have had running water and internal toilets. But, reader, do not for one moment think that their initial accommodation after Bonegilla was roughly like you live today.

Another person in my life relevant to this story was George Kiddle. George was one of the 3-man team who interviewed the Displaced Persons who had heard, in September-October 1947, about the possibility of moving from post-War Germany to Australia. He also was the head, during 1978-81, of the Department of Immigration branch where I was working. Mind you, it was only on his last day at work that I realised that he was one of the 3 responsible for selecting my mother, and so responsible for my birth as an Australian.

I think it was George who told me something along the lines of building worker numbers in Australia being so short of what was required that anyone who had helped erect a shed on the family farm was a candidate for Australia.

The selection team did their best and succeeded in choosing 75 men who they regarded as suitable to work as Builder’s Labourers in Australia. Additionally, as noted in the case of Aleksander Nõmm, there were others with suitable experience who were described as Labourers instead.

At a guess, only 2 of the 75 were sent to work as Builder’s Labourers. Albinas Navickas and Jonas Strankauskas were allocated to the Department of Works and Housing, Woomera, SA, after a sawmill in Navickas’ case and fruit-picking plus casual labouring at Bonegilla for Strankauskas. We have been told elsewhere though that Albinas worked as a Linesman and Strankauskas was put onto joinery after initial labouring. The initial labouring just might have been supporting builders at Woomera.

I’m fairly sure that the 4 selected as Builder's Labourers but sent to brick-making companies were more likely to be employed in stacking bricks than building new houses from them. We know for sure that this was the case for 2 of the 5 sent to the Canberra Brickworks, but note that none of them were selected as Builder’s Labourers.

Mismatch? Yes! I think that what may have happened is that the Commonwealth Employment Service staff in the Bonegilla camp operated on a “first come, first served” basis in distributing the new arrivals to employers looking for labour, and the foresters, timber mills and brick manufacturers got in ahead of the builders.

Part of my purpose in running this blog is to look at the extent to which individuals were able to continue their careers in the context of what were then well known labour and staff shortages in various industries and occupations.

Right now, I can nominate only 3 Estonians, Nikolai Müristaja, Helgi Nirk and Ernst Kesa, and one Lithuanian, Kazimieras Balkauskas, as finding work in Australia which fitted well with their previous interests and training. Then there were some others, like Endrius Jankus, Albinas Kutka and Edvins Baulis, who trained in Australia and ran their own businesses. Most found an employer they liked and laboured for them – or went from employer to employer if they were less lucky.

MORE:

Australian Department of Home Affairs (2009) Oral History — George Kiddle https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&channel=entpr&q=%22george+kiddle%22#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:7f244f7e,vid:RI1Y3qYqkN8,st:0, accessed 28 June 2026.

Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne (2021) ‘Vale Professor Stuart Macintyre AO’ https://arts.unimelb.edu.au/news/past-news/vale-professor-stuart-macintyre-ao, accessed 27 June 2026.

Macintyre, Stuart (2015) Australia’s Boldest Experiment: War and reconstruction in the 1940s. Sydney, New South Publishing.

Viktoras Žeimys (1914-1997): Footballer, Cook, Telephone Technician, by Rasa Ščevinskienė and Ann Tündern-Smith

More than one year before the 50th anniversary of the arrival of the First Transport, the USAT General Stuart Heintzelman, at Fremantle with 839 Displaced Persons on board, about to settle in Australia, in 1996 the Mūsų Pastogė Australian-Lithuanian newspaper was publishing reminiscences.

One of them was from Viktoras Žeimys, a professional footballer in Lithuania and even in Germany before selection for Australia. Let’s translate what Viktoras wrote from his Lithuanian.

Professional footballer in Germany

“I lived in the Rotenburg DP camp in the British zone of Germany. [Rotenburg is about 45 km west of Bremen, more by road]. At the end of July 1947, when emigration to Australia began, I did not think of emigrating there because I played football for the German team, and the club urged me to stay in Germany — they would give me a good job, I would live closer to my homeland...

“In the camp, those who wanted to emigrate were examined by Dr Ivinskis. He advised me to emigrate. He said — you will not play football all your life, but there you may find a better life. When I decided to go, he filled out the necessary forms and checked my health.

“After that, they sent me to Hanover to check my health and political past, and after a few weeks, to the Diepholz camp, where they mainly checked my lungs, blood, etc. Later, my health was also checked by Australian emigration and UNRRA officials.

[Viktoras’ selection papers for emigration to Australia have been lost, so we no longer have access to what Dr Ivinskis or the others wrote, nor a photograph of the footballer from those days. Further, we don’t know what the Australian officials recorded about his arrival in Germany or his work there or earlier. We do know that he passed the medical exams or we would not be writing about his now.]

“During the last inspection, we had to take off our underwear and raise our hands — they checked whether we had SS signs (tattooed blood groups on our arms, near our armpits). [Lots of the men with whom Ann was able to talk twenty years ago spoke about raising their arms so that they could be checked for the blood group tattoo, but Viktoras is the first so far to put this aspect of the checking for migration to Australia into writing.]

“We received our personal documents, and a few days later we were taken to the port of Bremerhaven, where we boarded the beautiful USAT General Stuart Heintzelman. Goodbye to our homeland, Lithuania, goodbye to Europe!

The Mūsų Pastogė caption for this photograph said that it was taken in Bremerhaven,
just before boarding the Heintzelman, and Žeimys was second from the left:
we think that meant that he's the one in the light-coloured coat with the shrug

Mūsų Pastogė captioned this photograph, "Five future Australians on board": Žeimys was fourth from the left and Teresevičius was next to him, but Žeimys could no longer remember
the other names 49 years later — do you recognise anyone?

Source: Mūsų Pastogė

A Soviet Submarine!

“Upon entering the Red Sea, rumours spread on the ship that a Soviet submarine was following us and, possibly, wanted to sink us. Of course, these were just rumours, and on November 28, 1947, we arrived in the port of Fremantle, Western Australia, having spent 28 days on the journey.

Viktoras Žeimys, identity photography from his 1947 Bonegilla card

Source:  National Archives of Australia

“After spending [nearly] a week in a military camp near Fremantle, on December 5, we boarded the Australian warship HMAS Kanimbla. We were taken to Melbourne. From there we took a train to Bonegilla, Victoria, an emigrant camp set up in a former barracks. I was put to work in the kitchen.

Google's Gemini AI thinks that the man on the far left of this photo of Bonegilla staff,
most of them working in the kitchen, could be Viktoras Žeimas

Source:  Collection of Galina Vasins Karciauskas

From Bonegilla to Bathurst to Tully, Queensland

“A few months later, when an emigrant camp opened in Bathurst, NSW, I was with a group of other workers who were transferred there. I worked as a cook again.

“Later, I worked for a season in the sugar cane harvest in Queensland, but, not having made a fortune, I returned to the kitchen.

“In 1949, I was sent to the Army Cooks School. After graduating, I worked as a cook in an army unit, where I completed my two-year government contract. But even after graduating, I did not give up my job as a cook and worked at the Sydney Yacht Club, and from 1952 to 1979 — at the NSW Post Office.”

Viktoras Becomes an Australian Citizen

The digitisation of Australian Government gazettes by the National Library of Australia’s Trove service shows that Viktoras was amongst the very first from the General Stuart Heintzelman to apply for and be granted Australian citizenship. He received his citizenship certificate on 5 June 1953, only 6 months after he became eligible.

He then lived on Hugh Street, in the Sydney suburb of Belmore. The Australian citizenship means that Ancestry.com allows us to follow any changes of address or occupation until 1980, the year of the last digitised electoral roll. During this period, he and his wife continued to live at the same address, while Viktoras continued to record his occupation as telephone technician. By the time he died, though, the family had moved into the neighbouring suburb of Belfield.

Mūsų Pastogė correspondents have filled in more of Viktoras’ life. “AVK” for example, undertook the sad duty of an obituary after Viktoras died before that 50th anniversary, one month after his 83rd birthday, on 17 July 1997.

Chef? Footballer! Telephone technician ...

AVK pointed out that while Viktoras worked at the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron club in Kirribilli, he had the opportunity to cook lunch for Sir Robert Menzies. He received a very large tip from the Prime Minister that afternoon.

AVK explained that Viktoras was a member of the Sydney branch of Ramovė, the organisation for former members of the Lithuanian military. His military speciality had been communications. After completing his military service, he worked for the Lithuanian Post Office and was an active athlete. As a member of the Lithuanian football team, he travelled all over Europe.

[While AVK described Viktoras, apparently also known as "Stasys", as a member of the "Lithuanian football team", we have been unable to find him in any lists of players for Lithuania in the late 1930s.  It looks as if Viktoras was good enough to travel with the squads but never had the opportunity to take to the field in any FIFA-recognised international match for Lithuania.]

Viktoras Žeimys in military uniform

Source:  Mūsų Pastogė

We also learn from AVK that Viktoras’ speciality with the Lithuanian and NSW Post Offices was as a telephone technician. Abandoning his cooking career, despite Prime Ministerial patronage, indicates that Viktoras found the challenges of sorting telecommunications problems more to his liking than the challenges of new recipes.

Return to Lithuania

In 1991, Viktoras returned to Lithuania for the 4th World Lithuanian Games. Mūsų Pastogė published 3 articles about this visit. The first was based on an interview in the Mūsų Pastogė office and appeared on 1 July 1991.

The footballer about to return to Lithuania

Source:  Mūsų Pastogė

Viktoras was asked what prompted him to return to Lithuania. To that he replied, love of one’s native land, youthful memories, the desire to participate in the 4th World Lithuanian Games, and also the opportunity to meet with footballing friends. He hoped to renew acquaintances about whom he had dreamed in exile for more than forty years.

Viktoras explained that he started to play for the Žemaitis team in his home town, Kretinga, when he was only 13 years old. Given that he was born on 14 June 1914, this would have been in 1927. Three years later, he was invited to join the Klaipėda team, Švyturis. That was in 1936, he said, meaning that 6 years were lost somewhere in the explanation.

in 1938, the chairman of Kaunas football club, Kovas, asked him to join this team. He played there until the war began.

Viktoras had been told that former sports people in independent Lithuania were invited to participate in the opening of the 4th World Games in Kaunas. He was waiting excitedly for that day and hour.

The second article in Mūsų Pastogė, on 23 September, repeated an article in the Klaipėda city newspaper, which also was called Klaipėda. Their honoured visitor had started a Sydney football team in 1954, later coached Australian football players [meaning members of the national team?], and then coached juniors. However, he had said goodbye to active football completely in 1971, when he was 56 or 57.

The third report was published on 2 December 1991. During the opening ceremony for the Games in Klaipėda, 77-year-old sports veteran Viktoras Žeimys walked onto the field, knelt down and kissed the green grass. Before the War, he had played there many times with his father, he told Robertas Mackevičius, who was responsible for the stadium’s maintenance.

When he left, Viktoras handed Robertas 100 dollars and told him, "Tidy up our field, I really want everything to be beautiful here like before."

Robertas Mackevičius did not spend this money on the maintenance of the grass. When it was necessary to pay salaries to the stadium employees one month later, and “the winds were whistling through the bank account”, he took those dollars to the bank and exchanged them for roubles. Mentally thanking the Australian Lithuanian, he paid modest salaries to his small group of colleagues.

Robertas consoled himself with the thought that he still had 38 light bulbs left in the storeroom.

Still supporting Kovas at 80

In April 1995, the sports reporter for Mūsų Pastogė noted that Viktoras was still involved in sports. He was always present when the Sydney team, Kovas, trained. He always supported the athletes with donations and took care of their problems. He was unable to attend to the 1995 World Lithuanian Games but he had donated $50 to the athletes who were going and wished them good luck. [The Reserve Bank of Australia advises that, 30 years later, $50 would buy a basket of goods and services worth nearly $110.]

Viktoras the Scout

Two years later, after Viktoras’ death, an initial report in Mūsų Pastogė noted that he also had been a scout in his youth. In 1933, on 17 August, he had participated in a massive rally in Palanga, Lithuania, which brought together Lord Robert Baden-Powell, Lady Olave Baden-Powell, and a contingent of 650 British Scouts and Guides with nearly 2,000 Lithuanian Scouts and Guides. The British delegation was received by the President of Lithuania, Antanas Smetona, at his official summer residence in Palanga, and a street was named in Baden-Powell‘s honour.

The end, and the family

Viktoras was not well in the last few years of his life, so he was rarely seen at Lithuanian events in Sydney — apart from training sessions for Kovas, it would seem. His cause of death was a heart attack.

Viktoras Rufinas Žeimys was buried on 21 July 1997 in the Lithuanian section of Rookwood Cemetery after a funeral service conducted by Fr Jonas Girdauskas. The chairman of the Sydney Ramovė branch, Antanas Vinevičius, farewelled him on behalf of his comrades. We note that his name was Australianised for the burial: Victor Rufin Zeimys.

He met and possibly married his younger wife, Anna Katerina in Germany. She died 14 years later and is buried with him.

We know that they had at 3 children, 2 daughters and a son. That’s because a daughter accompanied Viktoras on his 1991 return to his homeland and the 4th World Lithuanian Games. Sadly, the son, John Phillip, born in March 1954, lived for only 63 years, dying in March 2017. His ashes rest in a wall among other Lithuanians in Rookwood Cemetery. We hope that the 2 daughters, named as Anna and Elizabeth in the obituary by AMK, are doing well.

The father with whom he played football on the grass of the Klaipėda field was Juozas, who had married Marijona Zmidaitė according to the details on an American Expeditionary Forces DP Registration Form completed for him somewhere in the south west of Germany in October 1945. That form also reports that he left in December 1945 for a DP camp in Freiburg in the French Zone of Occupation. Perhaps he had heard that the Displaced Persons there were keen on football.

SOURCES

AEF DP Registration Record, ‘Žeimys, Viktoras’ Document ID 69001742, ITS/Arolsen Archives https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/document/69001742, accessed 22 June 2026.

Alfas (1995) ‘Sportas’ (‘Sport’, in Lithuanian) Mūsų Pastogė, Sydney, NSW, 17 April, p 7 https://www.spauda2.org/musu_pastoge/archive/1995/1995-04-17-MUSU-PASTOGE.pdf, accessed 22 June 2026.

Australian Cemetery Index, Name/Cemetery Search https://austcemindex.com/?family_name=zeimys&cemetery=1150, accessed 21 June 2026.

“AVK” (1997) ‘A † A Viktoras Rufinas Žeimys, 1914.6.14 – 1997.7.17’ (‘RIP Viktoras Rufinas Zeimys’, in Lithuanian) Mūsų Pastogė, Sydney, NSW, 1 September, p 7 https://www.spauda2.org/musu_pastoge/archive/1997/1997-09-01-MUSU-PASTOGE.pdf, accessed 22 June 2026.

Bonegilla Migrant Experience, Bonegilla Identity Card and Memory Collection, ‘Viktoras Zeimys’ https://idcards.bonegilla.org.au/record/203728731, accessed 21 June 2026.

CM/1 No.207702 ‘Zeimys’ 3.1.1.1 Postwar Card File / Postwar Card File (A-Z) / Names in "phonetical" order from SA, Folder DP3618, names from SEJMICKI, WACLAW to ZEZNELOVICH, Shaban (1), ITS/Arolsen Archives https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/document/69001743, accessed 22 June 2026.

Commonwealth of Australia Gazette (1953) ‘Certificates of Naturalization’ Canberra, ACT, 16 July, p 1978 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/232810367/25083994, accessed 22 June 2026.

Find a Grave ‘Anna Katarina Zeimys’ https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/180428496/anna-katarina-zeimys, accessed 21 June 2026.

Find a Grave ‘John Phillip Zeimys’ https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/272633188/john-phillip-zeimys, accessed 21 June 2026.

Find a Grave ‘Victor Rufin Zeimys’ https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/180428497/victor-rufin-zeimys, accessed 21 June 2026.

Mundrys, Virgilijus (1991) ‘Kai pristinga pinigų …’ (‘When money is tight...', in Lithuanian) Respublika, 12.10.1991, reprinted in Mūsų Pastogė, Sydney, NSW, 2 December, p 6 https://www.spauda2.org/musu_pastoge/archive/1991/1991-12-02-MUSU-PASTOGE.pdf, accessed 22 June 2026.

Mūsų Pastogė (1991) ‘“Pašaukė tėvynės ilgesys”’ (‘“Called by longing for the homeland”’, in Lithuanian) Sydney, NSW, 23 September, p 6 https://www.spauda2.org/musu_pastoge/archive/1991/1991-09-23-MUSU-PASTOGE.pdf, accessed 22 June 2026.

Mūsų Pastogė (1995) ‘Mirė a.a. Viktoras Žeimys‘ (‘Died, RIP Viktoras Zeimys’) Sydney, NSW, 28 July, p 7, https://www.spauda2.org/musu_pastoge/archive/1997/1997-07-28-MUSU-PASTOGE.pdf, accessed 22 June 2026.

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