Leaving Australia for a Third Country
We have a good idea why others who left Australia for third countries moved on. Viktoras Kuciauskas, for example, knew that he had met the love of his life while visiting family in the United States, and moved there to be with her.
Vytautas Stasiukynas could not find employment in his field of veterinary science, so left for Colombia, South America. There he was employed immediately as a vet by the brother of the nation’s president.
Povilas Laurinavičius left Australia for Chicago, United States, around 1964, aged about 56, to spend the rest of his life with family there who he had been unable to sponsor to live in Australia in 1948.
Jonas Motiejūnas had been able to work as an engineer in Australia but perhaps had better prospects when he moved with his wife and young family to the United States in 1959.
Vladas Navickas seemed unable to settle down in any one place until he found San Francisco in 1959.
Veronika Tutins left in 1960 with her husband, Eduards Brokans, who had a younger, much better educated brother who probably was doing better in Pennsylvania than these two were in Australia.
We do not know why Jonas Zaremba left for New Zealand in in the early 1950s. We can see that he settled in well there.
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| Jonas Zaremba in 1950-51, when corresponding with the NSW Branch of the Department of Immigration Source: National Archives of Australia |
Jonas' life in New Zealand
New Zealand already had a Lithuanian Society, founded in 1949, but reorganised into the Lithuanian Community of New Zealand in March 1951. From 1950 to 1958, the newspaper Naujosios Zelandijos Lietuvis (The New Zealand Lithuanian) was published, and from 1952 to 1960, a Lithuanian Sunday school was in operation.
In 1956 Jonas Zaremba was elected to the board of the New Zealand Lithuanian Community.
Later that decade, he moved from Wellington to Auckland, where he married a New Zealander named Loris Ailene Grinter. They had no children, and his wife passed away on 11 July 1997, aged 80.
As long as his health allowed, he lived alone in his home. He died on 30 April 2006, aged 94, at the Mercy Parklands Hospital and was buried next to his wife in the Waikaraka Park Cemetery in Auckland.
Jonas Zaremba had been an active member of the Lithuanian community and a devoted Catholic.
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| The Zaremba's gravestone in the Waikaraka Cemetery in Ōnehunga, Auckland, New Zealand |
Jonas' life in Lithuania
He was born on the first day of 1912, in the village of Baskai, near Giedraičiai, in the Moletai district of Lithuania. His parents were Petras Zaremba and the former Ona Šimenaitė. They had been married in the Giedraičiai church on 30 August 1909, and already had one child, Petras, when Jonas was born.
Jonas’ father owned a farm, probably explaining why he was exiled to Igarka in the Krasnoyarsk territory of Siberia on 22 May 1948. He died in exile in 1953. World War II and its aftermath broke up the Zaremba family.
Jonas attended school in Švenčionėliai. He volunteered for the Lithuanian Army in 1933, so at the age of 21. Although his father had a farm, Jonas did not want to be a farmer. He had a passion for horses though, so was assigned to a cavalry regiment. He participated in recruit training and won prizes in equestrian competitions.
He served with General Plechavičius.* Due to the to and fro of World War II, he ended up serving in the armies of four different nations.
Jonas in Germany
The Arolsen Archive has not digitised any records of Jonas Zaremba yet. We meet him in Germany first in the Australian selection team’s interview record from September 1947 in the Buchholz DP camp. At this time he was living in a DP camp in Gross Hesepe, with the Geeste municipality in Lower Saxony. Geeste is less than 5 kilometres from the border with the Netherlands, so Jonas has gotten almost as far west, away from the Soviets, as it was possible to be in Germany.
The interview record noted that he had arrived in Germany in May 1944, having been “deported by the Germans”. The May date was months earlier than the September-October dates of people who had fled Lithuania when they heard that the Soviet forces were returning. He possibly travelled in retreat with the Germany Army units into which his Lithuanian Army unit had been absorbed.
More about life in Lithuania
He had attended Lithuanian schools not only for the basic 4 years of primary education, but also for another 4 years of secondary education. The selection panel noted that he spoke Lithuanian, Russian, Polish and ‘fair’ German.
Despite his disinclination to be a farmer, he admitted to 10 years’ experience as a farm worker in Lithuania. He may have been acknowledging assistance with the family farm before he joined the Lithuanian Army.
His experience in training horses was noted, no doubt with interest.
He had not been working for the previous 2 years, presumably since World War II ceased wherever he was then in Germany.
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| Jonas Zaremba in 1947 Source: National Archives of Australia |
Jonas' work in Australia
After arrival in Australia and time in the Bonegilla Reception and Training Centre in northeast Victoria, probably attending English classes and practising this new language with his fellow refugees, he was sent to his first job.
Like one-quarter of the men on the First Transport, the General Stuart Heintzelman, he was sent to pick fruit. His first Australian employer was Messrs Dundas Simson of Ardmona.
He put up with this outdoor labour for 3 weeks, returning to the Bonegilla camp on 22 March. As he was already 35 years old, more than 10 years older than the average age of the group, this first work in over 2 years may well have been more than his body liked.
One week later, on 29 March, he was sent to Tasmania. At this stage, we do not know what manual labour was expected of him there. All we can say is that he was not working at Railton’s Goliath Portland Cement factory, he was not logging timber from Maydena, cutting tracks through the bush for the EZ Company near Rosebery nor shovelling coal for the Electrona Carbide works.
Whatever he was doing in Tasmania, he put up with it for 9 months, then decided it was time to ask to do something else. He arrived back at Bonegilla on 4 January 1949, stayed another 5 weeks, then found himself travelling to Sydney on 14 February. The third employer was the Metropolitan Water Sewage and Drainage Board.
Why did Jonas leave Australia?
It is highly likely that the third job involved digging ditches. No wonder he wanted to leave for New Zealand, especially if he heard from Lithuanians there already about less arduous work. Another possible attraction was that New Zealand was about as far in the world as one could get away from the Soviet Union, even further away than Australia.
As he undoubtedly stayed loyal to his commanders in the Lithuanian Army during the turmoil of World War II, perhaps 10 months of his service had been under Soviet command. This might well explain his trek to the far west of Germany at the end of the War, as well as his move to New Zealand.
FOOTNOTE *General Plechavičius' role in the lives of some First Transporters, Henrikas Juodvalkis, Juozas Nakas, Elena Kalvyte's husband Jonas Augutis, and Stasys Šeduikis, has been mentioned already. Wikipedia has his English-language biography.
CITE THIS AS Ščevinksienė, Rasa and Tündern-Smith, Ann (2026) 'Jonas Zaremba (1912-2006): Another who left — for New Zealand'
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