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!
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| 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 |
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| 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 late — 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.]
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| 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.
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| 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.
National Archives of Australia, Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla], 1947-1956; ZEIMYS VIKTORAS, ZEIMYS, Viktoras : Year of Birth - 1914 : Nationality - LITHUANIAN : Travelled per - GEN. HEINTZELMAN : Number - 737, 1947-1958 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=203728731, accessed 24 June 2026.
Reserve Bank of Australia, Inflation Calculator, https://www.rba.gov.au/calculator/annualDecimal.html, accessed 20 June 2026.
Ryerson Index, Search for Notices https://ryersonindex.org/search.php, accessed 21 June 2026.
“V.A” (1991) Pasiilgau gimtosios žemės (‘I Miss My Native Land’, in Lithuanian) Mūsų Pastogė, Sydney, NSW, 1 July, p 6 https://www.spauda2.org/musu_pastoge/archive/1991/1991-07-01-MUSU-PASTOGE.pdf, accessed 22 June 2026.
Žeimys, Viktoras (1996) ‘Pirmieji metai Australijoje, Emigrantu į tolimqjq Australiją’ (‘First Years in Australia, Emigrant to distant Australia’, in Lithuanian) Mūsų Pastogė, Sydney, NSW, 5 August, p 6 https://www.spauda2.org/musu_pastoge/archive/1996/1996-08-05-MUSU-PASTOGE.pdf, accessed 22 June 2026.
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