Vincas Žygas’ contribution to Australia was to be a qualified psychiatric nurse at the Sunbury Hospital in rural Victoria, where he worked for 30 years and rose to be the head of a department.
He retired from that employment at the age of 60, as someone who was well liked by all his superiors and colleagues, with administrative skills which were highly valued, according to his obituarist. He hoped to be more active in community life. He died only 2 years later, though, from a debilitating illness.
Vincas was born on 8 January 1924 in the village of Vaiškūnai, Švenčionys parish and district, in the Vilnius region, occupied by Poland. He came from a large family of conscientious Lithuanian farmers. He had to attend Polish schools, but his obituarist wrote that “he left them unaffected by the foreign environment”. He wanted to be a teacher but the teachers' college was closed by another occupier of the region, Germany. He did not finish his education, instead becoming caught up apparently in the German war machine before moving into exile in camps in Germany.
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| Vincas Žygas in 1947 Source: Bonegilla Migrant Experience |
According to the Australian immigration team interviewing Displaced Persons for possible resettlement in Australia, his education consisted of 5 years of primary schooling only. He had been “forcibly evacuated by the Germans” from Lithuania in July 1944. An Arolsen Archives American Expeditionary Force (AEF) DP Registration Record gives an arrival date of 3 August 1944.
He provided no previous occupations on his application form, but said that he was fluent in Lithuanian, Polish, Russian and German. Given the succession of occupiers of the Vilnius region after World War I, this is easy to understand. The AEF form records his previous occupation as “pupil”.
It also notes that he lived at the one Švenčionys address from 1 March 1939 to 22 June 1941, suggesting that he had been moved from place to place around Lithuania by its German occupiers from the age of 17.
He arrived in Australia on the First Transport, the USAT General Stuart Heintzelman. Like Alfonsas Sadauskas, he was sent back the timber industry in Western Australia, specifically, to the State Saw Mill in Murray Street, Perth, on 15 January 1948. He had turned 24 one week before.
From 1945 onwards, the Communist invaders of his homeland targeted his family, as “kulaks” or rich farmers whose land had to be collectivised. His father, Blažiejus, and brother, Viktoras, were arrested and sent to Gulag labour camps in Komi ASSR in 1945. We have blogged about one Komi camp, Pechorlag, already in relation to Aleksander Nõmm’s brother, Heimar.
Blažiejus had been born in 1890, so was 54 or 55 when sent to the Komi ASSR, perhaps with the intention that he should labour there for the rest of a shortened life. Viktoras had been born in 1918, so was a sturdier 24 or 25.
During another mass deportation operation code-named Osenj (Autumn) in October 1951, Vincas’ mother, Zofija, born in 1889, so was 61 or 62 years old, and two of his sisters, Ciprijona or Ciprusė, born in 1914 and Janina, born in 1927, were exiled to Siberia. A third sister, Bronislava or Bronė, born in 1926, was tracked down and deported in 1952.
The women were sent to Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia from their homes in Lithuania’s Švenčionys district.
The conditions in Krasnoyarsk would have been similar to those we have described for Aleksander Nõmm's family -- only perhaps worse in their intensity given that southern Krasnoyarsk is even further from the moderating influence of the sea or a large lake than the Arkhangelsk, Komi or Novosibirsk regions.
In addition to strict surveillance and gruelling labour, the women's living conditions were likely to have been marked by even more severe cold weather in winter and larger, possibly fatal insect swarms in summer. The north in the 1950s may well have been ice-covered all year round.
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| The Krasnoyarsk ASSR within Russia Source: Wikimedia Commons |
Only Vincas and his sister Julė managed to avoid deportation – in Vincas’ case because he had already been taken from his homeland by the previous invaders.
After Stalin’s death and Krushchev’s condemnation of him, the repressions in Lithuania ended on 21 May 1958. All the deported family members were able to return to their homeland.
Vincas became an Australian citizen on 19 July 1960. His address at the time was Male Nurses Hostel, Mental Hospital, Sunbury, Victoria. In the absence of a file containing his application for naturalization, which would record his addresses and employers since 1948, we do not know how he moved from the timber industry to mental health.
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| Main building, former Sunbury Mental Hospital Source: KC Hunter/Alamy via The Guardian |
He married Elke Anna Klara Berger in 1963. When she became an Australian citizen on 15 February 1972, the two of them had made their home on Brook Street, Sunbury.
During the last 2 years of his life, Elke was his primary carer, his nurse. He died 2 August 1986 in Gisborne Hospital, near Sunbury, when Elke and close friends were visiting him.
At least one close friend was another Heintzelman passenger, Antanas Simkus, separated by their initial work deployments, who was searching for Vincas with an advertisement in Mūsų Pastogė in 1958. Antanas was then living in the inner Sydney suburb of Potts Point. There is no public indication that these two good friends were able to meet.
In addition to his grieving wife, Vincas was survived by his sisters Ciprusė, Bronė, Janina, and Julė as well as brother Viktoras and their families. That most of these victims of Communist repression survived him shows how untimely his death was.
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| Vincas Žygas in later life Source: Tėviškės aidai |
He was buried in the Lilydale Cemetery, also in a rural area but to Melbourne’s east while Sunbury is northwest. The road distance between the two localities is nearly 80 Km and still takes at least 1 hour 40 minutes to drive. Sunbury already had a cemetery, opened in 1862. We need to assume some special reason for the choice of Lilydale, such as good friends already buried there. Another possiblity is that Vincas had opted for cremation, which Sunbury was unable to provide.
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| Vincas' gravestone in the Lilydale Cemetery Source: Minnie on Find A Grave |
Vincas was only able to contribute to the life of Victoria’s Lithuanian community to a limited extent due to his working conditions, including the rural location of Sunbury, but he read the Lithuanian press and supported various community causes with his donations.
SOURCES
AEF [American Expeditionary Force] DP Registration Record ‘Žygas, Vincas’ Folder DP3709, names from ŽYGAS, Adalbertas to SJGNUS, Klara (1), 3.1.1.1 Postwar Card File / Postwar Card File (A-Z) / Names in "phonetical" order from SI, https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/document/69073833, accessed 22 October 2026.
Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria ‘Search Your Family History’ https://www.bdm.vic.gov.au/search-your-family-history#quick-search, accessed 22 October 2026.
Bonegilla Migrant Experience, Bonegilla Identity Card and Memory Collection, Vincas Zygas https://idcards.bonegilla.org.au/record/203688429, accessed 22 October 2026.
Commonwealth of Australia Gazette (1960) ‘Certificates of Naturalization’ Canberra, ACT, 19 July, p 4167 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/240551205/25988013, accessed 22 October 2026.
Elektroninis Archyvų Informacinė Sistema (Electronic Archives Information System, in Lithuanian), Švenčionių dekanato gimimo metrikų knyga (Švenčionys Deanery Birth Register, in Russian) p 158, entry 22 https://eais.archyvai.lt/repo-ext-api/share/?manifest=https://eais.archyvai.lt/repo-ext-api/view/267142726/316215684/lt/iiif/manifest&lang=lt&page=158, accessed 22 October 2026.
Enciklopedija Lietuvai ir Pasauliui (Encyclopedia of Lithuania and the World, in Lithuanian) ‘Blažiejus Žygas (1890):206045’ https://lietuvai.lt/wiki/Bla%C5%BEiejus_%C5%BDygas_(1890):206045, accessed 22 October 2026.
Find A Grave ‘Vincas Zygas’ https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/153336563/vincas-zygas, accessed 22 October 2026.
Lietuvos Gyventojų Tremtys ir Kalinimas, Sovietų Sąjungoje (Deportation and Imprisonment of Lithuanian Residents in the Soviet Union, in Lithuanian) ‘Represuotieji’ (‘The Repressed’) (Blažiejus Žygas) https://lietuviaisibire.lt/lt/represuotieji/name:Ymxhxb5pZWp1cw==/surname:xb15Z2Fz, accessed 22 October 2026.
Lietuvos Gyventojų Tremtys ir Kalinimas, Sovietų Sąjungoje (Deportation and Imprisonment of Lithuanian Residents in the Soviet Union, in Lithuanian) ‘Represuotieji’ (‘The Repressed’) (Bronislava, Ciprijona and Janina Žygaitė) https://lietuviaisibire.lt/lt/represuotieji/surname:xb15Z2FpdMSX, accessed 22 October 2026.
Lietuvos Gyventojų Tremtys ir Kalinimas, Sovietų Sąjungoje (Deportation and Imprisonment of Lithuanian Residents in the Soviet Union, in Lithuanian) ‘Represuotieji’ (‘The Repressed’) (Viktoras Žygas) https://lietuviaisibire.lt/lt/represuotieji/name:dmlrdG9yYXM=/surname:xb15Z2Fz, accessed 22 October 2026.
Lietuvos Gyventojų Tremtys ir Kalinimas, Sovietų Sąjungoje (Deportation and Imprisonment of Lithuanian Residents in the Soviet Union, in Lithuanian) ‘Represuotieji’ (‘The Repressed’) (Zofija Žygienė) https://lietuviaisibire.lt/lt/represuotieji/name:Wm9maWph/surname:xb15Z2llbsSX, accessed 23 October 2026.
Mūsų Pastogė (Our Haven) (1958) ‘Pajieškojimai’ (‘Searches’, in Lithuanian) Sydney, NSW, 22 September, p 6 https://spauda2.org/musu_pastoge/archive/1958/1958-09-22-MUSU-PASTOGE.pdf, accessed 22 October 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; 705, ZYGAS Vincas DOB 8 January 1924, 1947-1947 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=5118123, accessed 23 October 2026.
Sunbury Cemetery ‘Home’ https://sunburycemetery.com.au/, accessed 22 October 2026
Tėviškės aidai (The Echoes of Homeland) (1986) ‘A A. Vincas Žygas‘ (‘In Memoriam, Vincas Zygas‘, in Lithuanian) Melbourne, Vic, 21 August, p 6 https://spauda2.org/teviskes_aidai/archive/1986/1986-08-21-TEVISKES-AIDAI.pdf, accessed 22 October 2026.
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