Vladas told Australian officials that he born on 22 June 1915. His selection documents for migration to Australia from post-WWII Germany say that he had completed 3 years of primary school and 8 years of secondary education.
Such a lengthy secondary schooling normally would mean some sort of specialisation, but there are no further hints in his selection papers. In his book on the Baltic refugees sent to the Latrobe Valley, Welcome to Little Europe, Josef Šeštokas says that Vladas had acquired a university education in Kaunas, but presumably was not himself given further details.
Vladas had the standard “Forcibly evacuated by the Germans” explanation for coming to Germany in his selection interview report. He must have been doing some work of value to the German military when it was decided to retreat.
At the time he applied to migrate to Australia, he was in Camp Riga in Lübeck in coastal Germany. Judging by its name, its main inhabitants were Latvians.
Once he got to Australia on the First Transport and to the Bonegilla Reception and Training Centre, he nominated his brother Bronius as his next of kin. Bronius was living in a different DP camp to that of Vladas but also in Lübeck.
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| Vladas Paskevicius colourised photo from his Bonegilla card Source: National Archives of Australia |
Vladas was seen as an appropriate choice for working the Moe brown coal deposits with the State Electricity Commission of Victoria, headquartered in Yallourn in Victoria’s southern Latrobe Valley. He left the Bonegilla camp on 15 January 1948.
His first accommodation outside the Bonegilla camp probably was little different to the Bonegilla camp in its comforts. It was the North Camp in the town of Yallourn North. Josef Šeštokas goes into more detail about the camp in his book.
By 1953, Vladas had moved on the Eastern Road Hostel, Yallourn East. Josef says that he was known to have high blood pressure. While showering at the end of his afternoon/evening shift, on 24 February, he suffered what was thought to be a cerebral haemorrhage.
He was found around 7 am the next day, and taken to the Latrobe Valley Community Hospital. He died there at 11 am without regaining consciousness. That was only 5 years after arriving in Australia and when Vladas was aged only 38, according to the date of birth given to Australian officials.
The report on his passing in the Lithuanian language Australijos lietuvis (Australian Lithuanian) says, however, that he was aged 47 at the time. This started Rasa on a hunt through Lithuanian births recorded in church registers. In the Pumpėnai registers, she found a record for Bronius, born in 1896, and his brothers, Stanislovas (1899) and Aleksandras in (1901). A sister, Vanda, was born in 1908. There was no record for Vladas, either in the Pumpėnai books or those for Raudondvaris, where the Australijos lietuvis obituary said he had been born.
We have looked in the Arolsen Archives as well. They have digitised records relating to Bronius, but the two men called Vladas Paskevicius are distinguished by different details. One has different parents to Bronius and our Vladas, while the other was a tailor on a ship to America with his wife.
Our Vladas is included in an Arolsen Archives document about Bronius and his family, this time with the 1915 birthdate of 6 April. Rasa has conducted a search based on that date too, but again without results.
Rasa has added the siblings’ details, including Vladas’ name, to a record for Bronius in Geni.com, in the hope that another genealogist one day will add Vladas’ accurate birth details, supported by documentation.
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| Vladas would have been driving a train like one of these two, shown being loaded by a coal dredge at the Yallourn open cut mine, photographed by someone unknown in 1948 or earlier Source: Wikipedia |
He must have been an astute saver because, according to Josef Šeštokas, before his death he had bought a house in the Melbourne suburb of Collingwood for his mother and 3 brothers, whose migration he had sponsored.
Bronius would have been one of them, as we know from Vladas’ own Bonegilla card. He had arrived in Melbourne on the General AW Greely, sister ship to our General Heintzelman, on 12 May 1950, with his wife, Elena, and sons, Rimautas and Bronius. The Henrikas Paškevičius who arrived on the Anna Salen on 30 July 1950 with his wife, Irena, may well be the Henrikas who was the son of Bronius and Elena.
There are no files in the National Archives of Australia’s Record Search for Bronius and Vladas’ brothers, Stanislovas and Aleksandras, nor their mother, Teodora. Josef Šeštokas was relying on what he was told by North Camp residents still alive when he was researching about 20 years ago, as well as the accessible National Archives files. It is looking like the house which Vladas generously bought in Collingwood was not for his mother and 3 brothers but for one brother, Bronius, along his wife and 3 sons, one of whom also had a wife.
Bronius, in his turn, looked after Vladas, arranging for his body to be transported to Melbourne and buried in the Roman Catholic Section of Melbourne’s Fawkner Memorial Park, two days after his death.
Elena died only one year after her brother-in-law, Vladas, also at a young age, this time 45. Bronius had her buried in the same plot as Vladas. Sadly, there is now a small stone recording Elena’s life but nothing for Vladas. Probably commemorating his wife was all that Bronius and his family could afford at the time. The need to record Vladas’ burial in the same plot probably was overtaken by other events.
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| The grave of Pladas (sic) Paskevicius and his sister-in-law, Elena, in Fawkner Memorial Park Source: Patricia C on Find A Grave |
Bronius, is should be noted, was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Lithuanian Army who had been responsible for two major victories in Lithuania’s war of liberation, in 1919, earning 2 Vytis crosses for his actions.
Vladas’ obituary describes him as sensitive to every Lithuanian cause, a generous donor and a zealous subscriber to the Lithuanian press. Leading a sober and orderly life, he was only interested in politics, theatre and music.
His innate modesty, self-absorption, and perhaps a sense of sudden death, it was said, did not allow him to express himself in local Lithuanian cultural and social life, although undoubtedly he had the abilities and intellectual qualities for this. He lived quietly in his last years and died quietly.
He had been an active member of the Riflemen's Union and its choir in Lithuania. In exile in Germany, he was as an administrative worker in a Displaced Persons camp.
A fellow First Transport arrival, writing about life in Yallourn ten years later, noted that both Vladas and another early death, Antanas Pranauskas, were sensitive and generous to Lithuanian affairs and passionate lovers of the Lithuanian press.
The death certificate for Vladas, and documents for Bronius, name different parents to those nominated for the other Paskevičius on the First Transport, Zigmas. These two were distantly related only, if at all. Gemini.ai says that Paskevičius is relatively frequent surname across Lithuania, while not in the top ten. It is widely distributed throughout the country, with notable concentrations in larger urban centres.
CITE THIS AS: Tündern-Smith, Ann and Ščevinskienė, Rasa (2026) ‘Vladas Paskevičius (? – 1953), early death for a coal train driver’ https://firsttransport.blogspot.com/2026/08/vladas-paskevicius-1953-death-for-coal-train-driver.html.html.
SOURCES:
AEF (American Expeditionary Force) DP Registration Record, ‘Paškevičius, Bronius’, Folder DP3032, names from PASKES, ALEXANDER to PASMIONKA, Stanislaw (1), 3.1.1.1 Postwar Card File / Postwar Card File (A-Z) / Names in "phonetical" order from P, ITS/Arolsen Archives, DocID: 68537817 (Bronius PAŠKEVICIUS (sic)) https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/document/68537817, accessed 29 July 2026.
Australijos lietuvis (Australian Lithuanian) (1953) A†A Vladas Paškevicius (In memoriam Vladas Paskevicius, in Lithuanian) Adelaide, SA, 18 April, p 8n https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/280312301, accessed 29 July 2026.
Find a Grave, ‘Pladas (sic) Paskevicius’ https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/212502440/pladas-paskevicius, accessed 29 July 2026.
Mūsų Pastogė (Our Haven) (1959) ‘Gyvosios Mozaikos Gyvos Ištrupėlės (Pirmųjų Transportų Lietuviai Yallourne)’ [Living Mosaics Living Bugs (First Transport Lithuanians in Yallourn) in Lithuanian] Sydney, NSW, 13 February, p 2 https://spauda2.org/musu_pastoge/archive/1959/1959-02-13-MUSU-PASTOGE.pdf, accessed 29 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; 422, PASKEVICIUS Vladas DOB 22 June 1915, 1947-1947 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=5162091, accessed 29 July 2026.
National Archives of Australia: Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla], 1947-1956, PASKEVICIUS VLADIS, PASKEVICIUS, Vladis (sic) : Year of Birth - 1915 : Nationality - LITHUANIAN : Travelled per - GEN. HEINTZELMAN : Number - 802, 1947-1948 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=203724932, accessed 5 August 2026.
‘Personal file of PASKEVICIUS, BRONIUS, born on 10-Jan-1896, born in PANEVEZYS and of further persons’ 3.2.1.1 CM/1 Files originating in Germany, CM/1 files from Germany, A-Z / Files with names from PARZYCH, DocID: 79569041, ITS/Arolsen Archives https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/document/79569041, accessed 5 August.
Šeštokas, Josef (2010) Welcome to Little Europe: Displaced Persons and the North Camp, Sale, Vic, Little Chicken Publishing, p 82.
‘Vladas Paskevicius’ 1953, Death certificate of Vladas Paskevicius, 25 March 1953, Reg. no. 19671/1953, digital download, [Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria] (https://bdm.vic.gov.au), Melbourne.
