Kostas Kuzmickas (1920 - 1989) and Justina (Gustine) Kuzmickienė (Kuzmickas) (1922 -2014), a Yugoslav among the Balts? by Rasa Ščevinskienė and Ann Tündern-Smith

Updated 10 August 2026.

How did a Yugoslav, and a married one at that, get herself into the first group of single, Baltic Displaced Persons – refugees by today’s standards – brought to Australia?

This article will look at what the records tell us, but we can say in advance that it will not come up with a definitive answer.

First, who was the Yugoslav? Justina Čuček or Čiuček was born in Varaždin county, Croatia, on 30 September 1922. Her father was Antun (or Antanas, if the form was completed by a Lithuanian), mother Matilda, formerly Alužan. She had trained as a nurse. She spoke Lithuanian and German according to an American Expeditionary Force (AEF) DP Registration Record completed on 30 August 1945, that is, one month before her 23rd birthday.

Kostas Kuzmikas was 2 years older, although one source has him only 4 months older. He was born in Papiškiai village, Anykščiai district, Lithuania, on 22 May 1920 (or 1922) to Antanas and Apolonija, formerly Misiūnaitė. He last place of residence in Lithuania was Gasčiūnai village in the Šiauliai district. He spoke Russian as well as German and Lithuanian and, according to his Bonegilla card once he had reached Australia, his English also was good. He was tailor or a railway worker (records differ—and, who knows, maybe he tailored railway uniforms) who had married Justina on 27 June 1945 in Aschaffenburg, Bavaria. Although both were Catholics, it was a civil wedding in the local registry office. And it also occurred only weeks after the end of WWII in Germany, which was on 8 May 1945.

Kostas and Justina from their Bonegilla cards

Source:  National Archives of Australia and NAA

German officials seem to have Germanised Justina’s name to Gustine Tschtutschek, their phonetic spelling of its pronunciation. This spilled over into a report in the Melbourne Catholic newspaper, the Advocate, in January 1948.

The reporter clearly misunderstood postwar conditions in Germany. They wrote,

At the conclusion of the Mass, the Archbishop blessed the marriage of a young couple named Kostas Kuzmickas and Gustine Tschtutschek. This young pair had already married whilst they were in a concentration camp, but their hostile gaolers would not allow a priest to bless their union, so they had to be content with a civil marriage. Under the circumstances, the marriage was a valid one, but the faith of these good people is so sound that they eagerly sought the blessing of a priest on the union at the first available opportunity. Their fidelity was rewarded beyond their highest hopes, for their civil marriage of the concentration camp was ultimately blessed by an Archbishop.

Archbishop Simonds blesses the Bonegilla marriage between Justine and Kostas

Source:  Advocate

The fact that Justina was regarded as a Lithuanian after her marriage is not a surprise in the context of citizenship and nationality laws (often but not always the same thing) from 75 or more years ago. As a general rule, a woman was seen as having taken on her husband’s citizenship after marriage. Justina had become a Lithuanian in the eyes of anyone who knew about her marriage, and probably under Lithuanian and German law too.

Explaining how a married woman joined her husband in a party supposedly composed entirely of single people is not so easy to understand. Subterfuge was likely to have been involved. Each of the applicants was interviewed individually. Justina would have attended her interview with the 3 Australians on the selection panel without Kostas. Could her Lithuanian language skills have been so good that the interpreter assumed she was a native speaker? Perhaps instead there was a private exchange in Lithuanian with the interpreter, then playing along with Justina’s need to accompany her husband to Australia.

Anyone with a beginner’s knowledge of Lithuanian could see on an alphabetical list of the Heintzelman passengers that a Kuzmikiene had been married to a Kuzmikas — perhaps Kosmas. Maybe the 3 Australians lacked even that basic knowledge, and none of the Lithuanians who were helping the selection process volunteered to inform them.

Further, the story presented to the interview panel on 15 October 1947 was that she was a widow, with the maiden name of Cucek. It would not have mattered that her maiden name was not Lithuanian as, legally, she still held her deceased husband’s citizenship. The panel probably believed this without further questioning. Their focus was a legal one, on people who were unwilling or unable to return to their country of citizenship, of legal protection, not their place of birth.

Justina was well educated too, with 8 years of elementary schooling and 2 years of secondary. Her present occupation was nursing, and she had been doing this for 4 years, that is, from some time in 1943, while war was being waged. The languages in which she claimed fluency were Lithuanian, Slovenian and German.

Note the Slovenian language, not Croatian. We’ve seen above that Justina’s birthplace, was in Croatia, but her last permanent residence was in Celje, Slovenia. Inhabitants of both regions, which became Socialist Republics within Yugoslavia in November 1945, were predominantly Roman Catholic, like the Lithuanians.

She said she had arrived in Germany in April 1941, “forcibly evacuated by the Germans”. Kostas too had been “forcibly evacuated by the Germans”, but not until November 1943. Her presence in Germany from the spring of 1941 increases the possibility that this is where they met.

The thinking behind wanting the first group of Displaced Persons to Australia to be single probably was that it would be easier to place unmarried people in positions that Australians would not take or other areas of great need than to worry about placing the spouse (and maybe family) nearby. However, the 4 marriages in the Bonegilla camp before the end of 1947, including the Kuzmickas marriage blessed by the Archbishop of Melbourne, with another 3 in January, must have made officials have another think.

It seems that Justina and Kostas had a religious marriage ceremony before Archbishop Simmons blessed them, as their Bonegilla cards both say that they were married on 20 December by Father JC Awburn. He was the parish priest from Wodonga, who initially looked after the spiritual needs of the Catholics in the Bonegilla camp which the Church looked for a German-speaking priest.

Kostas and Justina finally were found positions together to which they departed on 6 February 1948, after 2 months in the Bonegilla camp. Their destination was Beechworth in rural Victoria, where they were to work for the Zwar Brothers tannery. They were sent along with 2 others, a Lithuanian and an Estonian, on 6 February 1948, so we can speculate that the Commonwealth Employment Service had been having a hard time finding placements for this group. The group must have satisfied the Zwar Brothers’ management though, because another Lithuanian was sent on 15 February and a fifth on 26 February.

There is a detailed history of this business on the Web already.

The Zwar Brothers tannery in Beechworth:
the dominant mode of transport suggests this photo was taken some time before 1948

Source:  Beechworth History Timeline

On 2 August 1957, Kostas and Justina together became Australian citizens, while resident at 66 Ardmillan Road, Moonee Ponds.

We can catch up with Justina and Kostas through a Lithuanian Entrepreneurs profile published in Tėviškės Aidai in June 1959. They owned what Australians call a mixed business, sometimes milk bar or a deli, on Melrose Street, North Melbourne. Sometimes this sort of business is called a corner store, and theirs did indeed stand on a corner.

The older portion of this property housed the Kuzmickas corner store on
Melrose Street, North Melbourne:
the date on the building is 1889, meaning that it was almost 70 years old
when the couple purchased it and perhaps in need of some repairs

Source:  Google Street View

The report is implausible at the point where we are told that Kostas had purchased the shop in early 1948. We already know what Kostas and Justina were doing in early 1948, and it was not amassing a deposit on the purchase of a shop. Given that they were living in the nearby suburb of Moonee Ponds when they became Australians in August 1957, it is possible that “1948” is a typographic error for 1958.

There is no reason to think that Justina had not working under contract like Kostas, perhaps in the Beechworth tannery but perhaps originally providing domestic assistance in the manager’s home. A letter from the Department of Immigration in November 1949, in response to a form notifying intention Justina’s intention to apply for Australian citizenship, was addressed to her at a Department of Mental Hygiene at Beechworth, meaning that she had found employment at the Beechworth Mental Hospital. Justina and Kostas would have been a two-income couple in 1948-49, which certainly would have helped them save to buy property early.

The Tėviškės Aidai report explains that Kostas obtained work in the Hilton Hosiery factory, also in North Melbourne, when they moved to Melbourne after their contracts ended. His Alien Registration file in the Melbourne office of the National Archives of Australia contains his most recent Alien Registration Certificate, a blue-covered, passport-like book. It contains two entries only, to say that Kostas had reported that he was working for Hilton Hosiery only on 10 May 1956, when he lived at an address in East Keilor, in outer Melbourne, not yet allocated street numbers.  We might find out what work Kostas was doing before that date when the National Archives opens more files for this couple.

Owning a shop as well, from early 1958, meant that the family again had a second income, while their daughter Ramunė-Marija, who was two and a half years old, could stay with Justina when her mother worked.

Mrs Kuzmickienė was of Yugoslav nationality, the reporter noted, but spoke Lithuanian perfectly, so that it was impossible to tell from her speech that she was not Lithuanian. The reporter was "introduced" by the older daughter, Ona-Gražina, 7 years old, who also "chattered" Lithuanian beautifully. One could only be surprised and delighted by such Lithuanity of the family, especially now that there were families where both parents were Lithuanian and the children could barely "translate" a Lithuanian word. (The quotation marks are from the original Lithuanian-language text.)

Although the shop was small, both it and the storeroom next to it were overflowing with goods. The store was mainly administered Mrs. Kuzmickienė. Mr. Kuzmickas, on shift work, could only help for a few hours a day during the opening hours. They had hired workforce of one, a young Lithuanian boy still in school. When asked if he was satisfied, Mr Kuzmickas replied: "The profit from trade gives us a second salary. Since my wife, due to her family situation, cannot leave the house anywhere, we feel very well off in this regard."

And indeed they would have been, compared with the many married couples were the wife was following society’s expectations of staying at home without additional paid employment.

Kostas’ employer, Hilton Hosiery, had been founded in Melbourne in 1936 by Len G Smith as Hilton Knitting Mills, which produced women’s stockings in silk, rayon and fine cotton. There was no nylon for nylon stockings available during WWII, as it all was being used in parachutes and their rip cords. The company expanded in 1947 when nylon did become available, moved beyond legwear to undergarments in the mid-1950s, and at times also made socks for men as well as women and fine knitwear.

It's possible that Kostas never used the main entrance to the Hilton Hosiery company premises,
as it may have been reserved for managers and salespeople:
the sawtooth roofline to the left of this photo is the location of the factory with its own entrance

Source:  State Library of Victoria image a19349 via Pittwater Online News

Hilton merged with the British giant, Courtaulds, in 1969 but this company then went through a period of pressure from tariff reductions, increasing foreign imports and rising local costs. It was wound up at the end of the century and the land on which it operated was sold for apartments. The building which replaced the Hosiery business occupies the same footprint and is called Hilton Hosiery Mills. The new building did not have to include the art deco entrance to the old so it, sadly, was demolished.

As men used to qualify for the age pension in Australia when they had their 65th birthdays, it became a de facto retirement age. We do not know if Kostas continued to work with Courtaulds Hilton Limited until he turned 65 in May 1985 or left earlier. Perhaps he and Justina figured before this that they could afford to run the corner store together and still make a good income.

Justine had told a reporter from the Advocate newspaper that she hoped that her future work would take her among children. She worked as a nurse in a kindergarten conducted by the Red Cross in one of the DP camps in Germany. She possibly was nursing, with children as well as adults, at the Beechworth Mental Hospital.  Now with her own young daughters to look after, perhaps her wish had been fulfilled again, at least until they were older.

Kostas was yet another an active Scout leader from the First Transport, who has been entrusted with the duties of head of the district and of district supply department.

Mūsų Pastogė published a special Melbourne edition on 9 May 1962. Among the donors it thanked for supporting the edition were J and K Kuzmikas, who still were running a shop selling fruit, vegetables and confectionery, on Melrose Street, North Melbourne.

Kostas died 27 years later on 10 May 1989, at a relatively young age, 12 days before his 67th birthday. He had been a distinguished volunteer for Lithuanian scouting. He was buried by an Australian priest in the Springvale Botanical Cemetery in southeastern Melbourne.

Justine or Justina Frances Kuzmickas lived another 25 years, to the good age of 91, but died on 4 April 2014. She too was buried in the Springvale Botanical Cemetery, with her husband.

A relationship which had started when both were in their very early 20s, and which had been tested by the requirements for early migration to Australia from the chaos of post-WWII Germany, had certainly stood firm through other tests until Kostas’ death 45 years later. Despite that subterfuge to get Justina into Australia with Kostas, the couple had contributed to their new home through their work, to the North Melbourne community through their shop, and to the future through their 2 daughters.

CITE THIS AS: Ščevinskienė, Rasa and Tündern-Smith, Ann (2026) 'Kostas Kuzmickas (1920 - 1989) and Justina (Gustine) Kuzmickienė (Kuzmickas) (1922 -2014), a Yugoslav among the Balts?'

SOURCES:

Advocate (1947) ‘300 Catholics Among Baltic Immigrants, Lithuanians Attend First Mass at Bonegilla Reception and Training Centre‘ Melbourne, Vic, 27 December, p 3 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/172493478, accessed 7 August 2026.

Advocate (1948) 'Joyous D.P.’s Greet Bishops at Bonegilla', Melbourne, Vic, 8 January, p 7 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/172493804, accessed 7 August 2026.

‘American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) DP Registration Record, Kuzmickas, Kostas’ 3.1.1.1 Postwar Card File, Postwar Card File (A-Z), Cards extracted from files subsequently, DocID: 87900627, ITS/Arolsen Archives https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/search/person/87900627, accessed 5 August 2026.

‘American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) DP Registration Record, Kuzmickiene, Justina’ 3.1.1.1 Postwar Card File, Postwar Card File (A-Z), Names in "phonetical" order from KR, DocID: 67949088, ITS/Arolsen Archives https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/document/67949088 and https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/document/67949089, accessed 7 August 2026.

Bonegilla Migrant Experience, Bonegilla Identity Card and Memory Collection, ‘Kuzmickas, Kostas’ https://idcards.bonegilla.org.au/record/203625136, accessed 7 August 2026.

Bonegilla Migrant Experience, Bonegilla Identity Card and Memory Collection, ‘Kuzmickiene, Justine’ https://idcards.bonegilla.org.au/record/2036251367, accessed 7 August 2026.

Commonwealth of Australia Gazette (1958) ‘Certificates of Naturalization’ Canberra, ACT, 24 April, p 1255 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/240891861, accessed 7 August 2026.

Elektroninis Archyvų Informacinė Sistema (Electronic Archives Information System), Ukmergės dekanato bažnyčių gimimo metrikų knyga' (Ukmerge deanery church birth register book', in Lithuanian [1920 Kavarskas church birth record Nr. 76]) p 87, https://eais.archyvai.lt/repo-ext-api/share/?manifest=https://eais.archyvai.lt/repo-ext-api/view/267626965/280278724/lt/iiif/manifest&lang=lt&page=87, accessed 7 August 2026.

Find a Grave, ‘Justina Frances Kuzmickas’ https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/231320325/justina_frances-kuzmickas, accessed 7 August 2026.

Find a Grave, ‘Kostas Kuzmickas’ https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/231320326/kostas-kuzmickas, accessed 7 August 2026.

‘Heiratsurkunde, Eisenbahnarbeiter, Kostas Kuzmickas und Rotkreuzschwester, Gustine Tchutschak’ (‘Marriage Certificate, Railway worker, Kostas Kuzmickas and Red Cross Nurse, Justina Cucek, in German’ 2.2.2.2 Official Certificates (marriages and deaths), western zones, general, Official Certificates (marriages and deaths), western zones, general https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/search/person/76792919, accessed 5 August 2026.

Mūsų Pastogė (Our Haven) (1962) ‘Melbourno numeris‘ (‘Melbourne number’, in Lithuanian) Sydney, NSW, 9 May, p 1 https://spauda2.org/musu_pastoge/archive/1962/1962-05-09-MUSU-PASTOGE.pdf, accessed 6 August 2026.

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration (Central Office); A435, Class 4 correspondence files relating to naturalisation, 1944-1950; 1949/4/4865, KUZMICKAS Justine – Lithuanian, 1949-1949 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=6965090, accessed 7 August 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; 575, KUZMICKAS Kostas DOB 22 May 1920, 1947-1947 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=5005810, accessed 7 August 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; 752, KUZMICKIENE Justina DOB 30 September 1922, 1947-1947 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=5005911, accessed 7 August 2026.

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, Victorian Branch; B78, Alien registration documents, 1948-1965; 1957/KUZMICKAS K, KUZMICKAS Kostas - Nationality: Lithuanian - Arrived Fremantle per USAT General Stuart Heintzelman 28 November 1947, 1947-1957 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=4275356, accessed 7 August 2026.

National Archives of Australia: Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla], 1947-1956; KUZMICKAS, Kostas : Year of Birth - 1920 : Nationality - LITHUANIAN : Travelled per - GEN. HEINTZELMAN : Number – 949, 1947-1948 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=203625136, accessed 7 August 2026.

National Archives of Australia: Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla], 1947-1956; KUZMICKIENE JUSTINE, KUZMICKIENE, Justine : Year of Birth - 1922 : Nationality - LITHUANIAN : Travelled per - GEN. HEINTZELMAN : Number – 1121, 1947-1948 recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=203625137, accessed 7 August 2026.

Pittwater Online News (2012) ‘Hilton Lingerie – Slips’ 21 -27 October https://www.pittwateronlinenews.com/collectors-corner---hilton-lingerie---slips.php, accessed 7 August 2026.

Tėviškės aidai (Echoes of the Homeland) (1959) ‘Lietuviai Verslininkai, Kuzmickų Kolonialinių Prekių Krautuve‘ (‘Lithuanian Entrepreneurs, Kuzmickas Corner Store’, in Lithuanian) Melbourne, Vic, 10 June, p 4 https://spauda2.org/teviskes_aidai/archive/1959/1959-06-10-TEVISKES-AIDAI.pdf, accessed 6 August 2026.

Tėviškės aidai (Echoes of the Homeland) (1989) ‘Is Mūšų Parapijų‘ (From Our Parishes‘, in Lithuanian) Melbourne, Vic, 23 May, p 7 https://www.spauda2.org/teviskes_aidai/archive/1989/1989-05-23-TEVISKES-AIDAI.pdf, accessed 6 August 2026.

Victorian Government Gazette, G37 (2014), 'Estates of Deceased Persons' Melbourne, Vic, 11 September, p 2037 https://resources.reglii.com/VGG.2014.9.11.G37.pdf, accessed 8 August 2026.

Elena Kalvytė Augutis (1917-1996): ‘Special Circumstances’ by Rasa Ščevinsienė and Ann Tündern-Smith

We have just met Elena Augutis as the fellow Lithuanian who accompanied Bronislava (Bronė) Jutkutė (later Umbražiūnas-Amber) from the Bonegilla camp in northern Victoria to the Hotel Ainslie in Canberra. There we mentioned that Elena Augutis was said to have had ‘special circumstances’.  Here we look further at these and her life as a whole.

The only photograph we have of Elena, from her Bonegilla card, is so out of focus
that Ann has used a Web service, Unblurimage.ai, to improve it a little

Source of original:  National Archives of Australia

Pregnant Women

When the 839 First Transport passengers had yet another medical examination, at the Bonegilla camp, at least their third in the migration process, the examining doctor reported that, “Two of the women are pregnant”.  One of them was Ann’s mother, pregnant with Ann.  Since Ann read that sentence, she has taken a particular interest in the story of the other woman, Elena Kalyvte Augutiene.

We know from several sources that Elena Kalvyte had married Jonas Augutis in Germany in 1947, before she boarded the General Stuart Heintzelman.  Probably because she knew that all the Heintzelman passengers were supposed to be single, she appeared before the selection panel using her maiden name.

Jonas follows

Perhaps Jonas applied too, but was rejected for the First Transport. He was not accepted for resettlement in Australia until his application for the Tenth Transport, the Svalbard, which reached Melbourne on 29 June 1948, when his daughter was already one month old. Perhaps it was her imminent birth that finally got him on a ship to Australia. This ship had sailed from Bremerhaven before her birth, on 8 May 1948, but its 52 days (7½ weeks) sailing time was more typical of ships of that era than the fast Generals.  His brother, Juozas, 8 years younger than him, came also.

Jonas Augutis from his 1948 Bonegilla card

Source:  National Archives of Australia

Elena's early life

Elena Kalvyte, the mother of the new Australian, was born on 31 August 1917 in Berciškiai village, Šilute district, in Lithuania, to Jurgis Kalvis and the former Ona Kaulickaitė.  An American Expeditionary Force’s (AEF) Displaced Persons (DP) Registration form completed on 19 July 1945 gives her previous occupation as clerk, her languages spoken, in order of fluency, as German and Lithuanian and her last residence in Lithuania as the city of Pagėgiai.

It is worth noting that her religion is stated to be Evangelical, unlike the vast majority of Lithuanians.  Various writers using various sources suggest that around 85 per cent of the population in 1939 were Catholic – they probably would be excluding the more varied Vilnius region, still in Polish hands.

Elena left the Hotel Ainslie in Canberra on 10 or 11 February to return to the Bonegilla camp.  By this time she would have been more than five months pregnant.  Her pregnancy would have been visible and probably interfering with her work. Nonetheless, as far as officialdom was concerned, both Elena and Ann’s mother had signed a contract to work in Australia in jobs where they were needed for two years (even though the paper they signed said one year only).

Pregnant women work in farm households

The issue was solved, at least until childbirth and perhaps later, with help from the Lutheran Church.  Both women were sent from the Bonegilla camp to assist nearby farmer’s wives.  In the case of Elena Augutis, it was to a Mr and Mrs RG Molkentin in Jindera, New South Wales.

Jindera is only 25 Km northwest of the north side of Lake Hume; another 7 Km brings the driver to the Bonegilla camp.  Or the driver could take the better roads through Wodonga and Albury, then head a few kilometres northwest to Jindera.

Elena’s Bonegilla card records a baby girl’s birth on 23 May 1948 at the Albury District Hospital.

Jonas Augutis' story

We know a lot about the baby girl’s father from an obituary in the Lithuanian-Australian newspaper, Mūsų Pastogė, in 1983.

Former Lieutenant Jonas Augutis of the 6th Regiment of the Lithuanian Army was born on 21 September 1914, almost 3 years before his wife, in the Sadutiškis parish of Utena county. When he finished Utena senior high school, he entered Lithuania’s Military School, graduating with its 17th class to the rank of Junior Lieutenant and joining the 7th Regiment in Klaipėda. Later, he was transferred to the 6th Regiment and served in Pagėgiai, Elena’s last place of residence in Lithuania. In 1938, he was promoted to the rank of Senior Lieutenant.

After the Soviets occupied his country in 1940, he was transferred to the Vilnius garrison with his regiment. As Soviet officials judged him to be unreliable, he was soon arrested and imprisoned in Lukiškės prison in central Vilnius. After the German Army invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, the prisoners were transferred to the Vilnius railway station to be taken to Russia. When the Germans bombed the railway station, several wagons were uncoupled, saving some of the prisoners, including Jonas.

During the German occupation of Lithuania in 1941-44, Jonas became the deputy governor of Utena County. On Lithuanian Independence Day, 16 February 1944, General Plechavičius made a radio appeal to the nation for volunteers to fight Soviet-backed partisans. Some 19,500 men responded to the appeal. Amongst them was Jonas, who was sent to fight the partisans in southeastern Lithuania.

When the Germans tried to transform the squad into SS units, Plechavičius resisted, was arrested and sent to the Salaspils concentration camp. His battalion was disbanded with Jonas being sent to Germany and assigned to an aviation unit. When the War ended, Jonas found himself in the American zone of Germany. He lived in a Displaced Persons camp, served in an American labour company and met Elena Kalvaitė.

Jonas goes to Canberra

Finally selected for resettlement in Australia and housed initially in the Bonegilla camp, it is likely that Jonas was able to reunite with Elena and meet his daughter. Two days after his 34th birthday, he was off to Canberra to work for the Department of the Interior, probably as a labourer. Let us hope that his wife and daughter were able to travel with him or join him soon after.

The Department of the Interior was responsible then for all official aspects of life in Canberra, as well as a wide range of other activities, including elections, meteorology, surveying and lands. The range is so wide that it is impossible to tell what Jonas was tasked to do. We know from his obituary that he joined Australia’s Bureau of Statistics after completing his employment contract and stayed there until his retirement in 1979, aged 65, the then compulsory maximum age of employment. (Ann notes that she was working across the road from the Bureau, in the Department of Immigration from 1977, and may well have crossed his path in the local shopping mall.)

In the early 1950s, the couple and their small daughter were living at 3 Ross Street, a short thoroughfare in suburban O’Connor. Given their circumstances, it may well have been built by the Government to rent. The address was confirmed by the Commonwealth Government when a notice of grant of citizenship to the couple was published in the gazette in December 1959.

Jonas appears before a magistrate

When Jonas came the before Canberra Court in June 1955, charged with both assaulting a policeman in the execution of his duty and drink-driving, at least one reporter for both the Queanbeyan Age and Canberra Times chose to describe him incorrectly as resident on the longer, more prominent, Queanbeyan address of Ross Road.

Jonas made counter allegations of having been assaulted by the police after his arrest. Elena gave evidence in support of her husband, one of the occasions when we have a record of the marriage having occurred in 1947.

Police evidence included Augutis having lost his driving licence once before, in November the previous year, while being fined £20 for drink driving. He had applied successfully to have the licence restored on 16 February. This, therefore, was the second occasion in less than a year when he had been found driving erratically when under the influence of alcohol. Still, he only was fined, £35 on the drink driving charge and £20 for assaulting the policeman. He was given 3 months to pay the total of £55, a hefty amount when you consider that its buying power then was equivalent to more than $2,300 in 2024.

Drinking too much alcohol is also on record for a number of the men from the General Stuart Heintzelman. Considering what they, as well as Jonas Augutis, had gone through during World War II, it is no surprise that they were using this approach to deal with what then was seen as, “Forget the past, look to the future”. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (now commonly PTSD) was not recognised until 1980, when it entered the American Psychiatric Association‘s third edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) as a result of the behaviour of Vietnam War veterans.

Jonas’ occupation at the time of his 1955 court appearance was still ‘labourer’.

Elena and Jonas' daughter

Elena and Jonas’ daughter started appearing in the local press, the Canberra Times, in September 1958. She attended Turner Primary School and had placed in the Junior High Jump competition at the School’s first athletics carnival. She also won a place in what the School called its Junior Championship. In the following year’s athletics carnival, she also placed in the 75 yards (69 metres) race for 11-year-old girls. 

In another crossing paths moment, the sports ground used by the Turner School is across the street from where another First Transport arrival, Valeria Mets, was living. She probably was at work, though, when her friend’s daughter was competing successfully.

Citizenship

Elena and Jonas received Australian citizenship at the same ceremony on 17 June 1959. They were with 54 other recipients, all of whom were given bibles either from the British and Foreign Bible Society or the Roman Catholic Church in Canberra. They would have been an excellent source of reading practice for English language development so long as they were much later versions than the 1611 King James Version still in common use at that time.

Jonas is recorded on his passenger list as Roman Catholic, while we know already that Elena identified as a Protestant. Which version of the bible they accepted, how they reconciled their religious differences or if they even bothered, are unknowns.

What is known is that Elena, newly back in Canberra with a baby, had help from nuns who were associated with Canberra's St Christopher's Cathedral.

Now that Elena and Jonas were Australian citizens, they were required to be on the electoral roll and to vote in elections. Electoral rolls for the period 1961-77 show them still living at Ross Street, with Elena’s occupation shown as cleaner and Jonas (recorded as John) shown as a machine-operator.

Elena, Jonas, their daughter and the Bureau of Statistics

Since John or Jonas spent his life working for the Bureau of Statistics, it is possible that the machine he was operating was a computer.

The citizenship ceremony was shortly after Elena was photographed with someone probably well known to her from some months together in early 1948, identified in the Canberra Times as Miss A Molkentin. They were said to be among visitors at the opening on 26 May of an exhibition of statistical equipment by the Bureau of Census and Statistics, then co-located with the Treasury in Parkes. We would not be surprised if they were staff gathered around for the purpose of a publicity photo, meaning that both Elena and Miss Molketin were employed by the Bureau, now the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).  (We will add the photograph if we can find a version which is not mostly black.)

At that stage, the Bureau was conducting complete censuses of the Australian population every 7 years. A very useful one for our purposes had been conducted in June 1947, just 5 months before the First Transport arrived. The 1954 census included most of the Eastern European refugees, still known as former Displaced Persons or New Australians. The next was to occur in 1961. However, the Bureau may well have been employing temporary staff, likely to have been female, to prepare punch card records of surveys, for example.

Ann has been told that their daughter also was a good musician. The Canberra Times of 12 July 1962 records her passing the Grade IV examination of the Australian Musical Examination Board, a hint that her parents had been able to afford a piano at home for some time. The next year she passed the 5th Grade examination. In 1965, she passed the 6th Grade examination.

The 1 June 1967 issue of the Commonwealth of Australia Gazette announced her appointment to the Commonwealth Public Service as a Clerk in what then was called the Third Division. She followed her parents into what then was called the Statistician’s Branch of the Department of the Treasury.

This was the first step on the ladder of a public service career and it looks like a step which she might have taken as soon as she finished high school at the end of the previous year. If she wanted further education, the Commonwealth Public Service provided time off for classes and other support.

Her promotion into the position of a Clerk Class 2/3 in the Public Finance and Taxation Section of the Statistician’s Branch was confirmed on 14 January 1971.

The daughter’s Canberra friends were told of her marriage in Canada in June 1976 by an advertisement in the Canberra Times 4 days after the event. We have no idea if there was sufficient money for her parents to fly from Canberra to attend.

A marriage and new life in Canada should have led to a resignation in the Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, but the search engine for the National Library of Australia’s Trove digitisation service has been unable to find one. Nor can Trove find appointments to the ABS for either John/Jonas or Elena. It is highly likely that they were temporary employees only, able to be left without employment when the Bureau did not need them. This would explain why Elena was prepared to give her occupation as ‘cleaner’.

The parents move; Jonas dies

By the 1980 electoral roll, Elena had moved to a new address, Dexter Street in the Canberra suburb of Cook, but had no occupation, while John was living still at the Ross Street address. It is quite possible that this is a record of John not get around to updating his residence before that electoral roll was finalised. (Newer electoral rolls are not available to the public for privacy reasons, which was not an issue in the 1970s and earlier.)

The family’s next appearance in the press was in April 1983, when Jonas died aged 68. The advertisement indicated that Elena and “John” had 2 granddaughters in Canada. It also tells us that Jonas’ brother, Juozas, who came to Australia with him in June 1948, had left for the United States. There, another Augutis brother, Mikas had settled.

An older Jonas Augutis in the photograph accompanying his obituary

Source: Mūsų Pastogė 

The advertisement also said that Jonas had died “after a long illness”, often code for cancer. Whether it was cancer or not, Elena probably had devoted herself to care for him throughout, maybe even into his last days.

Jonas’ obituary in Mūsų Pastogė described him as being of an open nature, a keen reader of books, interested in Lithuanian and general history, and someone who subscribed extensively to the Lithuanian press. He was cremated at the Norwood Park Crematorium on April 21 1983. His farewell included a speech on behalf of the Lithuanian returned servicemen’s organisation, Ramovė.

The family donates

Public thanks appeared in a Lithuanian publication for a donation from the Augutis family in 1990, a very generous $100 from Elena.  She had donated it to the Independent Lithuania Foundation in Canberra.  This was only months after Lithuania had announced its independence from the Soviet Union on March 11, 1990.

The Augutis name previously appeared on a list of donors in 1951, for 10 shillings to the National Fund. The purpose of this fund was assumed known to readers. Ten shillings, the equivalent of $1 in decimal currency, may appear small but was the largest amount a number of donors were giving and corresponds in buying power with more than $25 in 2024.

Elena's last years

In another possible moment of paths crossing, Elena lived in the same suburb as Ann in her later years. They may well have been at the local shops at the same time.

Elena joined Jonas in Norwood Park with a plaque on the same rock after her death on 6 October 1996 aged 79, in Morling Lodge, Canberra’s first aged care home. She did not receive an obituary. We are doing the best that we can here.

Augutis plaques, Norwood Park
Source:  CAMCF on Find a Grave

SOURCES

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