Girts Broders was chosen in the Bonegilla camp to lead a band of men sent to the South Australian Railways at Wolseley because of his excellent English.
Further evidence is on his Displaced Persons Registration Card from Germany in September 1945, where he stated that his usual profession was “tulks”, Latvian for “translator”, and his languages spoken in order of fluency were Latvian, of course, and English ahead of German. Elsewhere he has stated his previous occupation as “student”.
Evidence of Girts’ high standard of English is a letter he wrote, published in the Adelaide Advertiser on 15 March 1948. His English was flawless, unlike that of the journalist who headlined his letter or perhaps the printer who set the headline type.
His first name, Girts, is the Latvian equivalent of the Germanic and Nordic “Gert”, which in turn is the equivalent of the English “Gerard”. While Gerard would have been the direct translation for Australians, it’s diminutive, “Gerry”, sounds the same as the World War II derogatory term for a German soldier, “Jerry”. It’s no surprise then, that he became known as George in Australia.
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| Girts Broders' ID photo from his Bonegilla card Source: NAA: A2571 BRODERS, G |
As the head of the party of 62 moved on from Wolseley to another camp for the new arrivals at Bangham, he was the spokesman, although he wasn’t the only one in the party with fine English. Hugo Jakobsen from Estonia and Nikolajs Kibilds from Latvia were two others. More about them soon.
The 62 had been selected by the Commonwealth Employment Service at the Bonegilla Migrant Centre for the South Australian Railways (SAR), which had an overdue need to widen its tracks from narrow gauge. The one thing holding them back, their Minister announced, was lack of manpower.
When the press came calling, Girts told Bordertown’s Border Chronicle that “the men had been busy preparing camp and were maintaining excellent spirits. Their average age was 24 and all were single and ‘anxious to meet the local ladies’. They would miss the excellent swimming facilities which had been provided at Bonegilla camp.
"The brilliantly-lighted Australian cities and their peace-time spirit had created a deep impression on (him) after seven years of war conditions in Europe. His own country had suffered alternatively from German and Russian occupation, and after three years among German ruins, the sight of a normal city was ‘pleasing’.
“Questioned as to their political views, (Girts) said he represented every member of the party when he answered, ‘Everything, but not communistic’.”
Imagine his feelings then, and that of the other men in the Bangham camp, when they learned of the words of an Adelaide City Councillor at a Municipal Association meeting. The Mayor of Glenelg had suggested that the councils investigate the possibility of obtaining refugee labour for their projects.
Adelaide City Councillor FC Lloyd, Liberal Municipal League, as quoted in the Adelaide Advertiser of 11 March 1948 said, “I do not agree with Mr. Calwell's policy. I think we should show him that we don't want this type of labour and that we don't want these people among us. They are only going to divide us and do not forget that there are plenty of Communists among them. It is time we turned the whole thing down with a thud."
Girts’ letter in reply, as published in the Advertiser of 15 March is worth quoting in full.
He wrote, “Sir—Apparently Councillor FC Lloyd is either badly informed about the political happenings in Europe since 1940 or he hates Baltic migrants for some reason, but most likely he just uses the word ‘Communists’ as a swear word, not knowing its meaning and not knowing the aims of Communists.
“Councillor Lloyd admits that we are refugees, but there is nothing else at present in Europe to do but to take refuge from Communism, so we cannot possibly be Communists. If we were, we would, after liberation in 1945 from Nazi slave labour camps, have returned to our home countries and not come to Australia to displease Councillor Lloyd.
“I can say, on behalf of many of us, that as soon as our home countries become independent again, we will return. The Baltic countries, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, were the first victims of the aggression by the Soviet Union in 1940. Our countries were promptly incorporated into the Soviet Union as ‘fraternal republics’. After one year's Communistic domination, 120,000 were deported from those countries to Siberian slave labour camps and 25,000 were shot as ‘enemies of the people’.
“When, in 1941, war broke out between Russia and Germany, what the Russians started was continued by the Nazis, who looted what the Communists had left. The remaining people were taken as forced laborers to Germany. In this group were most of the Balt laborers now coming to Australia. Almost every one of them has a close relative deported by the Communists and killed by the NKVD or by the Gestapo. We have been accused of being plutocrats, capitalists, Nazis and Fascists, but never before of being Communists. Hence our disgust.”
[To clarify, for those who think of World War II starting on 1 September 1939, the Soviet Union (Russia) remained neutral, but enjoyed the benefits of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed with Germany’s Foreign Minister 23 August 1939. Then Germany broke the Pact on 22 June 1941 with a surprise attack on the Soviet Union. In the meantime, the Soviet Union had scooped up spoils allocated to it in the Pact by invading and occupying the Baltic States in mid-June 1940.
[During the year after June 1940, it perpetrated many acts of violence in the Baltic States against individuals known or thought to be opposed to it. One of the worst acts of all, still commemorated wherever there are people of Baltic descent, was the mass deportation to Siberia of tens of thousands from each of the three countries in train cars meant for carrying animals, starting from the early hours of 14 June 1941. This act in particular, and the knowledge that they might be destined for the next mass deportation, is the reason why more tens of thousands fled their homelands ahead of the Soviet return in the late summer of 1944.]
We know that Nikolajs Kibilds and Hugo Jakobsen left the Bangham camp and the task of relaying rail tracks to a wider gauge quite early. That’s because the Adelaide Mail of 8 May 1948 reported that they were among 17 from the First Transport selected to train in Peterborough as cleaners and porters for SAR. The Mail was reporting that all had passed their exams so well that their instructors were delighted.
Girts Broders stayed at Bangham until May, at least. We know that because the Bordertown Border Chronicle reported, on 6 May 1948, that he had been the interpreter for an evening social and dance organised by the Tatiara Youth Club on the previous Monday night.
In thanking the organisers, Girts had said that they “appreciated the change after the ‘tedious, everyday life at Bangham, which is not one of the most fashionable and entertaining places’.”
Girts had become engaged to be married to Maimu Naar in Germany. They met because they were both working for the United National Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), the international agency tasked with providing assistance to the victims of World War II.
Maimu, an Estonian, was tracing lost children while Girts was working in transport. As luck – or maybe skills and ability – would have it, Maimu had been able to relocate to Australia on the First Transport with Girts, and with her older sister and younger brother. I hope to write more about the Naar siblings soon.
By the time Girts filled out the application form for migration to Australia on 2 October 1947, his employer had become the International Refugee Organization (IRO). He gave his address as “DP Camp Wildflecken IRO Team”. The functions of UNRRA, which existed for only 4 years, were being handed over to the newer IRO gradually.
Maimu’s first job was in Canberra, where she was a typist in the Department of Immigration. She lived in the Mulwala Hostel, where the strike involving Margarita Vrubliauskienė occurred.
Through her work colleagues, she was able to arrange a transfer for Girts to Canberra. He worked there for 18 months as a clerk in a hostel at the Fairbairn Royal Australian Air Force Base. He was there when advised that the Minister for Immigration had shortened the length of most contracts, so he was free to find his own employment if he wished after 30 September 1949.
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| Source: The New Australian, October 1949 |
The certificate in the photograph above would have been numbered 1 as, seven years later, Girts was sharing this with a suburban Adelaide newspaper, Coromandel. He was the “first certificated non-British migrant under the post-war scheme”. Perhaps this occurred because he was first in the alphabetical surname list of those eligible in Canberra, where the Central Office of the Department of Immigration was located.
Girts and Maimu married in Sydney in 1949. Their only child, Linda, was born in Sydney. Later they moved to Adelaide, where they spent the rest of their lives. They changed officially from migrants to citizens there on 17 October 1955, although they would have had to wait longer to take the oath of allegiance and receive their citizenship certificates in the sort of public ceremony which continues today.
Girts’ working life led to a position of Supply Manager, in charge of purchasing for the South Australian branch of the Gilbert & Barker Manufacturing Co, which traded as Gilbarco. The company now is a supplier of fuel dispensers, point of sales systems, payment systems, forecourt merchandising and support services. You’ve almost certainly seen its name on petrol pumps at Australian service stations.
Girts had been born in Koknese parish, Latvia, on 9 November 1923. His father, Alberts, was arrested by the KGB on 25 October 1940 and imprisoned before being shot with 99 other Latvian men. Their execution occurred on 21 June 1941, the day before the German started their return to Latvia. The dead Latvians were buried in a mass grave at Baltezer, a lake near Riga.
Alberts owned a textile factory employing about 500, so clearly was exploiting the working class. His record as a fighter for Latvian freedom in 1919-20 may have gone against him too.
Later, the corpses were exhumed and the bodies identified and reburied. Now the site of the former mass grave has a memorial bearing the names of the 100 men shot there.
Girt’s mother, sister and an older, married brother with his family had been able to escape to Germany in 1944. His mother and sister had been able to join their son and brother in Australia via the Wooster Victory in March 1949. Falks-Andrievs, his wife Skaidrite, and their two young children arrived on the Castel Bianco in May 1950.
Maimu had studied one year of medicine in Germany after her flight from Estonia. Co-incidentally, Girt’s mother, Marianna, had started to study medicine too before marrying his father in 1918.
Girts died on 6 October 2006, in Riga, aged 82, while visiting his homeland. He was brought back to South Australia, to be buried with Maimu, who had died in 1995. He remains in his second homeland where his family members live now. Indeed, he became so Australianised that he is buried under the name of George Martin Broders.
His older brother, Falks or Jack in Australia, is 102 years old now and has only recently moved into an aged care residence. His sister, Ilze, is still in Adelaide at 89 years old.
Girts and Maimu have one grandchild, screenwriter, film director and composer Dario Russo. Dario has directed and acted in a couple of cult classics, Italian Spiderman and Danger 5, the latter having been commissioned by SBS Television.
He described himself to Sydney Morning Herald journalist Paul Kalina in 2015 as a “textbook only child”. Paul Kalina added that “Russo credits his ‘highly artistic and theatrical’ parents for supporting his passion. "They never encouraged me to get a real job and as far as I know I don't have one. I was never encouraged to get the fall-back career and for that I have to be eternally grateful. Mum was an art teacher, dad a guitar teacher, both into creativity. They're incredible, model parents. I feel guilty.”
Below: The Age Green Guide, 1 January 2015, featured Dario Russo’s Danger 5.
SOURCES
Advertiser (1948) ‘Councillor’s Attack On Balt Labor’, (Adelaide) 11 March, p 1, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article43759190 accessed 8 January 2024.
Arolsen Archives, ‘Broders, Girts’, AEF DP Registration Record, DocID: 66705455, https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/document/66705455, accessed 7 January 2024.
Border Chronicle (1948) ’62 Balts at Bangham, To Help Broaden Rail Gauge’, Bordertown, South Australia, 15 January, p 1, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article212918125, accessed 8 January 2024.
Border Chronicle (1948) ‘Balts Welcomed by Council Chairman (Cr Hunt)’, (Bordertown, SA) 6 May p 4, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/212919306 accessed 8 January 2024.
‘Broders, Alberts’, L.k.o.k. biogrāfija, LKOK nr.3/414, http://lkok.com/detail1.asp?ID=246 (in Latvian) accessed 10 January 2024.
Broders, Girts (1948) ‘Attack of Balt Labor Resented’, The Advertiser (Adelaide), 15 March, p 2, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article43759705 accessed 8 January 2024.
Broders, Girts (2004) Personal communication, 4 January.
Coromandel (1956) ‘Migrant With Card No. 1’, (Blackwood, SA), 27 July, p 1, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article261058228 accessed 8 January 2024.
Courier-Mail (1947) ‘Wasn’t White But’, (Brisbane) 26 December, p 4, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article49664209 accessed 9 January 2024.
Find A Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/search?firstname=&middlename=&lastname=broders&birthyear=&birthyearfilter=&deathyear=&deathyearfilter=&location=South+Australia%2C+Australia&locationId=state_577&memorialid=&mcid=&linkedToName=&datefilter=&orderby=r&plot=, accessed 31 December 2023.
Geni, https://www.geni.com/people/George-Martin-Broders/6000000008871342239, accessed 30 December 2023.
Gilbarco Veeder-Root, ‘Company History’, https://www.gilbarco.com/us/company-history, accessed 16 April 2024.
Kalina, Paul (2015) ‘Lunch with TV Writer and Actor Dario Russo’, Sydney Morning Herald, 9 January, https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/lunch-with-tv-writer-and-actor-dario-russo-20150101-12ahoz.html, accessed 16 April 2024.
Mail (1948) ’17 Balts Learn English to be Railway Men’, (Adelaide) 8 May p 6, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/55905773 accessed 8 January 2024.
National Archives of Australia: Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla], 1947–1956; BRODERS, Girts : Year of Birth - 1923 : Nationality - LATVIAN : Travelled per - GEN. HEINTZELMAN : Number – 1085, 1947–1948; https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=203687219, accessed 7 January 2024.
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 (1947–47); 712, BRODERS Girts [Girto] DOB 9 November 1923 (1947–47); https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=5118086, accessed 8 January 2024
New Australian (1949) ‘New Australians Released From Contracts; More Follow Soon’, (Canberra), October 1949, p 1.
New Australian (1949) ‘Proud of Their Certificates’, (Canberra), October 1949, p 1.
Russo, Linda (2004-2024) Personal communications.
Wikipedia, ‘Gilbarco Veeder-Root’, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbarco_Veeder-Root#History accessed 16 April 2024.
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