On 7 November 1947, the USAT General Stuart Heintzelman had been sailing from Bremerhaven for more than eight days. Australia's Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell, decided that it was time to tell the public through the newspapers and radio that the very first migrants from Europe sponsored by the Government were coming. All were refugees from the Soviet re-invasion, in 1944, of the 3 Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Click on each page for a larger, more legible version.
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| Click on any of the pages above to open a larger, more legible version Source: Bound copy of Calwell's speeches and press releases in the Department of Immigration Library |
Fast communication by radio, telegram, telex and cablegram was possible already, so the press release could have been accurate. The inaccuracy starts with the 860 passengers, when it should have been well known to officials in Australia that the actual number to depart on 28 October was 843.
There was 18 passengers younger than Algis Baranskis. While 11 of them also had had 18th birthdays, 3 were still aged 17, 2 were 16, one was 15 and one was 14. The youngest were with older family members or trusted friends. Maybe the Minister wanted to appear responsible by not discussing those under 18, but his chosen example was neither the youngest nor the oldest of the 18 year olds.
The incorrect spelling of names was to persist for years, maybe lifetimes, but let's make known corrections here. In the order of their appearance in the press release, we have first Captain Valentine Pasvolsky, not "Pascolsky". As discussed earlier, he did not have charge of sailing the ship, but shipboard life for its passengers. The person in charge of sailing the ship was Captain CM Pedersen.
"Brundazaite Constamcija" should have been Konstancija Brundzaite, using Western name order. It looks like some of the passengers were providing their names to enquirers using what now is known as Hungarian name order, because it still is used in Hungary. There's a typing error in "Constamcija" as well as an assumption that other languages use a C to represent a hard initial sound when they are far more ordered in their orthography than English. Brundzaite was misspelled also.
"Rage Birute" was subject to the same misunderstanding of name order. In Western name order she should be known as Birute Rage. And no, her last name is not pronounced like an English synonym for "anger". It is two syllables, for a start.
The men generally got off better, but it should have been Povilas and Petras Baltutis, not "Povillias and Petra Balutis". "Ludas Krasaoskas" should have been Ludas Krasauskas.
Borisas Dainutis was only slightly mangled as "Borisis Dainutis". We have his biography in preparation. Sergejs and Nikolajs Bergtals suffered similarly as "Sergeis" and "Nikolais". We're working on biographies for them too.
"Miss V. Mets" or Valeria Mets, later known by Australians after her marriage to one of them as Val Blackburn, seems to be the only passenger whose name was spelled correctly, perhaps because of its shortness.
Here's how the Minister's press release was used one day later, in the Sydney Morning Herald. The number of passengers has been corrected. There was no arrival date predicted in the press release, but now it has become 26 November. Perhaps the Minister's office sent out a telex message of amendment, which has not been stored with the two copies of the press release that I have seen.
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The Minister's press release, as published on the next day, 8 November 1947 |
Let us hope that the other details supplied in the Minister's press release are more accurate than the spellings.
Reference
Wikipedia, 'Surname' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surname accessed 16 April 2025.
