Hugo Jakobsen (1919-2010): Leader and Teacher by Ann Tündern-Smith

Updated 16 December 2024

Hugo Jakobsen obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Diploma of Education soon after coming to Australia as a refugee on the First Transport in 1947. First, he had to serve out two years of labouring with the South Australian Railways.

He also had married an Australian, Denise Gum, within three years of arrival. What a quick start to a new life!

Wait, there’s more! He also is credited with being the person who suggested to the Department of Immigration that it should publish a newsletter for new arrivals. He offered to produce it himself. The first issue of the New Australian, produced instead by the Federal Department of Information (of which Arthur Calwell was also Minister) appeared in January 1949. It continued until December 1953, when it was merged with a similar publication with a broader audience, the Good Neighbour.

Hugo as the source of the New Australian idea is acknowledge in a memorandum
to the Minister for Information, Arthur Calwell (also Minister for Immigration)

Source:  NAA, CP815/1, 021.148

He had been born in Estonia’s capital, Tallinn on 3 October 1919, and his sister Anu was born five years later. They were the only children of the Prefect of Police for the Virumaa and Järvemaa provinces of Estonia, who was based in the Virumaa town of Rakvere. They moved upon their father’s retirement in 1934 to the town of Keila, much closer to the capital city of Estonia.

The family started both of the children at school when they were only six years old, although normally Estonian children in the 1920s and 1930s did not start until they were eight. In Rakvere, Hugo attended the Ühis Gümnaasium (the Co-educational High School). After the family moved to Keila, Hugo completed his secondary education at Estonia’s most prestigious school, the Gustav Adolf Gümnaasium in Tallinn.

He was always top of his class, except for one term in which a new arrival, a girl what is more, obtained better scores. He used to create crosswords for the school newspaper. He regarded crossword creation and solving as “mental gymnastics”.

Due to the early start at school, he was too young to undertake the compulsory national service with the military when he completed high school. He attended Tartu University first, completing two and a half years of an arts degree.

The Tartu University’s Album Academicum Universitatis Tartuensis has him enrolled as a student of filos (Philosophy, but maybe the same as an Australian Arts degree) for the years 1937 to 1939. Keeping in mind that the Estonian educational year is from September to June, with summer holidays in July and August, these were the two years and more of his three-year degree.

He was doing his national service when the Soviets invaded Estonia in June 1940. He found that he was now in the Soviet Army. The German military drove the Soviets out at the end of June 1941. Under the Malenkov-Ribbentrop pact, the Germans had evacuated persons in Estonia with German family connections already in 1939. They organised an additional evacuation to the fatherland in 1941. After his experience of the Soviet Army, Hugo was glad to make use of the opportunity to get further away.

The only digitised Arolsen Archives document relating to Hugo’s time in Germany shows that he was living in Schloss Werneck, the Werneck Castle in 1941. Werneck is a market town in Bavaria, in the south of Germany. His occupation is again given as 'Stud.phil.' or student of philosophy (maybe Arts in Australia).

Hugo’s father escaped deportation to Siberia in June 1941, when many thousands of others on Communist hit-lists were herded into cattle trucks in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Having previously held such a high position with the Estonian Government, it was very likely that he would have been on the next train out if the Germans had not arrived first. He died before the Soviets returned in September 1944.

His family realised that they also would have been targeted, so mother and daughter left when warned.

In western Germany, they got word that Hugo was being held in a prisoner of war camp for Latvian generals. Knowing that a big mistake must have occurred, twenty-year-old Anu travelled by herself to this camp, and begged for her brother’s release. He was being held because a Jewish person in the French Zone had claimed that a person with a very similar name had been involved in the torture of Jews.

Anu’s story must have corroborated the one which Hugo was trying to offer, as she was told that he would be released the next day without being asked for further evidence or papers. He was released as promised, from cramped confinement in a space resembling a cage, and spent a short time with his mother and sister in the Augsberg camp for Estonians. Then he found work with an American army unit.

It must have been through this unit that he found out about the Australian team which was in western Germany, recruiting workers.

He was one of the English speakers among the 62 sent from Bonegilla to work for the South Australian Railways (SAR), initially at Wolseley, but then moved to a camp of their own at Bangham.

Hugo Jakobsen’s 1947 ID photo from his Bonegilla card

Source: NAA: A2572, JAKOBSEN HUGO

When a journalist from the Border Chronicle reported on them on 15 January 1948, he said of Hugo, “University student for two years in Estonia, and for a further period in Munich, 28-year-old Hugo Jakobsen anticipated with enthusiasm the time when he could resume his broken studies. He had trained as a teacher of German and English in his country, and had studied German, English, philosophy and pedagogics (art of teaching) to fit him for his profession.

“He, too, hoped their period of prescribed labour would not be increased beyond the promised period of one year. In 1944 he had been forced to work in Germany as a farm labourer and waiter. His first impression of the Bangham camp was that they had been ‘buried alive with little opportunity to increase their knowledge of Australia and its language.’”

Hugo and Latvian Nick Kibilds were 2 of 17 men transferred from Bangham to Peterborough, selected because the SAR thought that they had the capacity to be trained as cleaners and porters rather than utilised as unskilled labour. Since these two were fluent in English already, they acted as interpreters for the first two weeks of the course. After that, the other wrote their notes as the words sounded, in phonetic English. They also had teachers from Peterborough running English language classes three times a week.

Flaavi Hodunov (L) with Hugo Jakobsen (R)
possibly at Peterborough, South Australia

Source:  Tatyana Tamm

They also did practical work, with the Adelaide Mail reporting on 8 May 1948 that, “Everyone co-operated, because the Balts were so keen to learn”. They did their exams in English and all obtained good passes, to the delight of their instructors.

While there, Hugo organised a concert for the local residents which featured other Displaced Persons working there. The concert, held on 24 June 1948, was reported the next day by the local Times and Northern Advertiser newspaper.

The local Secretary of the concert’s beneficiary, the Railway Institute, introduced Hugo to the audience. He was described by the newspaper as “an (arts) student from (Estonia) who speaks six languages and acted as announcer”. By June, refugees from later ships had reached Peterborough, so none of the Latvian, Lithuanian and Ukrainian performers were from the First Transport.

After the concert, a Baltic Boys’ Jazz Dance Band, consisting of Hugo on piano with an accordionist and a trumpeter, played music to which all present could dance.

Hugo met Denise at a dance in Adelaide, after the SAR realised that his proficiency in three languages (or was it six?) could be put to better use there than in Peterborough. Denise may well have been an intellectual equal in addition to being a good dance partner. While the public knows nothing about her as an individual after their engagement announcement in the Adelaide Advertiser on 3 October 1949 and marriage on 4 March 1950, pieces of her earlier life made the newspapers.

Before World War II, young Denise was having her creative writing published in the Adelaide Mail. Her poems and a couple of stories appear 6 times between February 1938 and January 1940. She sent in drawings too but was not successful in having them published. In January 1940, having completed seventh grade, she was the top student of the 3 completing their primary education at the Gumville School in the Karte district on the border with Victoria. In a bigger field at the Adelaide High School next year, she won an Adelaide Circulating Library Prize – perhaps for her writing again.

Even before his engagement and marriage, Hugo had returned to study, this time at the University of Adelaide. What he told a fellow student of life at his previous university, in Munich, was so interesting that it was reported to all in the student newspaper, On Dit.

Source: On Dit 4 July 1949

To fund his studies and married life, Hugo moved from the SAR to commerce, selling membership of Adelaide’s Mutual Hospital Association to new arrivals. Mutual Hospital provided both health and life insurance.

He took the oath of allegiance and became an Australian citizen on 15 April 1953.

'Thrilled to become Australians' read the headline, while the caption started, 'Mr Hugo Jakobsen (left), 34, of Warradale Park and Mr Jonas Jakaitis, 33, of Woodville, examining their naturalisation papers at a reception given by the Good Neighbour Council yesterday to mark the naturalisation of 13 New Australians.  Mr Jakobsen is from Estonia and Mr Jakaitis is from Lithuania.' 
Jakaitis has arrived also on the First Transport, the USAT General Stuart Heintzelman.

Source: The Advertiser, Adelaide, 16 April 1953

His graduation with a degree in German and history plus a Diploma of Education was reported in the Adelaide Advertiser of 16 March 1954. He had been fortunate enough to have 3 of his previous subjects recognised as equivalent by the University of Adelaide, shortening his course significantly.

Source: The Advertiser, Adelaide, 16 March 1954

By then, Hugo and Denise had two daughters, born in April 1951 and October 1952. Their only son was born in February 1963.

The Advertiser article noted also that he recently had been appointed the manager of retail books at Rigby Ltd. Rigby’s was a part of Adelaide’s and Australia’s history, having once being the largest publisher in Australia. The company was started with a bookshop on Hindley Street, Adelaide, in 1859 by William Charles Rigby. Being appointed to managed the bookshop 95 years later would have indicated Hugo’s prominence in Adelaide’s commercial world.

Hugo had a letter published in the Adelaide Advertiser on 1 January 1954. The Advertiser headed it, “Speech Rights of Migrants, Right to own language”. Hugo wrote, “'Unity' (30/12/53) need not be unduly alarmed about so much 'foreign gabble' in Australia, as it is only a temporary inconvenience he has to put up with.

“When the children of the migrants now attending Australian schools have grown up and start to dominate the scene, they will push the older generation still clinging to their mother tongue into the background.

“His concern, therefore, revealing a spirit more Nazi like than even Hitler's, is entirely uncalled for. It smells of ignorance, immaturity, and intolerance.

“He does not realise that this is a free country where everybody is entitled to live his own private life in pursuit of his individual happiness within the limit of the law without any nosey interference from outsiders.

“Migrants learn, and have learned, English with much better results without legal compulsion because they realise the tremendous advantages which the knowledge of English gives them.”

Being told in public to speak to each other in English was a harassment with which many post-War migrants were greeted. Hugo provided a most sensible answer, perhaps too logical for the “talk Australian” locals.

Hugo did not forged a career with Rigby’s, returning instead to his love of teaching. A daughter remembers that his first appointment was to Elizabeth High School.

Elizabeth was established in 1955 in Adelaide’s north as a home for the workers which South Australia needed for its industrialisation under the Playford Government. Teaching here was a challenge for Hugo, not only because few students were academic achievers but also because of the distance to travel each way when his home was in Warradale, some 40 Km away in Adelaide’s south.

He also taught at LeFevre High, Croydon High and Mitchell Park Boys Technical High School. Towards the end of his career he trained as a teacher librarian and worked at Seacombe High School. He was much happier doing that.

I was taken by Denise to meet Hugo some 50 years later, on 2 January 2004. He was too ill to be interviewed, she had said and, indeed, his dementia made him barely aware of his nursing home surroundings. He seemed not aware that he had visitors, not even his own wife.

But Hugo was tough, lasting more than another 6 years until 8 October 2010. He was 91 years old.

I was shocked to find that Denise had died even as I started to prepare this tribute. She died on 10 January 2024, aged 96, after a short illness.

Footnote

While sorting through his mother's papers after her death, Hugo and Denise's son came across an article in English by his father on how Estonians celebrate Christmas.  No it's posted online at https://www.thevarnishedculture.com/christmas-in-estonia/.

Sources

Arolsen Archives (1941) ‘Name list of resettlers from Estonia and Latvia, who lived in Schloß Werneck in the year 1941’ https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/document/70553643 accessed 24 October 2024.

Australia, Department of Immigration (1949-53) The New Australian.

Frey, Anne (2024) Personal communication, 26 September.

Jakobsen, Denise and Anu (2004) Personal communications, Adelaide, 2 January.

Jakobsen, Peter (2024) Personal communications, 22 February, 25 September and 25 October.

National Archives of Australia:  Department of Information, Central Office; CP815/1 General correspondence files, two number series, 1944 –1950; 021.148, Immigration - From Minister [correspondence with Immigration Publicity Officer], 1947 – 1948, p20-21 https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=263676 accessed 26 October 2024.

National Archives of Australia: Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla]; Jakobsen, Hugo : Year of Birth – 1919 : Nationality – ESTONIAN : Travelled per – GEN. HEINTZELMAN : Number – 931, 1947 – 1956, https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=203620853, accessed 22 February 2024. 

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, Central Office; A11772, Migrant Selection Documents for Displaced Persons who travelled to Australia per Genera; JAKOBSEN Hugo DOB 3 October 1919, 1947 – 1947, https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=5005793, accessed 22 February 2024. 

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, South Australia Branch; D4878, Alien registration documents, alphabetical series 1923 – 1971; JAKOBSEN Hugo - Nationality: Estonian - Arrived Fremantle per General Stuart Heintzelman 28 November 1947, 1947 – 1953, https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=4077744, accessed 22 February 2024. 

On Dit (1949) ‘Student Body With No Apathy’, Adelaide, Adelaide University Students’ Representative Council, 4 July, p 3, https://connect.adelaide.edu.au/nodes/view/2087?type=all&lsk=13deab63089f66f25769c519cb7d1780, accessed 23 October 2024.

Rahvusarhiiv Album Academicum Universitatis Tartuensis  https://www.ra.ee/apps/andmed/index.php/matrikkel/view?id=16119&_xr=eNpLtDK0qs60MrBOtDKGMIqtDI2slIpSC0tTi0v0ExNLS5SAYhZWSgWpRal5mbmZUG5WYnZ%252BUnFqHohraKVUCKUNlaxrawGJmhp5 accessed 26 October 2024.

Šeštokas, Josef (2010) Welcome to Little Europe: Displaced Persons and the North Camp Sale, Victoria, Little Chicken Publishing, pp 141-142.

The Advertiser (1953) 'Thrilled to become Australians' Adelaide p 3 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/48284822 accessed 26 October 2024.

The Advertiser (1954) ‘Letters to The Editor’ Adelaide 1 January p 4 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article47581070 accessed 28 December 2023.

The Border Chronicle (1948) ’62 Balts at Bangham’ Bordertown, South Australia, 15 January p 1 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article212918125 accessed 28 December 2023.

The Mail (1948) ’17 Balts Learn English to be Railwaymen’ Adelaide, South Australia, 8 May p 6 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article55905773 accessed 29 December 2023.

Times and Northern Advertiser (1948) ‘A Musical Treat’ Peterborough, South Australia, 25 June p 3 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article110548699 accessed 9 January 2024.

Wikipedia, ‘Education in South Australia’, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_South_Australia#Early_childhood_education accessed 17 January 2024. 

Wikipedia, 'Elizabeth, South Australia' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth,_South_Australia accessed 26 October 2024.

 Wikipedia, ‘Rigby Ltd’, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigby_Ltd#Rigby_Ltd accessed 21 January 2004.

Artur Klaar (1919-1970): Economics student, accountant, Estonian

Updated 18 July 2024

We've met Artur Klaar already as the fellow Estonian who befriended Flaavi Hodunov in Peterborough.  It's possible that they had become friends at Bangham, at Bonegilla, on the First Transport or even earlier, when they discovered that they had both attended the same public primary school in Narva, Estonia.

Artur was also the best man at Flaavi's wedding on 26 December 1949 and the godfather to Flaavi's first-born daughter in 1951.

Artur Klaar (left) with Flaavi Hodunov on Flaavi's wedding day;
the blue eyes are authentic, according to their Bonegilla cards, but whoever hand-coloured the photo used their imagination for the auburn hair as people of Estonian descent are much more likely to have dark brown or blond hair or sometimes Viking red if they have Swedish blood

The best man and the bridesmaid before the wedding of Flaavi and Walya:
Artur Klaar with G Linke, probably Gladys

Source for both:  Collection of Tatyana Tamm

Born on 1 June 1919, Artur was nearly 8 years older than Flaavi so probably would have been in high school already as Flaavi started primary school. It was not just the same school premises and maybe teachers that they had in common, though.

They both would have remembered many other parts of the small but significant town of Narva. Perhaps the older Artur would have been able to explain things about it that the younger Flaavi had not understood.

Artur Klaar (left) with Walya and Flaavi Hodunov, probably in Peterborough

Source:  Collection of Tatyana Tamm

Their paths had separated after the primary school. Flaavi probably did not start school until the late summer of 1935, as Estonian children still don’t start until after they have turned 7. If he finished primary school at the start of the 1941 summer, this would have been the time when the Soviets retreated ahead of a German advance into Estonia.

We know from Flaavi’s daughter, Tatyana, that Flaavi’s parents sent him to Germany as the Soviet forces invaded again in September 1944, since he had been working with German mechanics.

After finishing primary school around 1932, Artur finished high school around 1938 before becoming a bookkeeper in a bank while enrolled in an economics course at the University of Tartu.

All young Estonian men during the first period of independence (1918-40) were required to do many months of military training after they finished their schooling. Artur had not only completed this but completed an officer’s training course at the military academy. At the end of this, he was promoted to the most junior officer rank, of ensign.

Artur had completed only 1½ years of his economics course when WWII disrupted it. At this point in his story, it is relevant to consider what preceded WWII and the first independence period in Estonian history.

The first known foreign occupiers of Estonia were the Danes, who maybe arrived during the 12th century. The King of Denmark sold the Duchy of Estonia to German crusaders, the Teutonic Order, 1346. While these German occupied themselves with christianising the Estonians, they probably were amongst those who took the opportunity to settle on land which seemed theirs for the taking.

The Swedes came next, ruling over Estonia from 1561 until forced out by a Russian invasion in the early 18th century. During the Swedish period, some Swedes also bought land in Estonia, giving the country a mixture of German and Swedish nobility. The Russian occupation of Estonian was formalised in 1721. In order to keep the nobility on side, the Russians initially gave them more power over the Estonian peasants, who were living on the less salubrious parts of the noble estates.

The Russians had occupied Estonia for more than 200 years when the October Revolution gave the locals a longed-for opportunity to claim their freedom. This became official with a proclamation of independence on 24 February 1918. The Russians, now the Soviet Union, invaded again in August 1940, claiming all the Baltic States as theirs under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Hitler broke this Pact, having decided that Germans needed Lebensraum in the Soviet Union too. German rule returned to Estonia in June 1941, but was under threat again in the summer of 1944.

This history indicates that the Estonians’ lived experience of the German nobility and the Nazis, and Tsarist and Communist Russia meant that, of the two evils, they certainly preferred the Germans. Thus joining the German Army to fight the return of the Russians was not supporting the Nazi regime but opposing the Russians. Many of the Baltic men who came to Australia on what I have called the Fifth Fleet were among those who fought against the Russians, and Artur Klaar was one.

He fought in two major battles, those of Narva and Vaivara, the latter known as the Sinimäed (or Blue Hills) and remembered by Estonians today as a battle in which the Soviet forces were defeated. He was promoted to the rank of junior lieutenant and awarded the Iron Cross for his bravery. I know that he was not the only First Transport passenger who had an Iron Cross in his luggage.

The Allies in occupied Germany decided to overlook this form of co-operation with the former Nazi regime. It often happened in circumstances where the young Baltic men had no other option, and sorting out volunteers from conscripts was not worth the effort. As time as proven, the Allies were more interested in removing Communists from the ranks of those migrating to third countries than looking into the details of apparent co-operation with the Nazis.

The report for his September 1947 interview by the Australian selection team in Buchholz refugee camp records that Artur’s knowledge of English then was slight. However, I happen to know from my own mother’s life and a good friend who was studying economics at Tartu University at the same time as her, that a knowledge of English was something of a prerequisite. I imagine that many texts were available in English only, plus English was available as a high school subject.

The report also said that Artur had 6 years experience as an accountant in a bank.  I think this is a bit of an exaggeration.  Six years from the end of high school in the summer of 1938 takes us to the summer of 1944, when the Russians/Soviets were invading again and Artur was fighting the battles of Narva and Vaivara, possibly from February.  There was also the greater part of a year spent around 1939 in compulsory military training.

Only four months later after his arrival in Australia, Artur was sent from Bangham to Peterborough because of his good language skills. That tends to support the idea that he knew some English before starting at Tartu University. His studies there, Edna Davis’ shipboard classes and classes at the Bonegilla camp all would have helped Artur hone his skills.

From Peterborough, Artur was sent to Adelaide to work in the South Australian Railways (SAR) offices. He remained with the SAR for the rest of his life.

In Adelaide, he met and married another Estonian, Silvia Tulina, on 21 June 1951. Silvia had studied medicine for 6 years at the University of Tartu between 1936 and 1942. In Germany from September-October 1944, she had made her way to Göttingen to complete her medical qualifications before travelling to Australia in 1950.

In Australia, Silvia found along with other doctors with European qualifications, that she could not practice medicine here, not without doing the whole course again.

There were so many such instances of this that Egon Kunz, himself with a doctorate from Hungary in Hungarian language, literature and social history plus an Australian doctorate in demography, wrote a book about it. Intruders: Refugee Doctors in Australia was published in 1975.

The situation for those with medical degrees from outside English-speaking nations has changed little since. It can be compared with the struggle which Vytautas Stasiukynas had to obtain employment related to his veterinary science qualifications.

Silvia Klaar was more fortunate than most. At the time she reported her change of name by marriage to the Department of Immigration, Adelaide, for its Aliens Registration records in July 1951, she advised that she was now employed as an assistant pathologist at the University of Adelaide. She was employed in similar non-clinical fields for the rest of her working life.

Artur died way too early, on 6 November 1970, of a heart attack when aged only 51. He would have been employed still by the SAR when this happened.

Silvia told me that Artur was a smoker who could not give up the habit. He also had developed high cholesterol in the days before heart by-pass operations were performed in Australia.

He merited an obituary in the Australian-Estonian newspaper, Meie Kodu, on 3 December 1970. It’s in the Estonian language, of course, but Google Translate now can be a useful starting point for any of us.

The obituary’s author, Richard Ollino, noted that Artur had enrolled again in Economics at the University of Göttigen in Germany, but abandoned this course due to his selection for resettlement in Australia.

Artur then matriculated to the University of Adelaide, but again abandoned the course when bad health interceded. Silvia said that he had passed two Adelaide University subjects at this point. Richard also wrote mysteriously of “a duty, and obligation”, which blocked Artur’s return to study.  Maybe it was his marriage, into which Silvia brought a young daughter.  In any case, three times interrupted might have left him feeling that it was not meant to be.

Richard Ollino’s obituary describes how Artur was able to contribute greatly to the Estonian community in Adelaide. In translation, it reads in part, “The problems of preserving the Estonian spirit abroad were close to his heart. He devoted his strength and energy to Estonian social activities in Adelaide in various fields.

“He was a board member of the Adelaide Estonian Society for a long time, a board member of the Adelaide branch of the Fighters' Association, and a member of the Adelaide Congregation Council of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church. He was always ready to help where a helping hand was needed.

“However, the Estonian community in Adelaide remembers Arthur Klaar most of all for the fact that he, as a founding member of the Estonian House, laid the foundation for our Adelaide Estonian home, in which our national activities now take place.”

This sort of community activity is at least as important volunteering to support the wider community through organisations which might benefit more of those in need, whether it's the Good Neighbour Council and Red Cross like Edvins Baulis, the local hospital or the lost dogs home.  It stabilises a new community in its unfamiliar surrounds and is likely to stop those on the periphery from drifting further away into problems in a foreign language, a foreign society. 

Artur Klaar is at the rear left of this 25 January 1953 photograph
of the elected members of the committee of the Estonian community in Adelaide

Source:  Siska

Despite not completing a degree, Artur continued his membership of Fraternitas Estica, a Latin name meaning 'the Estonian fraternity'. Fraternities for men and sororities for women were a serious, lifelong commitment in Estonia’s one pre-War university and for Estonians in exile.

The fraternity certainly honoured Artur’s life, with its death notices appearing in what might have been all the Estonian community newspapers in the English-speaking world: Vaba Eesti Sõna (Free Estonian Word, America), Vaba Eestlane (Free Estonian, Canada) and Meie Kodu (Our Home, Australia) advised their readers of Artur’s passing.

Sources

Klaar, Silvia (2011) Personal communication.

Korp! Fraternitas Estica (nd) ‘Coetus 1957/1958 [1957/1958 Group]’ https://www.cfe.ee/album-esticum?show=1957#A778 accessed 23 March 2024.

Kunz, Egon (1975). Intruders: Refugee Doctors in Australia. Canberra, Australian National University Press, digital copy now available from https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/114807, accessed 16 May 2024.

Ollino, Richard (1970) 'Artur Klaar, In Memoriam' Meie Kodu, Sydney 30 December, p2 https://dea.digar.ee/page/meiekodu/1970/12/03/ accessed 17 May 2024.

Persian, Jayne (1918) ‘Egon Frank Kunz: Displaced Person’ https://australia-explained.com.au/history-shorts/egon-frank-kunz-displaced-person/ accessed 23 March 2024.

Pocius, Daina et al (2023) 'Vytautas Stasiukynas (1920 –?): The Vet Who Found Happiness in South America' https://firsttransport.blogspot.com/2024/01/vytautas-stasiukynas-veterinarian-Colombia.html accessed 17 May 2024.

Siska. Voldemar (nd) ‘Eesti ühiskond Lõuna-Austraalias’ [‘The Estonian community in South Australia’] https://www.folklore.ee/rl/fo/austraalia/rmt/EAI/siska.htm accessed 23 March 2024.

Tündern-Smith, Ann (2022) 'The only Australian aboard our Heintzelman voyage, Edna Davis (1906-1985)' https://firsttransport.blogspot.com/2022/12/edna-davis-only-australian.html accessed 17 May 2024.

Urmenyhazi, Attila (2008) 'Kunz, Egon Francis (Frank) (1922–1997)', Obituaries Australia, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://oa.anu.edu.au/obituary/kunz-egon-francis-frank-14133/text25143, accessed 16 May 2024.

More about Flaavi Hodunov (1927-2023): SAR Train Driver by Tatyana Tamm

Flaavi Hodunov was born in Estonia in 1927. He was passenger 201 on the General Stuart Heintzelman, the first ship to bring displaced persons (DPs) to Australia to start a new life after the traumas of WWII. He had just turned 20 years of age when he boarded the ship in Bremerhaven and sailed to Australia.

We have learned something about Flaavi and his wife, Wasylisa, from John Mannion's post about his interview of them.

At the end of the war, Flaavi was unable to return to his homeland due to Russia’s occupation of Estonia. He had worked for the Germans while they occupied Estonia. He was fourteen when Germany invaded, and he began working for Germans mechanics. This would not have been viewed favourably by the Russians, so his parents encouraged him to leave. Sadly, he never saw his family again. At the end of WWII, he applied to Canada and Australia with the latter accepting his application first.

Flaavi's photo taken for an official document
(hence the rivet on the left and partial stamp on the right)
taken in Barmstedt, Germany in the 1940s

While travelling to Australia he began learning the English language. Flaavi was keen to succeed in his new home and took to his studies eagerly. He arrived at Bonegilla, the camp where the DPs were housed until they were assigned work. Flaavi only spent 47 days at the camp, with English classes on most days, before he was sent to work for the South Australian Railways (SAR). He was sent to Bangham along with sixty-one other displaced Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians.

The Bangham camp was situated on the south-east railway line between Custon and Frances. The camp was situated approximately 14.5 kms south of Custon. The countryside was scrub and sand, a far different environment from their homeland of forests and greenery.

This environment was not conducive to the men learning English and they reverted to German as this was a common language amongst them.

During a short stay at Bangham, 17 men were identified as being suitable candidates to attend the new railway school in Peterborough, South Australia, because of their good English. Ten were Lithuanian, four were Latvian and three were Estonian. Peterborough is 248 kms north of Adelaide and 506 kms away from the Bangham camp. Flaavi, despite his short time learning English, was one of those chosen.

Baltic men at Peterborough, 1948:
Flaavi is the shortest man (at 5' 6" or 168 cm), fourth from the right —
Double-click on this or any image below to view a large version

When the men arrived, they were housed in Nissan Huts and worked hard. Flaavi started off first in the cleaning shed then worked his way to a fireman. He would work all day and then at night he would survive on coffee and study hard at English so he could take the requisite tests to become a fireman. He gained his fireman's ticket in December 1949.

Flaavi thrived in the country and enjoyed his time in Peterborough. He celebrated his 21st birthday in 1948 at the Railway Institute Hall.

During those early months in Peterborough, Flaavi was writing back to Europe to a girl he had met in a Stuttgart Displaced Persons camp. She was a Ukrainian DP named Wasylisa Proszko. She had been with her family at the camp, so could not be resettled immediately as Australia was only taking single people with families to follow later. The Proszko family did not arrive in Australia until 1949. In Flaavi’s letters he wrote of life in Australia, wanting Wasylisa to convince her father to come to this land of plenty.

Flaavi made friends with the two other Estonians at Peterborough, Artur Klaar and Hugo Jakobsen. Flaavi and Artur, with the help of the Lutheran Church, moved from the Nissan huts to board with the Linke family on their farm west of Peterborough.

Artur Klaar and Flaavi Hodunov relaxing at the Linke home, 1948

Artur Klaar (left) with Walya and Flaavi in Peterborough, 1949

Once the Proszko family had been accepted by the Australian government for resettlement, they were sent to Bonegilla too. Flaavi with the help of the Lutheran community secured work for Wasylisa on a farm owned by Tom and Margaret Casey in September 1949.  (See the official evidence of that here.)

There were restrictions placed on all DPs by the Australian Government of the day. They had to work where sent for 2 years. They had to apply to get married and they had to wait 5 years before becoming an Australian citizen.

Flaavi and Wasylisa married on 26 December 1949 in the Lutheran Church in Peterborough, once permission had been granted. Wasylisa could no longer work once she was married, so she stayed home. Unfortunately, Flaavi’s work in the railways meant that he was away from home a lot leaving his young wife alone.

The wedding party (from left) with members of the Linke family on the verandah, then Mary Proszko (Wasylisa's middle sister), Dominika Proszko (their mother), Wasylisa, Artur Klaar, Raya Proszko (Wasylisa's younger sister) in front of Artur, the bridesmaid (probably from the Linke family), a Linke family member, another Linke family member and, on the right, Flaavi Hodunov.

When Wasylisa’s mother became ill in Adelaide the following year, she relocated to take care of her mother. She refused to go back to Peterborough as she hated the loneliness and isolation of the town. Flaavi had to apply for a transfer to Adelaide through the railways, which was not easy, but in 1950 he secured work at the Mile End yards and their life together in Adelaide began.

Flaavi was determined to succeed. He continued his studies and in 1952 he became the second New Australian to gain his Engine Driver ticket. The Adelaide News ran a story to say that he was the first New Australian, as repeated by John Mannion in one of his entries in this blog. The same story then appeared in at least 5 regional South and Western Australian newspapers as well as the Department of Immigration’s magazine, the New Australian.

The story was picked up from the New Australian to be repeated by the Adelaide Advertiser's columnist, who signed himself Wm Waymouth. The SAR contacted that paper to say that the first migrant engine driver was Andrij Wyshnja, a Ukrainian who had qualified one year before Flaavi. Waymouth ran an apology on the following day, but it was not picked up by the other press which had repeated the story.

Not the first DP engine driver for SAR

Becoming a train driver was a major achievement for a man who had only 6 years of formal schooling. This was not the only achievement that Flaavi was to have in those early years in Australia.

Once he and his wife were settled, living with her mother and father, they had their first daughter Irene, born in 1951. Flaavi obtained a block of land in Brooklyn Park and began building his home mostly by himself. He would work long hours to earn the money needed to build the house and then spend all his spare time working on his home. It took him about three years to do it. The family moved into their home in 1955.

An Adelaide newspaper article about Flaavi, his family and the new home:
it's repetition of the error about Flaavi being the first 'new Australian in SA to hold a rating', 
suggests it is from the News rather than the Advertiser and the date is likely to be 1955

Their daughter, Irene, was four at the time. The following year they had their second daughter, Tatyana, and then 18 months later their third daughter, Lena. Their family was complete and life for Flaavi Hodunov flourished in his adopted home.

Flaavi enjoyed working in the railways. Although released from his contract with the Federal Government, he remained employed by the SAR for 37 years before he retired at the age of fifty-eight due to industrial hearing loss.

Flaavi lived in his own home until June 2023, when frailty caused him to be placed into a nursing home until his passing.

In the end Australia was more his home than his native home of Estonia. He arrived on 28 November 1947 and just one day before the 76 anniversary, on 27 November 2023 he passed away. He never returned to the country in where he was born.

Note:  All images are from the collection of the author, Tatyana Tamm, Flaavi's middle daughter.

References

New Australian, ‘First new Australian train driver’ Canberra, August 1952 p 4.

News, ‘New Australian Drives Loco’ Adelaide, 21 June 1952, p 2 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/130274483 accessed 24 April 2024. 

Waymouth, William (1952) ‘Good Morning! Good as new’, Advertiser, Adelaide, 11 September, p2 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/47408025 accessed 26 April 2024. 

Waymouth, William (1952) ‘Good Morning!’, Advertiser, Adelaide, 11 September, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/47416433 accessed 26 April 2024.

Flaavi Hodunov (1927–2023): SAR Train Driver, by John Mannion

Updated 5 April, 12 May and 26 October 2024.

Estonian-born Flaavi Hodunov was another of the 18 with good English selected at the Bangham camp to be sent to be Peterborough. My three previous blog entries, on Australia's post-WWII displaced persons' program, Peterborough in general and Paul Deimantas in particular, refer. 

Flaavi's ID photo taken in Germany before departure to Australia --

Source:  Tatyana Tamm collection

Flaavi Hodunov's ID photo from his Bonegilla card
clearly a mistake has occurred!

Source:  National Archives of Australia

Flaavi was a keen railway man and eager to learn. He recalls the ‘Roundhouse Rat’, a V-class steam shunting engine that was fired with big lumps of coal thrown into the firebox by hand.

'The little engine that could', the Roundhouse Rat, is on the left of this photo;
built in 1877, it was already at least 70 years old when the First Transporters met it
for the first time; it is now on display in a Naracoorte park

Source:  State Library of South Australia

He spent over three years at Peterborough and celebrated his 21st birthday at the Railway Institute. Eventually he moved to Adelaide and built his own home. 

He recalled that a few weeks after the arrival of the ‘very first’ Balts at Peterborough, another group arrived, followed by many more. Many families were separated as a result of the work contract and accommodation. 

Flaavi and another Estonian, Artur Klaar, moved out of the hostel and found private board with the Linke family, through the Lutheran Church, on a dairy farm at Peterborough West. 

Two Baltic boarders, standing and kneeling on the left, with the Linke family

Source:  John Mannion Collection

The first means of transport for the Balts was on foot, push-bike and motor-bike. 

The push bikes could be used for recreation too;
here we have Juozas or 'Joe' Donela on the left with friends

Source:  John Mannion collection

It was difficult at first but these men later recalled the acceptance they received from Peterborough railway men including Ray Schell, Dave Rosser, the Brennan brothers, Lionel Noble, Peter Smallacombe and many others. 

Flaavi's girlfriend, Walya [Wasylisa Proszko], came to Australia with her parents and sister [on the Wooster Victory, in May 1949]. They too stayed at Bonegilla. She had to wait until Flaavi found her a job as a domestic with the Casey family on a farm east of Peterborough. 

Walya's Bonegilla card, with that assignment to the Casey family

Source:  National Archives of Australia

Walya recalls that, while she was at Bonegilla, some of the locals came to see what these Balts look like, just out of curiosity. The general opinion was that they ‘looked just like us!’ 

Walya remembered being given clothing, in particular a bright pink raincoat. ‘When you don't have much, you remember things like that’ she told me. 

Men and women were in separate accommodation at Bonegilla. 

Everybody had to work for two years so, in order for the couple to marry, the authorities agreed for Walya working near Flaavi. According to Flaavi, when they married, Walya's contract was cancelled. 

Walya's family were reunited after they came over from Sydney for the wedding at Peterborough Lutheran Church [on 26 December 1949] and found work in Adelaide. 

Walya recalls the trip from Bonegilla to Peterborough well. She was given a packed lunch of sandwiches and a couple of eggs. ‘All I had was a suitcase and a handful of papers. I was unable to speak a word of English’. She reckoned that she has never waited so long for a train. 

On arrival at Adelaide station, she could not ask questions, but a Lutheran priest advised her in German how to get to Peterborough. Walya remembered that the train trip to Peterborough was in the dark, so she couldn't see where she was going, but when she did arrive, there was no platform. This was unheard of in Europe. 

The Peterborough Railway station, 1974, still without a raised platform

Source:  Lionel Noble collection

‘I expected a street with houses and shops on both sides of the street but found a very, very poor street, very scary, with one big hotel dominating the long Main Street’. 

The Hotel Peterborough would have dominated Walya's first view of
Peterborough's Main Street

Source:  John Mannion collection

Peterborough's Main Street, with
a hotel in the distant centre, around 1950

Source:  Lionel Noble photographer, John Mannion collection

Many of the migrants, including Walya, didn't like country life, but Flaavi reckons he would still be in the bush if not for Walya. 

According to the men I spoke with, Heini Koch, a descendant of the original Petersburg settlers, did a lot of work for the ‘lads who could not speak very well English’. 

Before they married, Walya would visit Linke's on weekends. As a married couple, the Hodunov's rented a little tin house that Flaavi had renovated for the new bride, near the hostel on Telford Avenue. They eventually rented a railway cottage. 

Flaavi found out that it was very hard to get transferred to city, but once he did, he excelled on the job and was the first 'Balt' to graduate as an SAR driver at Mile End.

Flaavi's achievement of locomotive driver status was celebrated in the New Australian,
a monthly publication for migrants from the Department of Immigration, in its August 1952 issue; the fettler work actually was when he was based at Bangham, near Wolseley,
the cleaning job was after redeployment to Peterborough and initial training there

Source:  New Australian, August 1952

Flaavi (right) on the job as a fireman, before his 1952 promotion to driver

Source:  John Mannion collection

He liked his job in the railways and worked freight trains back to Peterborough after the broad gauge was extended from Terowie to Peterborough in 1970. 

He spent 37 years on the job, 37 years of shift work, and agreed that it was not easy for the women being alone when men away on shift work.

Flaavi and Walya in 2003

Source:  John Mannion collection

Flaavi was born in Estonia's easternmost coastal city of Narva on 21 September 1927, so was 20 years old on arrival in Australia.  He died in Adelaide very recently, on 27 November 2023, aged a hearty 96.  Walya predeceased him, in March 2014, just after her 84th birthday.

POSTSCRIPT by Ann  

Flaavi's life before his voyage to Australia is encapsulated in the document below, a DP Registration Record created in the American Zone of occupied Germany.  In addition to confirming his place and date of birth, it tells us that his parents were Teodor Hodunov and Liidia Kolk, that his usual occupation when the record was created in maybe 1945 was motor-car locksmith, and that his first choice for resettlement was Canada.

From one of Flaavi's daughters, Tatyana Tamm, I now know that those parental given names were misrecorded.  Flaavi's father actually was Feodor while his mother was Leida-Bižarde Kolk.

Flaavi's name has intrigued me since I first saw it on the Heintzelman passenger list 25 years ago.  Although his Estonian birthplace means that he had Estonian nationality until the time during WWII when that no longer had practical meaning, the name is not Estonian.

The -ov ending of Hodunov indicates clearly a Slavic family name.  The most likely source of Slavic names in Estonia is Russia, but a Russian would spell this name with an initial G, as in Mussorgsky's opera, Boris Godunov, about an early Tsar of Russia.  

A Ukrainian friend has confirmed that this is indeed a Ukrainian spelling of the name, where the initial G gets transliterated as an initial H.  It happens with many Slavic names.  An example is the female first name Halina, diminutive Halya, in Ukrainian, which become Galina and Galya in Russian.  I've used this example because I can tell you that this name sounds just the same in Estonian, but is spelt Galja.

Flaavi, my friend said, absolutely was not Ukrainian, so more research was required.  I found that Flavi is known to be a first name used in Rumania, derived from the Latin name Flavius, meaning 'golden'.  Rumania still has many links in its language to the Roman occupation some 2,000 years ago, starting with the name of this nation-state being derived from Rome (or Roma in Latin and Italian).

Flaavi with two a's is a typically Estonian spelling, lengthening the initial vowel sound in Flavi and adding to the normal stress on the first syllable of Estonian words.  The name turns out to be quite multicultural, even before this concept was invented by the Canadians.

As reported above, Flaavi's mother's family name was Kolk, which translates from Estonian into English as an out-of-the-way place or, a dangling piece of wood.  Regardless of the reason for its application to his mother's family in the 1830's, when Estonians first got family names, it is authentically Estonian.  Her first name, Leida, is authentically Estonian too, but Google Search has never come across Bižarde in any nation.  Geni.com, a genealogy Website much used in the Baltic States, can find only Flaavi's mother with with this given name.

Starting with a B as it does, Bižarde is likely to be an import from another language, but from where? Does it help to know that the name transliterates into Бизарде in Cyrillic?  If you know more, dear reader, please feel free to comment below.

A family like her's, living in eastern Estonia as Flaavi's daughter, Tatyana Tamm, has found (specifically, Unipiha village, Nõo parish, Tartu county) would have been exposed to a lot of Russian cultural influences.

Tatyana also has found that Flaavi's Hodunov grandfather, Efim, was born in the village of Tverdyat', which is southeast of Narva and 110 Km distant by road.  Flaavi's great grandfather, Nikolai, was a farmer there.  That's long way from Ukraine, let alone Ukraine's border with Rumania.

Mixing ethnic groups up by translocation was a deliberate policy of the Soviet Union, in an attempt to reduce nationalism developing, but it occurred as well in Tsarist Russia, probably for economic reasons.

Efim was born in 1869, so Nikolai probably was born in the 1840's or 1830's.  It may be that the family was moved to Tverdyat' from elsewhere in the Tsarist Russia when Nikolai was young or even earlier.

As for the motor car locksmith trade, another of the First Transporters, a Lithuanian, called himself an 'engine locksmith' when interviewed by the Australian press in December 1947.  Did motor car and engines (perhaps pulling trains) have different locks to houses in the 1940s and earlier?  Who knows about this?  Please feel free to comment below if you do, reader.

A later entry on Flaavi, by one of his daughters, Tatyana Tamm is at https://firsttransport.blogspot.com/2024/05/more-about-flaavi-hodunov.html.

American Expeditionary Forces Displaced Persons Registration Record
for Flaavi Hodunov in Germany

Source:  Arolsen Archives

SOURCES

Arolsen Archives, 'Folder DP1475, names from HODIONENKO, ANNA to HOFFEINS, Marija (2)'

https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/search/person/67368899?s=hodunov&t=2738137&p=0, accessed 20 March 2024.

'Lionel Noble Photo Collection, Peterborough Station', https://lionelnoble.com/station/ accessed 20 March 2024.

National Archives of Australia, Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla] 1947–1956; HODUNOV, Flaavi : Year of Birth - 1927 : Nationality - ESTONIAN : Travelled per - GEN. HEINTZELMAN : Number - 920, 1947–1948.

National Archives of Australia, Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla] 1947–1956; PROSZKO, Wasylisa : Year of Birth - 1930 : Nationality - UKRAINIAN : Travelled per - WOOSTER VICTORY : Number - 85482, 1949 –1949.

'Railway transport: Locomotives and rolling stock 3'6" narrow gauge [B58892/492]', photograph, State Library of South Australia, https://collections.slsa.sa.gov.au/resource/B+58892/492, accessed 20 March 2024.

Tamm, Tatyana (2024) Personal correspondence.

'V 9, The oldest steam loco in South Australia', http://www.australiansteam.com/V%209.htm, accessed 19 March 2024.