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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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 the Melrose Street address. 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.
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| 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.
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‘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.
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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.
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‘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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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