Bonegilla 1947-1948: The Next Week (December 12-18) by Endrius "Andrew" Jankus

This post continues the recollections of Endrius Jankus, a Lithuanian refugee who arrived in Australia on the First Transport, the General Stuart Heintzelman.  Endrius became known as Andrew in Australia.  He was born in Draverna in the south of Lithuania on 7 July 1929.  He died in Hobart, Tasmania, on 23 July 2014.  He sent the memoir to me in 2012.

12 December 1947

English Classes were organised by a group of university lecturers and the man in charge was Professor Crossley. The professor was from the University of Sydney. He was a short, dumpy fellow who spoke to us in German. We thought that he was a linguist and assumed that all of us could speak German. Probably about three-quarters could understand German, but not many were fluent.* 

In his late 30's but still playing rugby union with the students:
Dr Ralph Crossley from a photograph of the 1939
New England University College rugby team

Source:  http://aussieobserver.blogspot.com/

I was assigned to Class 3a, an advanced class in English. Our teacher was a Mr Lightfoot from Adelaide University, a very nice person. We had to attend four lessons a day. We were taught some English, but also about the strange monetary system of pounds, shillings and pence. We touched on the basic law of the country, the political structure of Parliament and the complicated measurements of rods, chains, feet and miles. 

The professor, Dr RG Crossley, was from the Department of German at the University of Sydney and was the chief instructor of 22 teachers recruited from NSW and Victoria who volunteered to work during their summer vacation to teach the newcomers English and familiarise them with the Australian way of life. 

The official estimate was that 80 per cent of the migrants could not speak English. I would dispute that figure. Of the 839 in our group, that would amount to more than 150 speaking English. There were very few in the First Transport that could speak English. My guess would be that 95 per cent could not speak the language. Most of them could speak and understand a little German. 

We had dances in the Great Hall. Girls from Albury and Wodonga were brought in to complement our somewhat moody girls. Some started quick romances with them. Some came back later after completing their contracts and married them. 

One fellow showing off his swimming capabilities drowned in front of his girlfriend. He was our first casualty in Australia. We buried him with the respect that we always applied to our departed.** 

One barbel latched on to me, but I steered her promptly towards another fellow.***  I wasn’t interested in getting 'chained' just yet. The slogan at that time was Populate or Perish. When we asked the local girls to help with the 'population' part, pointing out that it will be good for the country, the reply was that it might have been good for the country but that it wasn’t too good for them. How unpatriotic! 

15 December 1947 

A heap of journalists and photographers descended on us. They took our photos at the Lake, swimming and diving. Those photos appeared the next day in the newspapers. I didn't see it, but someone told me about it. I was watching a movie in the Hall when a camera was pushed in front of me and I was filmed watching it. Later, a journalist 'corralled' me for an interview.

It's OlgerTs Bergmanis playing with Gunars Berzzarins but
at least this is a photograph of some men for a change:
it's likely to be one of the photographs taken on 15 December 1947

Source:  Sydney Morning Herald via Trove

Camp life went on as usual. I didn’t hear it, but someone informed me and my friends that at 2 am Radio Moscow read out all the names of the people who had arrived in Australia. No doubt the KGB was still interested in the people who got away from them. 

17 December 1947 

I was ordered to offside on the camp’s truck. We drove to the railway station at Albury to pick up clothing and bring it back to the Camp. The second trip we made was to Wodonga to pick up food for the camp. 

At 6 pm we received a surprise visit from the Immigration Minister, Mr Calwell, as we had organised an exhibition of cultural relics from the three Baltic countries. He was impressed. 

At 7.30 pm we had a concert in the Hall. A lot of guests arrived as well. All this was filmed and taped. After the concert, Mr Calwell thanked us for our efforts and appeared to be very pleased. The next morning as we were standing at the clothing store, he waved goodbye to us as he left the Camp. 

Estonians Valter Kongats (left), Tiiu Jalak (later Salasoo, centre) and
Vally Meschin (later Johanson, right) perform one of their folk dances,
Raksi Jaak or Crackerjack, at the concert put together for the visit of
the Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell****

Source:  Collection of Tiiu Salasoo

18 December 1947 

At the clothing store, I was issued with a sports jacket, trousers, army boots, army shirt and two pairs of army socks. Outside the clothing store we had to line up to receive our new outfits. We were called alphabetically according to our surnames. 

The back of Endrius' 'Bonegilla card' confirms the clothing issue;
a later diary entry records that the 2 pairs of pyjamas, hat and
set of braces to hold up the trousers were issued on 23 January —
they were all Army surplus, left over from the end of WWII

Source:  National Archives of Australia

The clothing store was next to the Camp Commandant’s office. In the line there was banter going on in our own language. 

One tall fellow with a booming voice replied to the banter quite often. That must have infuriated our Camp Commandant, Major Kershaw. He came flying out of his office, marched up to the 'booming voice' and punched him in the face saying, 'I am the Commandant'. 

We were astonished that the receiver of the punishment punched him back with the words, 'and I am an emigrant'. The Commandant retreated to his office speechless, and most of us just clapped and shouted 'Bravo'. Not because he had hit the Commandant, but for his ability in the English Language. 

A Scout Master from Albury arrived after lunch to inspect the Scouts and have a word to us. 

That night I was invited by the Albury girls to a dance in their town. About thirty of us went in the Camp’s truck. We saw the same girls who visited us, but a few new ones had joined them. I met a girl called Nancy. She was a good looking Amazon and friendly girl. She even gave me her address. 

The supper was fantastic. We were urged to eat up all the different cakes and biscuits. The problem was that they were too sweet for us. We were not used to so many sweet things, but enjoyed drinking the tea.

To be continued.

Footnotes

* Ralph George Crossley was the Senior Lecturer in German and head of the subject at the University of Sydney, but not a Professor.  Most of the 22 other teachers were his students who had just completed their third year of university studies.

** I have told the story of Aleksandras Vasiliauskas earlier in this blog, at  https://firsttransport.blogspot.com/2021/04/aleksandras-vasiliauskas-short-and-sad.html.

*** A barbel is a type of fish found in British fresh waters.  I don't know for which word or words Endrius might have been searching here.  Bar girl?

**** There are videos of Raksi Jaak on the Web.  Since the photograph shows 3 dancers only, I've linked it to a video of the dance performed by a trio.  It seems that, the more dancers you have, the more energetic and athletic it can be.  Watch more energetic versions here and here.

How a Lithuanian Boy Became a Refugee in Australia

The Melbourne Catholic newspaper, the Advocate, published on 12 February 1948 an article from a Bonegilla camp staff member written on 21 January that year.  Since the Second Transport, the General MB Stewart, did not reach Fremantle until the date of publication, "Robertas Luas" in the article below clearly is someone who came to Australia on the First Transport.

The Advocate's introduction read, "The following account of the experiences in Lithuania of one of the D.P.'s in the Bonegilla camp has been forwarded to us with the accompanying photograph taken in the European concentration (sic) camp. The Monstrance was made in the camp from wood. The names, for obvious reasons, are fictitious."

This evening, when I walked past the "Kinohalle" I heard piano playing and Lithuanian singing.  I entered and saw what I had expected: the young Lithuanian lad again played what he had picked up without any tuition and a few of his friends (were) singing into the microphone. 

I played a few German folk songs for them, showed them views of "beautiful Tasmania", and then asked him what he intended to do here in Australia. He said he would like to go back into a technical school to become an architect, and also take evening lessons in art and music. 

Then I asked him to tell me the story (of) how he got away, from his home so young. And this is what he told me in as good a German as he could command.  "My family name is Luas, and my Christian name Robertas.  I come from (Kalvarija), a place in Lithuania. I am a Catholic and eighteen years of age. My father died when I was three years old.  My mother, sister, and two brothers are still in Lithuania, I believe. 

"It was in 1944, I was at school.  German soldiers came into the schoolroom and asked all over fourteen years to volunteer for making road obstacles against the Russians, who were approaching the village.  But these men had guns and showed them, so we did not go freely, we just had to go.  They told us that when the work was finished we could come back to school. 

"We worked for a whole week, but could not finish; the Russians came too quickly.  We wanted to go home, but the soldiers brought us to the next village to make there a 'Panzergraben'.  We were fifty boys. 

"Soon we started to run away in small groups, but the soldiers shot at us and killed four.  Then we stayed, and were treated as prisoners of war.  They sent us to Istenburg in East Prussia into a camp of the "Arbeitsdient."  In my hut were fifteen men: Poles, Italians and Frenchmen.  Our daily food was 1½ kilo bread and vegetable soup for the whole fifteen.  I stayed about six weeks.

 

"Then I was sent to a farmer in Gustrow.  I had to work hard, and got very little to eat.  Many worked for that cruel man.  We were foreigners.  Everything was forbidden for us.  One day he hanged two Poles, because they had gone with German girls.  He told us the same would happen to us if we did not keep the rules. 

"But then I ran away towards Lithuania, to get home to my mother.  But I had no papers.  When the police caught me they put me in gaol for two weeks.  Then, I think they intended to shoot me.  At the last moment the sergeant asked me my age.  I said I was fourteen.  And my name?  I said Robert.  He said: 'that sounds German, we will let him go!' 

"I was sent to Bonn on the Rhine where it was horrible.  First the work at the railway station, loading cases of ammunition into trucks was not so bad.  But then we had to fill in bomb holes in the city streets, and they gave us rubber gloves to pull out the dead from shelters days after the bombings had taken place.  This lasted for six weeks.  I never knew what day of the week it was.

"Then I went to Essen to work in the factory where they made spare parts for the ME109 fighter aircraft.  The American Army surrounded us there, but I escaped to Haltern, where I worked again loading trains with ammunition.  All the time since I was in Isemburg a guard stood by as I worked. 

"After four weeks I went, partly walking, to Hamburg-Altona, constructing road obstacles against the oncoming British Panzer units.  Later I went to Lubeck, and there the British came on May 17, 1945, and put me in a D.P. Camp at Nuestatt, a fisher village on the Baltic Sea. 

"Soon I went to Buxtehude, to attend the Baltic Technical High School. From there I came to Australia last year." 

This is the story of a Catholic boy who was driven from his home at the age of fourteen.  I asked him what moved him to come to Australia.  And he gave me some more interesting information.

Last year he wrote to his mother asking whether he should go home.  She did not answer in a letter.  But she sent him a picture of St. John baptizing Our Lord, and wrote on the back, "Into the wide world." 

For young Robert this was leave to go anywhere in the world.  He was glad. He did not want to go home, nobody did.  Questioned by the British Occupation authorities, they all answered, 'No, we do not want to go where the Russians are, we prefer to die here in Germany.' 

Robert wanted to go somewhere else, anywhere, because of hunger. He showed me a picture of himself when he was fifteen, and it is a sad reality, hunger impressed on every face in the group.  Robert himself unrecognisable, more like a man of forty.

Lithuanians playing basketball in the Bonegilla camp
show how thin they still were nearly three years after the end of WWII

Source:  Pix, 31 January 1948

He also showed me a picture of Corpus Christi procession in a D.P. Camp of Lithuanians in Germany, which gives a similar impression. Robert weighed only 62 kilo in Germany.  Now he looks strong and sturdy again.  The sun of Bonegilla and the waters of the Hume Weir have tanned his Nordic skin. 

The Advocate's photograph of a monstrance procession, said to have been in a European camp.

Next week he goes fruit picking.  He hopes to save some money to continue his studies later in Melbourne or Perth.

Robertas' story could belong to any one of eleven 18-year-old Lithuanian males on the First Transport.  To whom it belongs doesn't matter much though, as the details are generic for many, if not most, of the Baltic men on the First Transport. Women were conscripted like this too but were more likely, from what I have heard, to be working in factories.

The person who wrote Robertas' story is highly likely to have been Dr Ralph Crossley, the Senior Lecturer in German at the University of Sydney who organised the first English classes at Bonegilla camp.  Not only was his PhD on the German language but he had spent time in Germany in the late 1930s.  I think that he would have been the only English-speaker in the camp in January 1948 whose German was so fluent that he could write 'as good a German as he could command' of someone who had spent the previous 3 years operating in German as well as Lithuanian.  And play German folk tunes for the assembled Lithuanians.  Ralph Crossley has an interesting life story, which I should blog sometime soon ...