Bonegilla 1947-1948: The First Five Days (December 7-11) by Endrius "Andrew" Jankus

Endrius Jankus, known as Andrew in Australia, was born on 7 July 1929 in Draverna, a village near the Lithuanian coastal town of Klaipėda in the south of the country.  He died in Hobart, Tasmania, on 23 July 2014.  He was a grandson of the 'Patriarch of Lithuania Minor', Martynas Jankus, a printer, publisher and social activist.  Endrius' memories of his first four months in Australia were written in 2012 but based on a diary he had kept in 1947-48.  You may see something of his grandfather's social activism in his views. I would not be surprised if the Commandant of the Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Major Alton Kershaw, had seen a brash 18-year-old who needed to be trained to obey.  Read on...

7 December 1947

We arrived in Melbourne on the dirty old tub, Kanimbla.  It was like a hell ship out of some fantasy.  Dingy quarters, grime-ingrained bunks with food to match.   It was a big letdown after the General Stuart Heintzelman.*  

At 2.30 pm, the then Minister for Immigration, Mr Calwell, arrived with his retinue on the main deck and welcomed us to Australia.  With newsreel cameras whizzing and camera flashes just about blinding everyone, the whole ceremony was over within the hour.  

Estonian Lucia Maksim thanks the Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell,
(centre, in light suit)
on the Kanimbla at anchor in Port Melbourne, 7 December 1947.

Source:  Private collection**

I had volunteered to help load baggage onto the train. There were not that many pieces. While we were loading, a chap approached us and introduced himself as the First Officer of the Danish ship Java berthed on the other side of the pier. Since I could speak English, he told me what a terrible country this was. The exact conversation escapes me after 65 years. 

It would be better if I joined his crew as they were leaving for Europe in the morning. That was a great temptation as I always wanted to go to sea. He showed me a newspaper called the Tribune. This Australian Stalinist rag had a cartoon of people getting off a ship with swastikas and SS armbands. The caption was, "These people will make good Australians". 

But my first reaction to the proposal was no desire to return to Europe, since we had just arrived in Australia. Secondly, we travelled on international refugee papers and were still regarded as stateless persons. We did not belong to any country, since our country had been swallowed up by the criminal Soviet Union. ”Thanks” to the idiotic US President Roosevelt who sold us out and three-quarters of Europe to the Stalinist butchers. 

I had heard stories of stateless persons on ships travelling the seas who were not allowed to step ashore on any land due to lack of a passport or identification. That thought made me decline the offer. 

It was the days when the White Australia policy was strongly defended. We were lily white but not English, which was unacceptable to the population. Most of them had some black blood cruising through their veins but that was ignored. That was why we were discriminated against for many years to come.

Some groups, particularly in Tasmania, of the isolated, inbred, black-brushed population and the Stalinist unionists made our life a misery. We faced strikes on our arrival organised by the Communist-dominated unions and fights in the pubs. 

This antipathy is still alive today in 2012. It’s more gentle because of laws prohibiting discrimination, but it is still being practised by some idiotic clerks in government departments and in businesses and workplaces. Under our breath, we used to call them Anglo-Saxon Nazis and Australia a country built on bullshit. You never struck that many conmen, crooks and criminals in any country as you did in Australia. 

Just like going through the medical in Germany. They looked at our teeth, like the old horse traders did, to make certain that they were healthy. On arrival in Australia, we found out that most people had no teeth at all but had prostheses. 

8 December 1947 

This morning we boarded trains and our journey began towards Bonegilla. We were divided into two groups, one per train. I was in the first one with all our girls. 

This sparsely occupied land already had sunburned yellow grass as far as the eye could see. It was almost the middle of December, in the summer. The train stopped for lunch at Benalla. Some Red Cross Ladies provided us with a meal. 

After about one and a half hours, we were told to board the train again and proceeded. In the rolling northern hills of Victoria, with no signs of life, the train stopped. Had we arrived? 

The girls, some 120 of them, alighted on the dirt ramp which was level with the floor of the train. The rest of us jumped out into the belly-high grass. There was deathly silence interrupted only every now and again by the locomotives snorting. 

Someone suggested that we had arrived at our execution spot. I countered that they would not have sent us halfway round the world to execute us. The suggestion hadn’t been that far-fetched. Those sorts of isolated places were normally used for mass murder in Europe. 

Suddenly, we could hear the noise of revving motors. Khaki green trucks were slowly working towards us. Only a slight wisp of dust rising from the ground indicated the Army trucks’ position as they laboured to reach us. There was no road, just a miserable track between the high grass and a fence. The girls got preferential treatment and went first to the trucks. 

Three of the Lithuanian women, with Viltis Salyte on the left
seated on one of the Army trucks at the Bonegilla railway stop

Source:  Border Morning Mail via Trove

We followed some time later and got a bumpy ride across some paddocks to the main highway. Once we reached the highway, our vision of the countryside improved. We could see Lake Hume and a large conglomeration of barracks on its foreshore. The Hall, a massive barn, stood out amongst the corrugated iron huts, our accommodation. 

Our group from the Flensburg Camp (close to the Danish border) and a few friends had stuck together throughout the journey and now were allocated accommodation on the outskirts of the camp in Block 18, Barrack 33. 

Endrius Jankus as a sea scout in Flensburg, 10 September 1947,
just 3 months before his arrival at the Bonegilla camp

Source:  Europeana

The corrugated iron huts were stinking hot like a sauna. The beds were tubular, folding iron and fencing mesh constructions made up with white sheets. Twenty-two of us took up our accommodation, threw our few belongings under the beds and bolted outside. 

It was cooler there. A group of kangaroos watched us in dumb silence from the High Hill, keeping a respectable distance. 

At 5 pm a loudspeaker blared out that it was teatime and all should proceed to the mess hall. What we ate, I didn’t record in my diary, only that it was sufficient and tasted bland. That seemed to be the norm in this country. We always maintained that the good food was spoiled because of the lack of tasty ingredients. 

9 December 1947 

We were shown a film about the Australian environment. After that we had to hand in our International Refugee Organisations documents. We were told that we had to be photographed for new documents, which never materialised.***  This left us only a red card for identification. 

This is likely to be the photograph of Endrius 
taken in the Bonegilla camp on 9 December 1947,
for use with his 'Bonegilla card'

Source: National Archives of Australia

10 December 1947 

Everyone had to have an x-ray of their lungs. The strict medicals that we went through in Germany were partially checked again. There seemed a suspicion that somehow people had escaped health scrutiny. 

It made the camp authorities and Immigration Department scratch their heads when they found almost 30 people with lung damage, mainly injuries from bullets. We knew about some of our fellows who we had helped smuggle into the country. They arrived here with someone else’s lungs. How it was done shall remain a mystery. Several had only one good eye, but they too were discovered. 

Actually out of 839 passengers this wasn’t such a great number of fraudulent immigrants. We had expected that all of them would be deported back to Germany and discussed what action we could take to prevent this or at least convey our displeasure. 

A few days later, they all were rounded up and sent to Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital. They returned to camp about a week or so later and the whole affair was “swept under the carpet”. They all stayed here. 

In the meantime we just rested, went for walks to the kangaroo vantage points, the hills, and discovered the multitudes of rabbits — black, brown and brindle. The hills seemed alive with rabbits. Someone in our group had a camera and we photographed ourselves on the walks to the hills and the Hume Weir. What happened to these photos, I am unsure. 

11 December 1947

We were called to the camp office and asked what sort of work we wanted to do. This was a strange question as in Germany we had been told that unless we signed up as labourers, we would not be accepted for the interviews. Just like the medical where they scrutinised the status of our teeth. And on arrival here we found that most Australians did not have any but chewed on their falsies. 

This was payday for us. The unemployment benefit at this time was one pound and five shillings. The camp kept the one pound for our keep and handed us the five shillings as spending money. We had to sign that we had received it. 

I spent three shillings at the shop down the road a bit on tobacco, cigarette papers and a box of matches, plus an ice cream. I had one shilling left. These days, the anti-tobacco or anti-smoking campaigns amuse me. I began to smoke at 14 years of age. I found out, like millions of others, that smoking calmed you down and suppressed your hunger pangs. 

In four years of warfare, I can well remember being hungry day after day. It was just like a rat gnawing at your empty stomach. It may be dangerous to your health, but no little Hitler should have the power to ram his ideas down other people’s throat. In my book, they are the “perverts of democracy”. Besides, I stopped smoking 30 years ago. 

To be continued.

Footnotes

* Endrius was not alone in this recollection.  Several of the women have told me too that they regarded the Kanimbla as filthy, and not just in comparison with the General Stuart Heintzelman.  The captains (Army and Navy) of the Heintzelman had figured out, probably through the experience of other troop transports of the same class built before her, that the best way to keep their soldier passengers out of mischief on the high seas was to give them work to do.  Much of it has to do with keeping the ship clean, but there were other tasks as well, such as helping in the kitchen and bakery or the ship's library.  Australia's first post-WWII refugees on the Heintzelman had been subject to the same regimen, but benefited from a clean and orderly voyage.

** There are so many copies of this image in public and private collections that I think it was taken by one of the Heintzelman passengers with their own camera.  These photographers could run something of a business, selling or bartering their prints to cover their costs, and probably make a small profit as well.

*** The new documents were quite likely to have been the 'Bonegilla cards', National Archives of Australia series A2571.  They were for the use of the administration, not the Centre residents.

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 ...

From a Lithuanian farm to Australian lawyer: Stasys Čibiras (1923-2012) by Daina Pocius and Ann Tündern-Smith

Updated 4 August 2024

Stasys Čibiras was born on a farm in Lithuania but retired from a law practice in South Australia. Learning the law means a close grasp of the meanings of words: for Stasys, known as Stan in Australia, English would have been his third or even fourth language. World War II changed the course of his life but this strong man survived and bettered himself. 

Stasys Cibiras at age 24 in 1947, on his 'Bonegilla card'

Source: National Archives of Australia

The farm was in senas (old) Daugeliškis, where he was one of seven brothers and a sister. Born on 13 October 1923, he was a student of mechanical engineering at a trade school when the Germans invaded his country in the summer of 1941. 

In 1944, he was taken to Germany to labour for the German Army, digging trenches between the opposing forces. He dug for eight months before being shot.  

He was taken a prisoner-of-war by the British. At the War's end, he got himself to the American Zone of occupied Germany, to the city of Kassel. He had become a Displaced Person, able to complete high schooling there in 1946. The following year in Eichstädt he studied philosophy. Like so many other Displaced Persons, his hope was to go to America, but he answered an earlier call to consider Australia instead. 

His appearance before the three-man Australian selection team took place a couple of hours away from Kassel by rail, in the town of Butzbach, near Frankfurt. Success in the selection process doubtless occurred because the team saw before it a 6-foot (183 cm) tall man who had just celebrated his 24th birthday and was healthy apart from the bullet wound. It was followed by a return to his camp on the outskirts of Kassel, hasty packing, another trip to Butzbach, then train travel to the Bremerhaven assembly point for his journey to Australia. 

Four weeks on the USAT General Stuart Heintzelman were followed by four days in Fremantle and another voyage to Port Melbourne on board the HMAS Kanimbla. 

After one month in the Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre, probably attending English language classes every weekday, he was one of a group of 33 men sent to Mount Gambier, South Australia, for their first Australian employment. For nearly two years, they laboured there for the Department of Woods and Forests, but were told that their two-year obligation had ended two months early for good behaviour like the rest of their fellow passengers.

Moving to Adelaide, Čibiras lived initially in a large tin shed in the western suburbs with other refugees. He continued to work as a labourer, mostly in an Adelaide factory. Later he became an orderly at the Daws Road Repatriation Hospital. During this time, he decided to study law at the University of Adelaide. This was no easy undertaking. As mentioned above, he would be studying in a very recently acquired language, at least his third after Lithuanian and German. 

Those who had migrated to Australia in 1947 were not eligible to apply for Australian citizenship until after 5 years residence here. Stasys beat the gun by one day, publishing the required notices in two newspapers on 27 November 1952 when his date of arrival was 28 November 1947. He managed, however, to hold off completing his application form until 5 days later. His citizenship was conferred on 15 April 1953. 

Stasys, or Stan, was already an articled law clerk when he applied for citizenship in 1952. Indeed, his law career probably started even earlier, because we know he instigated the Australian Lithuanian Student Association, Adelaide Branch, (Australijos Lietuvių Studentų Sąjunga or ALSS), with an establishment date of 25 August 1951. Members were university students or those studying at a higher professional level who had completed a diploma. 

With part-time study, it took him until 1958 to graduate from the University of Adelaide with a Bachelor of Laws degree. 

Stan Cibiras as a successful immigrant: the full caption for this 1958 Australian Government publicity photograph reads, "When Stan Cibiras came to Australia 11 years ago from Lithuania he was employed as a labourer. Later he became a male orderly in an Adelaide Hospital. Working at night and weekends, he was able to undertake a Law Course at the Adelaide University and recently qualified as a Bachelor of Laws.  He is now employed as a solicitor with the
Crown Law Department of South Australia."

Source:  National Archives of Australia

Meanwhile, he had involved himself in the early days of the Adelaide Lithuanian Society.  A meeting was held to discuss the establishment of a Lithuanian community house and Stasys became a member of the committee to look into this. He was a member of the Australian Lithuanian community court, President of the Baltic Communities committee and became President of the Adelaide Lithuanian community for 1956-57.

While studying, and working, he even found the time to undertake a pilot's course with the University Air Squadron, attaining the rank of Flight Lieutenant. 

A 1962 publication on the South Australian Lithuanian community, Blėzdingėlės prie Torrenso or Swallows by the Torrens, had a sketch of Stasys in his role as community leader.  Jonas Mockunas has provided what he calls a very loose translation.  "Completely straight, never wrapping anything in cotton wool, Čibiras seems not to have felt any of the attacks directed at him and always did what he was determined to do.  A young, energetic lawyer, having finished his studies in Adelaide, Stasys  Čibiras would dress down those who tried to insert sour notes into the life of the community.  To the sorrow of his friends and the joy of his enemies, Čibiras has temporarily left Adelaide simmering in disputes and settled in pleasant Renmark ..."

After completing his articles, Stan's first job was as a crown prosecutor. While visiting Renmark, he found out that a local solicitor, wished to retire. It was agreed with the solicitor that Stan would take over his business. 

Stan married a fellow Lithuanian, Dalia Pyragius, and they had two sons. The family stayed in Adelaide, so Stan travelled more than 250 Km every weekend to see them. 

Stan Cibiras (centre) with his sons, Tony (left) and Paul (right)

Photograph kindly supplied by Paul Cibiras

After Stan's death in Canberra in February 2012, his friend and former business partner, Malcolm Daws, described his Renmark life in an obituary in a local newspaper, the Murray Pioneer.

Stan, Malcolm wrote,  "lived in makeshift accommodation in Renmark while renting office space in the old State Bank building in Renmark Avenue and because he could not afford his own car to drive to Adelaide, he would ‘grab a lift’ with whoever was going there on weekends. 

"After the first three months of hard work, Stan was left with just over $2 to his name. 

"However, his hard work started to produce results and he then quietly prospered, being able to afford to buy a house, a car and  about 10 years later, a share in the building which now houses the Renmark Medical Clinic and the Riverland Denture Clinic. 

"Although Stan was able to afford to have his two sons at boarding school in Adelaide, his marriage became a casualty but nevertheless his optimism remained undimmed. 

"He was proud of the later achievements of his sons Tony, a law graduate, and Paul, a mining driller. 

Tony Cibiras (left) at his graduation with his father, Stan (right)

Photograph kindly supplied by Paul Cibiras

"During his 30 years of legal practice in Renmark, Stan involved himself in a community in which he felt so much at home. A president and life member of the Renmark Club, he was also a president of the Rotary Club and a keen participant in tennis and golf where his enjoyment of both games outshone his prowess." 

Stan retired from his business, Cibiras & Daws, and from legal practice in 1990. He moved to Canberra, where his son Tony had obtained his legal education and was in practice. 

Renmark High School’s annual Stan Cibiras Award is presented to a Year 12 student who has overcome adversity to become successful. Stasys donated $500 annually until 2011 when the award was taken over by the Renmark Lions Club. Malcolm Daws wrote that, "The award came about after Stan lamented that he had always intended to write a book on constitutional law but had not done this, so he regarded himself as a failure.  Nothing could have been further from the truth."

By 2010, Stan's health deteriorated to such an extent that he was moved into a nursing home. He had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. When he passed away in February 2012, he had reached the grand age of 88. 

Malcolm Daws finished, "That the business name of Cibiras & Daws was registered for more than two decades causes your correspondent immense pride.  Stan's first consideration, when assessing a client's chances, was whether the client was 'a good bloke'.  Stan Cibiras was a good bloke."

In memory of Stasys (Stan) Čibiras, 13 October 1923 – 6 February 2012, and Anthony (Tony) Benius Čibiras, 26 August 1956 – 24 August 2022. 

SOURCES

Andriušis, Pulgis and Vladas Radzevičius (eds), Blėzdingėlės prie Torrenso (Swallows by the Torrens), J. J. Bachunas, Sodus, Michigan, 1962. (Jonas Mockunas advises that blėzdingėlė is also the name of a popular Lithuanian folk dance, performed by women only, so there is a connotation in the books title of Lithuanian cultural tradition being maintained in Adelaide.)

Čibiras, Paul, personal communications, 2022.

Daws, Malcolm, 'Farewell Stan Cibiras, just a genuinely good bloke', The Murray Pioneer (Renmark, SA), 14 March 2012, p 16.

Fatchen, Max, 'Their celebration was just like home', The Mail (Adelaide, SA), 30 October 1954, p 8, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article58098347 viewed 12 December 2022.

Gordon, Dalia, personal communications, 2012 and 2022.

J. Kalvaitis, 'Mokslo Keliu' ('Through Learning'), Musu Pastoge (Our Haven), Sydney, NSW, 20 June 1956, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article259365397 viewed 12 December 2022.

National Archives of Australia: Australian Customs Service, State Administration, South Australia; Alien registration documents, alphabetical series, 1923-1971; CIBIRAS S, CIBIRAS Stasys - Nationality: Lithuanian - Arrived Fremantle per General Stuart Heintzelman 28 November 1947, 1947-1953.

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, Central Office; A439, Correspondence files, multiple number series, Class 11 (Migrants A-C); 1952/11/8364, Cibiras, S, 1949-1953, https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=802671 accessed 4 August 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, 1947-1947; 534, CIBIRAS Stasys DOB 13 October 1923, 1947.

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, Central Office; A12111, Immigration Photographic Archive, 1946 - Today; 1/1958/29/1, Immigration - Migrants in the professions - When Stan Cibiras came to Australia 11 years ago from Lithuania he was employed as a labourer. Later he became a male orderly in an Adelaide Hospital. Working at night and week-ends he was able to undertake a Law Course at the Adelaide University and recently qualified as a Bachelor of Laws. He is now employed as a solicitor with the Crown Law Department of South Australia, 1958, https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=8109934 accessed 8 June 2024.

National Archives of Australia: Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla], 1947-56; CIBIRAS STASYS, CIBIRAS, Stasys: Year of Birth - 1923: Nationality - LITHUANIAN: Travelled per - GEN. HEINTZELMAN: Number - 908, 1947-48, https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=203680665 accessed 4 August 2024.

Papers held in the Lithuanian Archives in Australia, https://www.australianlithuanians.org/uncategorized/adel-arkhives/ accessed 25 May 2024.

(Pocius, Daina), 'Australian Lithuanian Students (Australijos Lietuvių Studentų Sąjunga (ALSS))', Lithuanian History in Australia, https://salithohistory.blogspot.com/2013/11/australian-lithuanian-students.html viewed 12 December 2022.

Riverland Weekly, 'Renmark Lions Club honour', Riverland Weekly (Berry, SA), 8 December 2011, p 4, https://issuu.com/riverlandweekly/docs/rw_207_dec_8_2011 viewed 12 December 2022.

The Mail, 'Want to be Good Australians', The Mail (Adelaide, SA) 15 October 1949, p 8, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article55782457 viewed 12 December 2022.

The only Australian aboard our Heintzelman voyage, Edna Davis (1906-1985)

Updated 20 November 2023

There was one Australian aboard the November 1947 voyage of the Heintzelman from Bremerhaven, Germany, to Fremantle, Australia.  She was Edna Davis, described by the West Australian Newspaper on 29 November 1947 as 'formerly principal of a school for young children in Melbourne'.  Miss Davis had been in Europe since August 1945, working with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, known as UNRRA, and the International Refugee Organization, IRO, in the US Zone of occupied Germany.  

Her return to Australia on board the Heintzelman had been arranged by the IRO, responsible for organising its voyage to Australia.

'These people are a very good type,' she told the West Australian reporter.  'I have been working with various people in Europe for the past two years, and I am of the opinion that the Baltic people are more like the English than those of any other country that I have met.'

Another Perth newspaper, the Daily News, reported on 28 November that Edna Davis had run onboard classes in English, since the Baltic refugees mostly spoke German among each other.  The classes were held three times a day, for elementary, intermediate and advanced students.

She told the Daily News that most of the men were rural workers, a fact that Australians would have welcomed even more then than now.  She added that others were 'engineers, chemists, architects, watchmakers and musicians'.  She advised that, 'They were specially selected by the Australian Commission in Germany. All had been separately interviewed and had undergone a strict medical examination. The Balts were pleased with the friendly and sympathetic treatment received from the Commission'.  The Commission was Australia's immediate post-War representation in Germany, run by the Australian military.

Source: Perth Daily News, 28 November 1947

We are fortunate in having had the Daily News publish a photograph of Edna Davis, above on the right, with her name spelled 'Davies' this time.  She is together with one of the Lithuanian passengers who actually preferred to be known as Birute and whose last name usually was spelled Tamulyte.  Birute was sent to Canberra to work, stayed, married and raised two sons.  She died in Canberra in 2016, aged 83.

When I first posted about Edna Davis, in April this year, I wrote that, 'I have been told that the Australian woman on the voyage married one of the men on the same trip.  Who that was I have yet to find out.  That information might help in the discovery about more of Edna Davis' early and later life.  Do you know more?

The community of people who, like me, are descended from passengers on this Heintzelman voyage or very interested in it came to my immediate aid.  Peter Pildre knew that Edna Davis had married Elmar Rähn, who was part of the 1924 Estonian athletics team at the Paris Olympics.  In Australia, Elmar became a teacher at Trinity Grammar, Kew, in Melbourne — specialising in athletics, of course.  He had organised a Trinity scholarship for Peter on the basis of his athletic ability.  I hope to make Elmar Rähn's life the subject of a separate entry.

Jonas Mockunas turned up an issue of the Journal of the Holocaust Survivors '45 Aid Society which included a mention of Miss Davis' role in Germany.  Writing about his life there from April 1945, Salek Benedikt described how his group were looked after in an UNRRA children's home in the village of Winzer, near Deggendorf, in Bavaria.  UNRRA Team 182, consisting of 15 volunteers from 11 countries, ran the home.  Among them was Edna Davis from Victoria, Australia, who he recorded as a nurse.

All 15 members of the Team are in this photo, so Edna Davis is in there somewhere,
perhaps third from the right. (Click on photo to enlarge.)

Source:  Holocaust Survivors '45 Aid Society

Edna Davis was one of three Australian women recruited by UNRRA to perform welfare work in the immediate aftermath of the War.  They were packed, ready to leave, when they were told that the Australian Government had refused them passports.  

The official explanation was that the Government had a policy of preventing persons who could assist in relieving the Australian 'man-power' shortage from leaving Australia if the work they were to perform could be done by persons available on the spot.  The Government stated that it had been told that if the Australian women could not leave by 6 August 1945, others from the US would fill their places.  The Government could not allow them to go 'while there remained an acute shortage of woman-power for the care of patients in repatriation, military and other hospitals and the dire need for women for textile and other industries'.

When I first read this, I thought, hang on, two of the women were teachers.  What did they have to do with the care of patients in hospitals or woman-power in the textile industry?

The two teachers were Edna Davis and Valerie Paling, both from Lauriston, a private girls' school in Melbourne.  Ms Paling was described as bitter about the Government's decision.  'As there was no ban on male UNRRA appointees going abroad it seemed to her like sex prejudice', said some reports.  She clearly was a woman ahead of her time.

Not only were the women packed, but they had resigned from their work, gone to a great deal of trouble arranging for necessary documents, and each had received 13 injections.

The Government backed down and the Prime Minister himself, Ben Chifley, announced on 3 August that the women would receive their passports.

In case this initial refusal to issue passports seems way too restrictive by modern standards, we must remember that World War II still raged in Asia.  The 6 August deadline above happens to be the day on which an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.  While the Germans had signed their unconditional surrender on 7 May, Japan did not announce its surrender until 15 August.  World War II in the Pacific did not end until 2 September, the day that the Japanese Foreign Minister signed its instrument of surrender.

For a comparison, think of how the Australian Government restricted overseas travel in the early days of the COVID-19 regime here.

Jonas Mockunas also turned up an online issue of a periodical called Lauriston Life, which had an article confirming that Edna Davis had resigned from the position of principal of Lauriston's Junior School.  She is known to have not only worked at the UNRRA children's home in the village of Winzer, but to have been in charge of the Wartenberg Children’s Centre, also in Bavaria.  Unaccompanied children received care here while efforts were made to find family members for them.  She also made several journeys across Europe returning groups of children to their homes.

Apart from her marriage to Elmar Rähn, we know little about what happened to Edna after her return to Australia.  The Australian version of Ancestry gives access to death indexes

advising that she died in 1985 in East Melbourne.  A search on the Victorian Government's Births, Deaths and Marriages Website gave a date of 22 November 1985.  

The death certificate then purchased shows that the cause of death was 'alveolar cell carcinoma of lung', which she was thought to have had for about 6 months.  Might this be air pollution in the immediate aftermath of World War II in Germany catching up with her?

The death certificate also confirmed her 1947 marriage — in Western Australia.  Edna and Elmar had met in Germany but had another four weeks to get to know each other on board the Heintzelman.  Now that I have a copy of their marriage certificate, I can report that no time was wasted once their ship docked.  They were married 3 days later, on 1 December 1947.  Both were living in the Graylands Camp.  There were two witnesses to the Church of England ceremony, O Pilais and E Pabeel, both unusual family names by English or Estonian standards:  perhaps they had been among the hundreds of Perth and Fremantle locals who came forward to entertain the new arrivals. There were no children of the marriage.  

Edna was 79 years old when she died, born in Newtown, Tasmania, to David Manton Davis, an inspector of schools, and the former Alice Mary Whitham.   A separate search through the Libraries Tasmania Website provides a birthdate of 16 April 1906.  Some family trees on Ancestry show that she was the middle child in a family of 5 children, the older of the two daughters. 

Electoral rolls and rate books give us some more information about Edna's life after her marriage in Perth in December 1947.  As Edna Mary Rahn, home duties, she was paying the rates on a property on Curraweena Road in the City of Caulfield, Melbourne, in December 1949 and December 1950.  It was a 5-room, weatherboard house said to have a 'population' of 3 people.

We know from a probate notice published in the Melbourne Argus of 27 January 1950 that the third person was Edna's mother, Alice Davis, a widow formerly of Kempton in Tasmania.  Perhaps Edna had been engaged in 'home duties' because she was providing care for her mother.

The Melbourne Weekly Times newspaper of 10 October 1951 has Mrs Rahn employed as the social worker for the War Widows Guild of Australia (Victoria).  She certainly was doing social work with young refugees in Germany.

In 1954, an electoral roll shows her having moved to South Road, Brighton, but again gives her occupation as 'home duties'. 

The first Olympic Games in the Southern Hemisphere were held in Melbourne between 22 November and 8 December 1956.  To make these the "friendly Games" and perhaps because hotel accommodation would be taxed by the influx of visitors, Melbourne residents were asked to offer homestays.  The Melbourne Argus newspaper of 29 September 1956 had a 3-page spread illustrating the offers.  Melbourne Opens Her Homes and Hearts included 'Former Olympic athlete Mr. E. Rahn and Mrs. Rahn, of South road, Brighton' who would 'have as their guest a visiting Dane'.

Elmar appears to be inspecting the roses in the front garden of the Brighton house.
This double-fronted brick veneer with roses lining the walk to the front door would have been
a far cry from the housing Elmar knew in his home country.

The living room of the Rähn household,
captioned by the Argus, 'A fire for a cosy room'

Source: The Argus, 29 September 1956

By 1963, Edna had moved to High Street, Armadale (now Prahran), declaring her occupation to be 'teacher'. Elmar Emil Rahn, also a teacher, was at the same address.

On the 1967, 1968, 1972 and 1977 electoral rolls, she remained a teacher but her address had changed to Illawarra Road, North Balwyn.  Elmar is absent from these rolls, having died as early as January 1966. On the 1980 roll, when she was aged in her 70s, her no occupation was stated and her address had changed to Dixon Street, Malvern.

There are no rates records digitised for these addresses, so perhaps the property on Curraweena Road was sold and Edna returned to renting her accommodation with Elmar.

Australia at this time had laws requiring retirement age of 65 for all, although women could retire and claim an aged pension at the age of 60.  Edna reached that age in 1966, but clearly continued teaching.  In 1977, she was aged 70 or 71, but continued to give her occupation as 'teacher'.  Either this was an oversight or she was still able to work at this age in a private capacity.  It certainly does suggest a love of teaching, just as her life exemplifies service to others.

Sources

'843 'Splendid' Balt Migrants Arrive', The Daily News (Perth, WA), 28 November 1947, p 8, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article79814996, viewed 5 November 2022.

Ancestry.com.au, All results for edna mary rahn, https://www.ancestry.com/search/?name=edna+mary_rahn&event=_australia_5027&count=50&event_x=_1-0&location=5027&name_x=p_p&priority=australian

Bars, Jenny, 2014, 'Miss Paling and Miss Davis: Humanitarian workers in post-WWII Europe', Lauriston Life, edition 3, October 2014, https://www.lauriston.vic.edu.au/.../downloads/page0032.pdf, downloaded 10 April 2022.

Benedikt, Salek, 2002, ' "Wir Fahren Nach England"', Journal,  Holocaust Survivors '45 Aid Society, Issue 26, Autumn, p 4-6.

Blandford, Nick, 4 May 2018, 'Material on Elmer Rahn', email.

'I Hear on my Rounds ... Australians with UNRRA', The Argus (Melbourne, Vic), 4 December 1945, p 7, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article12156653, viewed 5 November 2022.

Libraries Tasmania, https://librariestas.ent.sirsidynix.net.au/client/en_AU/names/search/results?qu=edna&qu=davis&qf=NI_INDEX%09Record+type%09Births%09Births, viewed 6 November 2022.

'Melbourne Teacher Aids European Children', The Herald (Melbourne, Vic), 3 August 1946, p 5, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article245542437, viewed 5 November 2022.

Mockunas, Jonas, April 2022, post to General Stuart Heintzelman/First Transport Facebook group.

Pildre, Peter, April 2022, post to General Stuart Heintzelman/First Transport Facebook group.

'Pretty Girl Migrants', The Daily News (Perth, WA), 28 November 1947, p. 1, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article79814870, viewed 5 November 2022.

Public Record Office, Victoria, Rate Books 1855-1963, digitised by Ancestry.com.au.

'To Their New Land', The West Australian, (Perth, WA), 29 November 1947, p 6, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article46819538, viewed 5 November 2022.

'Unaccompanied Children, Work of Melbourne Women with U.N.R.R.A.' The Age  (Melbourne, Vic), 7 September 1946, p 7, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article206366640, viewed 5 November 2022.

'War widows want higher allowance', The Weekly Times,  Melbourne, 10 October 1951, viewed 14 December 2022.

'Workers for UNRRA: Passports Refused to Nine Persons',  The Riverine Herald, (Echuca, Vic; Moama, NSW), 1 August 1945, p 6, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article116615757, viewed 5 November 2022.

Wikipedia, UNRRA  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Relief_and_Rehabilitation_Administration for more details.