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.

Helmuts Oskars Upe (1926-2018): Sheet Metal Worker by Ann Tündern-Smith

Helmuts Upe was easier to track down than many other First Transport arrivals because he was married to a cousin of a Dutch-born friend of mine.  We spent a couple of September afternoons in 2003 talking in his Gooseberry Hill home in the Perth hills.  A summary of what he told me then follows.

Helmuts Oskars Upe's photograph from his selection papers for entry to Australia

Source:  NAA, A11772, 313

He was born in Riga, Latvia, on 6 February 1926. When he was only 8 years old, his mother was one of several people drowned in a motorboat accident.  Helmut missed his mother deeply.  “A father is useful but a mother is necessary”, he said.

One winter’s night, the boat in which his mother was travelling hit a snag in the river and passengers were thrown overboard. Helmut’s mother could not swim and would have been wearing heavy clothing because of the weather. The cold water would not have allowed her to survive for long. 

Helmut was a keen reader but used to daydream through mathematics classes. When he reached high-school age, his teachers said that he should give up thought of further education. 

While the Soviet Army was invading Latvia for the first time, in 1940, he was already working behind the counter in a hardware shop. Given his now obvious intelligence, it is difficult to say how he would have earned his income had he been able to stay in Latvia.

Even at the still tender age of 14 in 1940, Helmut was politically aware and an active nationalist. He was a member of a group which resisted both the Soviet invasion and the ensuing German occupation. 

He and fellow younger members would play ball games against a high wall, say that of the local church, while the older resistance members were meeting nearby. They stayed on duty, despite the taunts of other youngsters, because they knew that they had to warn their colleagues if the meeting was likely to be discovered.

Given Helmut’s activism, it is not surprising that the likely return of the Soviet Army in September 1944, when he was already 18 years old, saw him travelling westwards. After he got to Danzig on a German ship, he joined the German Army. 

He was in Austria when World War II ended in May 1945. Arrest by the Americans and nine months as a Prisoner of War in the Bad Kreutznach camp followed.

The conditions here without any shelter were so poor, particularly when it was wet, that thousands died. 

Early on, he had to wear the same boots and socks for two weeks without changing. When he and others were finally able to take their socks off, the soles of their feet came off too. They had to move about on their hands and knees for a couple more weeks until new skin grew and hardened.

He passed himself off as a German to ensure that he did not join other Latvians being forcibly repatriated to the now Soviet Latvia immediately after the War. 

Later on he found out that, in his absence, he had been sentenced by a Soviet court to 10 years of hard labour for his resistance activities. Such a sentence might well have been accompanied by 25 years of exile, if the Estonian experience is any guide.

When he and a friend, Peter, were released from the POW camp, they started a wandering life, knocking on doors to ask for food and work. They found that the Germans were always kind to them, sharing the little food that they had. 

One door belonged to a man who had been a general in the German Army. He looked after them first until their health improved and they could do some work in return.

On his application to migrate to Australia, the wandering life was described as '1 year, farm labourer'.  This was after '2 years, merchant' in Latvia'.

At one of the German homes in Worms, in the Rhineland, they met another Latvian.  She recommended that they try one of the camps which were being set up for Displaced Persons. 

This was the name now being applied to the refugees from communism, who could not be called 'refugees' as the Soviet Union was one of the Allied victors in Germany. Helmut and Peter made their way north to one of these camps.

Life there was better, but boring. There was nothing much for them to do during the day. 

Somehow they seized upon the idea of joining the French Foreign Legion and travelled westward to the French Zone of Occupied Germany. They were recruited and started training. It did not take them long to realise that they had made a big mistake.

On parade, they were being asked to swear an oath of loyalty to France. Helmut asked to be excused to go to the toilet. Given permission, he jumped a fence, headed for the nearby railway station and found a train about to leave. 

Peter was with him. It did not matter where the train was going. This was just as well, since the train took them to Switzerland.

So it was over the border, back to Worms and, finally, back to the camp whose boredom they had escaped for a while. One day, somebody told them that there was a notice in the camp office about Australia recruiting migrants. Put me down, Helmut said casually.

In one of the holding camps before he left for Australia, Helmut saw the Chips Rafferty film, The Overlanders. This gave its viewers the impression that Australia was a vast desert. Wondering what he had let himself in for, Helmut was greatly relieved when the film’s action moved to Brisbane. 

As he had no scars or tattoos, he had no trouble passing the medical examination for Australia as well as the interview. 

He noticed on the General Heintzelman that something had gone wrong with the thorough selection processes as there were at least four passengers who could not speak any of the Baltic languages. One of them was one of the men who was sent back. 

What he did not notice was that there were also 114 women on the ship.

Helmut remembers that the men on the ship had Turkish cigarettes which had become mouldy. As they were the same length as American cigarettes, the men took American cigarettes out of their packets and replaced them with the Turkish cigarettes. They used the packets with the substituted cigarettes to pay for goods traded by Arabs who came out to the ship in the Suez Canal. 

It is hard to say who had the last laugh from this deal, as the men found that the brandy bottles which they pulled up in return were filled with tea.

As the Heintzelman sailed, its officers were suggesting that the men among the passengers should volunteer for jobs for the voyage, as they would get letters of commendation at the end. Helmut did not volunteer, as he believed that letters from the crew of the Heintzelman would carry no weight once they were in Australia.

When the Heintzelman berthed in Perth, Helmut remembers local people throwing small buckets of ice-cream up to the passengers. 

The passage across the Great Australian Bight in the Kanimbla was very rough. Few people turned up in the dining room for meals. 

One of Helmut’s friends returned from a meal to report that the ship was serving mushrooms in white sauce. Helmut quickly developed an appetite which overcame his queasiness. 

At the mess table he found, however, that the “mushrooms” were in fact tripe, which he had never eaten before and has not eaten since.

He does not remember mutton on the Kanimbla but it was on the menu in the Bonegilla Camp. He refused to eat it there, and still cannot eat lamb.

Helmut remembers Bonegilla Camp as a time of dreadful food. For example, the residents received only one slice of bread a day. 

The residents believed that the cooks were stealing the food to sell it. They used to walk to the local shop to buy extra food with the five shillings per week which they were paid.

The attitude of the commandant of the Bonegilla camp was, “If you don’t like the food here, go back to where you came from”.  The Bonegilla and Kanimbla experiences contrasted with the good food on the Heintzelman.

Some of the residents used to slip out of Bonegilla to work for neighbouring farmers. Helmut knew three or four others who did this, for fifteen shillings a day, three times their weekly income at the camp.

Helmuts Oskars 'John' Upe at 21, on his Bonegilla card

Source:  NAA, A2571, UPE HELMUTS

Helmut’s first job outside Bonegilla was fruit-picking at Shepparton. He felt well treated on this job. He was fed by his employer as well as being paid £8 per week.

Once he started working, the Germanic forename Helmuts was changed to John for Australians.

He and around twenty others were sent to Tasmania next, to work for the Goliath Cement factory at Railton, near Devonport. He was paid only £5 each week, from which he had to buy his own food.

Helmuts Upe (l) with Ojars Vinklers (r) captured by a street photographer --
they worked together at Railton, Tasmania, so perhaps this was in nearby
Launceston or Devonport

Source:  Helmuts Upe collection

He left Goliath Cement and Tasmania as soon as his two years’ contract was up.  He moved to Melbourne where he was recruited by the Cyclone company and started in sheet metal work. 

He married another Latvian.  They had one son, a journalist who commenced his professional training with a cadetship in Ballarat.  He is married, with two daughters.

Helmut and his wife ran a milk bar together in the Melbourne suburb of Ivanhoe for a while.  This proved more and more stressful, leading to the break up of Helmut’s first marriage. It was at this point that Helmut moved to Perth, in 1966.

He returned to sheet metal work and was involved in major projects, such as the kitchens of the Parmelia Hotel and various hospitals. 

His childhood indifference to mathematics was replaced by skilled awareness of the need to translate architects’ drawing exactly into three-dimensional stainless steel. He was so good at this that he remained in employment one year beyond the then normal retiring age of 65. 

He even taught himself how to use the company’s new computer for his work. 

One day his boss came to him to tell him that he had to leave because the company’s insurers were refusing to cover him any more.  This refusal on the grounds of age may well be against the law now.

Helmut visited Latvia twice after its second independence, in 1992 and 1995. While life for the residents was obviously still difficult, Helmut felt much more at home there than he had in Australia. 

Indeed, he would have returned to Latvia to live if it were not for his wife and son in Australia. 

He enjoyed an active retirement, looking after his own large garden on the summit of one of the hills surrounding Perth and those of many neighbours.

Death came on 9 September 2018, while in the care of a Perth nursing  home, at the advanced age of 92.

SOURCES

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; 313, UPE Helmuts Oskars DOB 6 February 1926, 1947-1947.

National Archives of Australia: Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla], 1947-1956; UPE HELMUTS, Upe, Helmuts: Year of Birth - 1906 [sic]: Nationality - LATVIAN: Travelled per - GEN. HEINTZELMAN: Number - 709, 1947-1948.

Upe, Helmuts (2003) Personal communications, 3 and 7 September.

Balts at Bedford Park, Ksaveras Antanaitis' brief home by Ann Tündern-Smith

Bedford Park in Adelaide now is home now to Flinders University and the Flinders Medical Centre, as well as many private homes. In the 19th century, it was a farm of that name. Some 1.6 square kilometres of the farm was purchase by the South Australian Government in 1917 so that it could build a sanitorium for tuberculosis patients. The sanitorium was supported by its own farm. This was where Veronika Tutins was sent to work in August 1948, so that she could be near the man she married 16 months later.

Bedford Park Sanitorium, 1943, with patients' accommodation on the left and
administration and nurses' quarters in the previous owner's home on the right

Source:  State Library South Australia

The previous owner's home converted into offices and nurses' accommodation,
with medical treatment rooms at the rear:  perhaps Veronika Tutins lived here in 1948-49

Source:  State Library South Australia

Another major presence after World War II was a camp set up the South Australian Government’s Department of Engineering and Water Supply (E&WS) for its workers. The Commonwealth Employment Service (CES) at the Bonegilla camp sent 64 of the refugees brought to Australia by the First Transport, the USAT General Stuart Heintzelman, to this camp to labour for the E&WS. Their first job was to be a new water main from the Happy Valley Reservoir into Adelaide city, about 20 kilometres north.

South Australia’s Minister for Works, responsible for the E&WS, had announced through the Adelaide News in May 1947 that adequate water supplies for Adelaide were being held up by a shortage of labour. There were sufficient pipes and 100 men were being employed already to lay them, but 150 more men were needed.

The E&WS already had employed a boarding house keeper at its Bedford Park camp, to help men unable to get accommodation in the city. The shortage of housing around Australia, due mainly to the builders and repairers of accommodation having been in the armed forces for up to 7 years previously, was a problem plaguing Adelaide too. (I have noted elsewhere that the shortage was so desperate that any refugee who had even helped build a farm shed in the Baltic States was enlisted as a ‘builder’s labourer’ for Australia.)

Thanks to the boarding house keeper, the men could buy meals for £1/5/- a week.  That was about one-fifth of their £5.12.6 weekly wage.  The Minister hoped that this would remove objections from men on this E&WS project who had to prepare their own meals. Presumably the lack of this service had been causing even more of a turnover of employees than normal.

Unlike the Bangham camp, which was set up specifically for men from the First Transport, the Bedford Park camp clearly was in existence before the 64 arrived in January 1948.

We have evidence that the 64 Baltic men were together in a separate part of the camp from an Adelaide Mail report of 17 January 1948, 8 days after the First Transporters arrived. Police had removed 7 men from the camp after a brawl which occurred while they were being fed. ‘Tables were upset and plates thrown at the cook.’ It seems that the boarding house keeper arrangement still had not made some of the men happy.

The Mail is very specific in reporting that, ‘The disturbances were not in the Balt section of the camp’.  The Baltic men may well have found the Australian version of food still strange, although they had had no alternatives for 7 weeks now and possibly also for another 4 weeks on the Heintzelman. However, they had been told that they could not leave of their own accord to look for other work. (It had been explained to them that they could go back to the CES for other work but, decades later, many did remember having been told that.)

The average age of the group from Bonegilla was 24 and the wage they were offered was the same award wage being paid to those already on the project. This was the first group of men sent by the CES to work outside the Bonegilla camp.

Marianne Hammerton has written a book on the history of the E&WS, called ‘Water South Australia’ and published in 1986. In it, she writes that, ‘From 1946 until well into the 1950s the Department could have done with — and indeed advertised widely for — 900 to 1,000 men just for construction projects, let alone maintenance … but it had little to offer. Those were boom years of full employment … the Department was not allowed to pay above-award wages …'

‘Standard issue to each man was an old army bed, a straw-filled hessian mattress, a chipped enamel pannikin, a knife, fork and spoon, a wash-up dish and an iron bucket. The men lived in ex-army tents, some with flooring, and shared hurricane lamps. Initially coupons were issued for food and blankets, but even when rationing was lifted the caterers showed little imagination. Supplies came in bulk — second-grade bulk tea, bulk porridge, meatballs, blue boiler peas and mutton.

‘The Department was forced to accept the problems inherent in such camps — caterers not turning up, gambling, drinking, training the unskilled — or have no labour at all …

‘In 1948 the influx of migrant (particularly Baltic) labour brought a partial solution to the Department’s problem. By 1950, 868 Displaced Persons remained out of a total allocation of 1,450 … The migrant labour force was not without its problems. There was no system of matching individuals to positions. The Department found it had a mixture of professionals, tradesmen and technicians working as labourers … Interpreters and volunteer teachers had to be found to overcome communication problems … ‘

A book is an unusual medium in which to find information relevant to the stories of our First Transporters. Other media in 1947-48 consisted of the press and radio and an element which was flourishing then but which has died out altogether: newsreels at movie theatres, before the feature film started. Keep in mind that Australia had no television until 2 months before the start of the Melbourne Olympic Games, in September 1956. 

Radio programs either were not recorded or the tapes were reused, so the media which survives from the first two years of life in Australia is mostly the press – although some Australian newsreels can be found still in our Film and Sound Archives.

One newspaper, at least, was as excited about the arrival of the first 64 (which it preferred to call 65) as the press had been in Fremantle, Melbourne and Bonegilla. The Mail headlined its story of 10 January 1948, ‘Balts free feel after prison camp horrors’. It continued, ‘”At last — freedom!” That was the first reaction of 65 [sic] Balts when they reached their new home in Bedford Park, Adelaide, yesterday.’

We know from stories of Baltic men and women from during and after WWII that it wasn’t one prison camp or even a series of them. The men were likely to have been digging trenches between opposing lines of gun or artillery fire. The women could have been conscripted into German factory work. Men who had volunteered or been conscripted to fight with the Germans were likely to have been in prisoner-of-war camps from 1944 onwards, but I have no evidence that this was a majority of the men.

While some of the women, at least, had arrived in Germany early enough to be ‘free living’, the majority of the Baltic refugees were placed in Displaced Persons camps — not prison camps — after the War ended. The occupying military authorities kept an eye on discipline in the camps — from Eisenhower down on the American side. Bonegilla camp had been run under the discipline of Major Alton Kershaw: see what Endrius Jankus has written for more on that.

Given that they did not know in advance what discipline would apply in their new camp, the ‘Freedom’ reaction of the new arrivals at the Bedford Park camp probably was along the lines of, ‘The start of our new lives as paid workers in the new country!’

The Mail interviewed Jonas Zumaras, Antanas Skiparis and Vincentas Babinskas from Lithuania, and Vilhelms Vanags, Voldemars Abolins and Viktors Romanovskis from Latvia. Their interpreter was the Estonian who had been appointed leader of the party by the CES in Bonegilla, because of his good English, Olaf Aerfeldt.

Olaf Aerfeldt's 1947 ID photo, when he was aged about 21

Source:  National Archives of Australia

All of them, except perhaps Romanovskis, had been held in German internment camps or forced to work as slave labour. This would explain the Mail’s ‘prison camp’ approach.

The Australian Workers Union reported to its members on 7 April through its Australian Worker newspaper that a very strong AWU camp had been established at Bedford Park. The camp was then about half Baltic refugees and half Australians. The Adelaide Branch Industrial Officer was attending fortnightly meetings of the camp committee. This was led by an Australian but half the other members were Baltic: Konstantins Svarinskis (a Latvian), Antanas Skiparis and Aleksandras Sliuzas (both Lithuanian). Interpreter Olaf Aerfeldt was described as ‘doing a magnificent job for his men and the Union’.

Olaf asked the Industrial Officer ‘to convey the thanks of the Balts in the camp to the AWU for the way the Union had looked after them since they arrived in Adelaide’ He added that ‘the Balts wanted to be good Australians and good unionists and the AWU had shown them the right road to follow.’

I will provide more details about these men in individual biographies.  Thanks to Rasa Ščevinskienė, we have a biography of one of them in the blog already.  He is Ksaveras Antanaitis, who was killed on 29 June 1948 when he fell from a truck bringing him and fellow workers back to the camp from their day's work.  The truck then ran over him, probably to the increased horror of all then involved.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE CLASSES

The Mail continued its interest in the new arrivals with articles headed, ‘Officials Ignore Teacher Plea’ (14 February) and ‘English Classes for Balts Arranged’ (21 February). Initially, the buck was being passed.

The State’s Deputy Director of the CES was quoted as saying, ‘The men were given a four-week course in English when they first arrived in Australia. Something should be done to follow that up. Perhaps we could get some volunteer teachers.’ He added that the job of the CES was finished when the men were handed over to the E&WS.

A Catholic priest said that about 40 of the men attended mass at his Church every Sunday — that would have been most of the 38 Lithuanians and a smattering of the Latvians. His opinion was that, ‘Four weeks’ instruction at Bonegilla is quite inadequate’. The responsible Commonwealth authority, the Commonwealth Office of Education, had opened in Adelaide the year before, but it looks like the journalist did not seek its advice.

One week later, the Mail was reporting that four teachers had volunteered to run English classes at the Teachers’ Training College one night a week and more if necessary. Between them, they would be teaching 30 of the refugees in small groups, then promoting them to a larger group as they advanced. They appeared to have organised this with the supervising engineer for the Happy Valley water main. The E&WS effort had been to mix the Baltic men with Australian workers ‘in the hope that they would pick up the language’.

Several people had driven also to the Baltic section of the Bedford Park camp to take some of the men home for meals, as their contribution to the teaching of English.

And the young women of the YWCA had organised a dance for the young Baltic men from the Bedford Park camp, for Friday, 18 February.

After that, the Mail left the Bedford Park men and chased other news, including incidents involving individual men. The only follow up in the press was more than two years later. Then the Director of the Adelaide office of the Universities Commission said that all migrants in South Australia had the opportunity to attend English languages classes. ‘All’ was limited to groups of six or more, when the Director went into detail. These groups could apply to the nearest school for a teacher in English (presumably, if someone helped them to do this).

The Director was responding to a motion from the State Council of the Australian Government Workers’ Association, insisting that ‘all foreigners brought into Australia should learn the language within three months or be sent back to their home country’. The Director pointed out to the Adelaide News reporter on 5 May 1949 that 3 months would be too short for some immigrants.

THE CONTRACT PERIOD

I’ve pointed out elsewhere that the E&WS seemed unaware that the Commonwealth Government had changed the duration of initial contract to work as directed from one year to two years while the Heintzelman passengers were on the high seas. They were informed of after some days at the Bonegilla camp. Endrius Jankus has written that a near riot ensued.

Endrius was one who tested the terms of the contract by finding his own work in Melbourne. He then was tracked down by the CES and told that he would continue to work as directed in Tasmania or be sent back to Germany.

The Adelaide Mail of 29 January 1949 reported that 19 of the Baltic men from the Bedford Park camp ‘who had completed their term of service’ had been allowed to transfer to other employers. Given the location and length of time involved, it is likely that all 19 were from the First Transport.

At this time, there still were 239 Baltic men employed by E&WS, more than 10 per cent of the Department’s workforce.

As explained earlier, if the E&WS found out about the Australian Government’s expectation of the contract length, any remaining for the First Transport group would have finished on 30 September 1949 or within days of that date.

SOURCES

Hammerton, Marianne (1986) Water South Australia Netley, Wakefield Press pp 232-5.

The Advertiser (1948) ‘Balts here today’ Adelaide, 9 January, p https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/43751623 accessed 24 July 2024.

The Australian Worker (1948) ‘Bedford Park camp, SA: Balts want to become good unionists’ http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article146243837 accessed 24 July 2024.

The Mail (1948a) ‘Balts feel free after prison camp horrors’ Adelaide, 10 January, p 3 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article55903813 accessed 24 July 2024.

The Mail (1948b) ‘Police aid sought in camp brawl’ Adelaide, 17 January, p 24 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article55904127 accessed 24 July 2024.

The Mail (1948c) ‘Officials ignore teacher plea: no English lessons for eager young Balts’ Adelaide, 14 February, p 24 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article55909057 accessed 24 July 2024.

The Mail (1948d) ‘English classes for Balts arranged’ Adelaide, 21 February, p 24 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article55905295 accessed 24 July 2024.

The Mail (1949) ‘Balts leave Govt. jobs’ Adelaide, 29 January, p 29 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article55924132 accessed 24 July 2024.

The News (1947) ‘Labor needed on water main’ Adelaide, 21 May, p 5 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article127299932 accessed 24 July 2024.

The News (1948) ‘Dance at Open House for Balts’ Adelaide, 19 February, p 11 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article128385028 accessed 24 July 2024.

The News (1949) ‘All “Given chance to learn English”’ Adelaide, 5 May, p 2 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article130191874 accessed 24 July 2024.

Wikipedia ‘Bedford Park’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedford_Park,_South_Australia accessed 23 July 2024.

Veronika Tutins (1911–2006), who disappeared?

Updated 4 August 2024

Veronika Tutins was a great friend of two other Latvian women from the First Transport, sisters Irina and Galins Vasins. Evidence of the friendship still exists in the form of 6 photos of Veronika, mostly with Irina and Galina. Suddenly, she vanished. What happened to her?

Veronika Tutins, 1947, from her Bonegilla card

Source:  NAA: A257, TUTINS, VERONIKA

All of them were employed initially in Australia at the Bonegilla camp. Irina was employed until February 1951, when the Department of Immigration offered her a transfer to another Reception and Training Centre for new arrivals, at Greta in NSW. Galina had left one year earlier, in February 1950. They certainly could be viewed as long-term Bonegilla employees, having worked there beyond the end of their initial contract  on 30 September 1949.

(L-R) Galina Vasins, Veronika Tutins and Irina Vasins
in the grounds of the Bonegilla camp, 1948

Source:  Private collection

Veronika, however, had ceased duty at Bonegilla on 22 August 1948 and was supposed to commence at the Bedford Park TB Sanitorium in South Australia on 24 August. We know that she wasn’t sent to South Australia as a patient, since any TB cases from Bonegilla were treated in the local Albury Hospital. 

(L-R) Galina Vasins, Irina Tutins and Irina Vasins
in the remains of a tank in the Bonegilla camp grounds, 1948

Source:  Private collection

Perhaps the answer lies in the story of Eduards Brokans, who arrived in Australia on 12 February 1948, on the Second Transport, the General MB Stewart. Due to the West Australian Government’s mistaken idea that all the passengers from the First Transport were to work in its State, the men from the Second Transport were held there pending a work allocation. So Eduards does not have a Bonegilla card. (The women were sent by train across the south of Australia, from Perth to Bonegilla, and do have Bonegilla cards.)

Eduards Brokans, from his 1947 selection papers

Source:  NAA: A11938, 494

Eduards were sent to Bedford Park in South Australia to labour for that State’s Department of Engineering and Water Supply (E&WS). We don’t know exactly when this happened, as we do with anyone whose Bonegilla card is extant. We can guess that this happened between February and August 1948, so Veronika had arranged to be near him.

It’s unfortunate that she did not tell Irina and Galina about her plans. Irina, for one, was still wondering what had happened more than 50 years later. If Veronika wrote to the Vasins sisters after moving to South Australia, they did not get the letters.

While Veronika's plan was to be near Eduards, both working in the suburb of Bedford Park, the South Australian Government had other plans.  Instead of Bedford Park, that Government sent Veronika to the Belair Sanitorium, 9 kilometres by road from Bedford Park.  That must have made seeing each other at weekends harder than it needed to be.

After Veronika stopped working there, the name was changed to Birralee, a named used previously when the property was a private home.  Belair was the name of the suburb in which the Birralee Sanitorium was located.  Birralee is  the name used by Veronika to describe her workplace when she applied for Australian citizenship.

Her application for citizenship shows that Veronika worked at Belair until December 1949.  My guess is that she left before her marriage.  Extant records in the National Archives of Australia show that Eduards and Veronika Tutins were married in Norwood, South Australia, on Christmas Eve, 1949. He was more than two years younger than his bride, being born on 29 June 1914. Her birthday was 15 November 1911.

Veronika had stayed at her Belair workplace for at least two months longer than required under the conditions of the voyage which brought her to Australia.  As reported here earlier, the first Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell, decided that the obligation to work as directed should end early, on 30 September 1949.  This was due to “the outstanding contribution they have made to Australia’s labour starved economy”.

Veronika had 6 years of primary education, followed by 4 years of commercial schooling. Eduards had 6 years at primary school only. She had been born in Zvirgzdene, a rural parish in Latvia’s Latgale province. Latgale is the one predominantly Catholic of Latvia’s four provinces: the others are predominantly Lutheran. Veronika advised the Australian selection team that she was a Roman Catholic.

Her registration as a Displaced Person with the American Expeditionary Forces now with the Arolsen Archives recorded that, in late 1945, she knew the Latvian, Russian and German languages. Two years later, when appearing before the Australian selection team, she undoubtedly could add English to the list. She had been selected as a waitress, back in the days when the Australian Government was setting up hostels for its younger, unmarried staff, although whether she waited on tables at Bonegilla is not known. He had been selected as a labourer.

Another Arolsen Archive card records that she had been living in Latvia’s capital, Riga, before fleeing to Germany. While in Latvia, she had worked as a typist, according to her application for Australian citizenship.

In Germany, from 7 December 1944 to 2 March 1945, she had been employed as a metal worker in a Chemnitz factory. Since Chemnitz became part of the zone occupied by Soviet forces, then became part of East Germany, undoubted Veronika was on the move westwards from early March 1945. By October 1947, she was living in a Displaced Persons camp in Esslingen, in south-western Germany.

She told the Australian selection team that she was single, but had one dependent, a sister. The sister was recorded on her Bonegilla card as Olga Zakis, still resident in Esslingen.

By the time of her application for citizenship in September 1958, Veronika had just obtained work as a comptometrist with a long-established Adelaide hardware manufacturer.  Since comptometers have not been used in offices since the 1990s, I suspect that the majority of readers will not know what they were.  

They were mechanical adding machines, which could be used for subtraction as well.  Trained comptometer operators could enter all the digits in a number at once, using up to ten fingers, unlike on modern calculators, where one digit at a time is entered.  This made them exceptionally fast.  Their decline was not due to the invention of modern calculators but to advances in electronic computing.

A comptometer manufactured in the 1950s

Source: John Wolff's Web Museum

Eduards had been born in the Rezekne area, also in Latgale. Like Veronika, he was a Roman Catholic. At the time of interview by the Australian selection team, he gave a street address in Esslingen. It does look like Esslingen could have been where these two met.

His previous occupations were recorded by the Australian team as farmer from 1927 (at the age of 13) to 1937, then ‘worker’ (perhaps labourer) for 1937-40, then office worker for 1940-44 and ‘worker’ again for 1944-47.

Veronika had recently had her 38th birthday at the time of her marriage. Despite this relatively advanced age for childbearing, they had three children together: two girls and a boy, born between 1950 and 1954.

Eduards became an Australian citizen in the Adelaide suburb of Mitcham on 17 October 1955. Very often, a couple make the commitment to Australia by applying at the same time and taking the oath of allegiance in the same ceremony. Veronika waited. She applied in September 1958, she was approved with her certificate sent to South Australia in February 1959, but she did not take the oath to become an Australian citizen until 27 October 1959, also at Mitcham.

Maybe even before this commitment to Australia, the United States became more attractive to them. It might have been economic opportunities, as with some of the other First Transporters who left (like Vytautas Stasiukynas) or it could have been personal reasons, including reunion with family members (see Viktoras Kuciauskas).

The attraction may well have been Eduards’ younger brother, Aleksandrs, born on 19 July 1917. Unlike the older sibling who started working on a farm at the age of 13, Aleksandrs had attended university in Latvia and graduated with a PhD in agronomy from the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, Germany. He initially resettled in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which also became the home of his brother’s family.

Ancestry.com has a digitised passenger list showing Veronika reaching San Francisco from Sydney on the SS Oronsay on 13 June 1960. With Veronika was her husband, a son and two daughters. The daughters were named as Mary and Rita, while the son was Edmunds. ‘Mary’ is likely to be the daughter identified on Geni.com as ‘Mērija Ilze Brokāne’. The names of the other two in their original, non-Anglicised versions, are not spelt out on this Website. 

It is possible that Veronika finally applied for Australian citizenship in order to have a passport for the journey to the United States. The Australian-born children would have been on one of their parents’ passports.

Dr Aleksandrs Brokans died at the age of 100 in 2017 in a Maryland nursing home. The children of Veronika and Eduards are listed among surviving members of his family.

Eduards did not have quite the long life of his younger brother, dying at the age of 86 in December 2000.

Eduards and Veronika Brokans in later life

Source:  Geni.com

Veronika lived on to the respectable age of 94, dying on 10 April 2006. Irina Vasins was still alive then, dying in 2008, while her sister Galina is still alive as far as I am aware. Mind you, it was not as easy 18 years ago to use the Web to solve disappearance mysteries, so I wasn’t able to find the answers in this blog entry while Irina was still with us.

Veronika is buried in the Resurrection Cemetery, West Hanover Township, near her final home of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

SOURCES

Ancestry.com ‘California, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists, 1882-1959 for Veronica Brokans, https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/10094931:7949 accessed 12 July 2024.

Arolsen Archives ‘DocID: 69544463 (Veronika TUTINS)’ https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/document/69544463 accessed 10 July 2024.

Arolsen Archives ‘DocID: 75443572 (VERONIKA TUTINS)’ https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/document/75443572 accessed 10 July 2024.

Geni.com ‘Veronika Brokāne’ https://www.geni.com/people/Veronika-Brok%C4%81ne/6000000011861721721 accessed 12 July 2024.

National Archives of Australia, Australian Customs Service, State Administration, South Australia; D4878, Alien registration documents, alphabetical series, 1937-65; BROKANS Eduards - Nationality: Latvian - Arrived Fremantle per General M B Stewart 12 February 1948, 1948-1955; https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=4072903 accessed 10 July 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; 819, TUTINS Veronika DOB 15 November 1911, 1947-1947; https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=5118138 accessed 10 July 2024.

National Archives of Australia, Department of Immigration Central Office; A11938, Migrant Selection Documents for Displaced Persons who travelled to Australia per General Stewart departing Bremerhaven 13 January 1948, 1948-1948; 484, BROKANS Eduards born 29 June 1914, 1948-1948; https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=4664555 accessed 18 July 2024.

National Archives of Australia, Department of Immigration, South Australia Branch; D400, Correspondence files, annual single number series with 'SA' and 'S' prefix, 1945-1969; BROKANS VERONICA - Application for Naturalisation - [Box 92], 1950-1959; https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=202814862 accessed 29 July 2024.

National Archives of Australia, Department of Immigration, South Australia Branch; D4881, Alien registration cards, alphabetical series, 1946-1976; TUTINS Veronika - Nationality: Latvian Arrived Fremantle per General Stuart Heintzelman 28 November 1947 also known as BROKANS, 1947-1949; https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=7171511 accessed 10 July 2024.

National Archives of Australia, Department of Immigration, South Australia Branch; D4881, Alien registration cards, alphabetical series, 1946-1976; BROKANS Eduards - Nationality: Latvian - Arrived Fremantle per General M B Stewart 12 February 1948 https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=7205717 accessed 18 July 2024.

National Archives of Australia, Department of Immigration, South Australia Branch; D4881, Alien registration cards, alphabetical series, 1946-1976; BROKANS Veronica - Nationality: Latvian - Arrived Fremantle per General Stuart Heintzelman 28 November 1947 Also known as NEE TUTINS, 1947- 1959; https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=7205718 accessed 13 July 2024.

National Archives of Australia, Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria] ; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla], 1947-1956; TUTINS, Veronika : Year of Birth - 1911 : Nationality - LATVIAN : Travelled per - GEN. HEINTZELMAN : Number – 1187, 1947-1948; https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=203711044 accessed 10 July 2024.

Star-Democrat (2017) ‘Obituaries: Dr Alexander Brokans’ Easton, Maryland, USA, 28 November, p A6 https://www.newspapers.com/image/353165191/?match=1&terms=edmunds%20brokans accessed 12 July 2024.

Vasins, Irina (2000-2007) Personal communications.

Vintage Calculators Web Museum,  Calculator Companies (2024) 'Comptometer' http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/comptometer1.html accessed 31 July 2024.

Wikipedia 'Comptometer' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comptometer accessed 31 July 2024.