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Useful books: International
Reading just one of these books would tell you far more about the Displaced Persons' story than a mere Website ever could. Try your local library or an online bookseller for
Eksteins, M. 2000. Walking Since Daybreak: A story of Eastern Europe, World War II, and the heart of our century. Boston, Houghton Mifflin.
Kunz, E.F. 1988. Displaced Persons: Calwell's New Australians. Sydney, Australian National University Press.
Proudfoot, M.J. 1962. European refugees: 1939-1952, A study in forced population movement. London, Faber and Faber.
Wyman, M. 1998. DPs: Europe's Displaced Persons, 1945-1951. Ithaca, Cornell University Press.
Useful books: International memoirs
Thomas, Sigrid von Bremen. 2007. Goodbye Stalin: A true story of wars, escapes and reinventions. Dallas, Durban House Press.
Useful books: The journey to Australia
My book on Bonegilla includes many pages about organising the journey and what happened on board the General Stuart Heintzelman:
Tündern-Smith, A. 2012. Bonegilla's Beginnings. Wagga Wagga, Triple D Books. Available through its own Website.
I know of only one other book about WWII refugees travelling to Australia:
Allbrook, M. and Cattalini, H. 1995. The General Langfitt Story: Polish refugees recount their experiences of exile, dispersal and resettlement. Canberra, Australian Government Publishing Service. (The Australian Government Publishing Service and its bookshops have been abolished, so this one is available through libraries and second-hand sources only.)
Useful books: Australian memoirs
Songaila, J. 2000. Journey to Paradise: The life story of Juozas (Joe) Songaila, A Lithuanian displaced person. Contact the author, joanmay AT connexus.net.au to find out more about availability. Like Juozas Sestokas (see below) Juozas Songaila came to Australia on the First Transport.
Skowronska, W. 2013. To Bonegilla From Somewhere. Ballarat, Connor Court Publishing. Wanda Skowronska writes about life in Wartime Poland and Latvia for her father and mother, in the context of those countries' histories, as well as about their life in Germany after the War and resettlement in Australia.
Uksi, J. 2015. From There to Here. Brisbane, June Uksi.
Lehtmets, A. & Hoile, D. 1994. Sentence: Siberia. Hartwell, Vic, Sid Harta Publishers.
Useful books: Australian Camps
Bonegilla, of course. There's my book on the foundation of the Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre and the prior history of the site, Bonegilla's Beginnings. To reference it properly, it's
Tündern-Smith, A. 2012. Bonegilla's Beginnings (Second Edition). Wagga Wagga, NSW, Triple D Books.
Glenda Sluga wrote an earlier book with an unhappy perspective, from its title onwards. It's
Sluga, G. 1988. Bonegilla, 'a place of no hope'. Parkville, Vic., History Dept., University of Melbourne. (Four editions in total were produced.) A digital version is available from Informit.
Bonegilla Camp was in north-east Victoria. North Camp was established by the State Electricity Commission of Victoria (SEC) near the Yallourn Power Station in the Latrobe Valley, hundreds of kilometres to the south of Bonegilla, to house recently arrived workers. Josef Sestokas has written a thorough history of the Camp, its environment, the local history, and the displacement of the Eastern Europeans who came there. His father, Juozas, came to Australia on the First Transport.
Sestokas, J. 2010. Welcome to Little Europe: Displaced Persons and the North Camp. Sale, Victoria, Little Chicken Publishing. Copies of this book might be available still from littleeurope AT bigpond.com.
Sale is about 70 kilometres east of the Yallourn Power Station. It was where the West Sale Migrant Holding Centre was established in 1949. Author Ann Synan has done a most thorough job of describing the background to the WWII refugees movement to Australia and many aspects of life in this camp:
Synan, A. 2002. We Came With Nothing, Story of the West Sale Migrant Holding Centre. Sale, Lookups Research.
A recent book is a comprehensive collation of the history and personal memories of Greta Camp, 50 road kilometres north-west of Newcastle, NSW. Its details:
Schulha, A. 2020. Beneath the Shadows of Mount Molly Morgan: History & Stories of Greta Camp, 1939-1960. [Ashtonfield, New South Wales, Alek Schulha.] Copies are available from the author, Alek Schulha, using the e-mail address shools AT bigpond.com.
Greta was the Camp divided into Chocolate City and Silver City. Silver City was the title of a 1984 Australian film about Polish refugees set in the Greta Camp, from director Sophia Turkiewicz. Penguin Books released a novelisation of the script by Sara Dowse:
Dowse, S. 1984. Silver City. Ringwood, Vic., Penguin Books.
In contrast to Sara Dowse's novel, Alexandra Dellios' paper the continuing importance of Bonegilla and Greta camps as sites of remembrance was published in a learned journal:
Dellios, A. 2015. 'Marginal or mainstream? Migrant centres as grassroots and official heritage'. International Journal of Heritage Studies 21 (10): 1068-1083.
Useful books: Nationalities in focus
Some useful books focus on the background and Australian settlement experiences of particular nationalities who came to Australia as Displaced Persons, refugees from the Soviet invasion of World War II. They may also look at the history of the nationality's settlement in Australia from the first known settler in the 18th or 19th century.
Kunz, E. 1985. The Hungarians in Australia. Melbourne, AE Press.
Putnins, A.L. 1981. Latvians in Australia. Canberra, Australian National University Press. This now can be downloaded as a PDF from an ANU Website if you search for the author and title.
Kazokas, G. 2003. Lithuanian Artists in Australia 1950-1990. Melbourne, Europe-Australia Institute.
Artymiuk, L. 2019. Destination Australia: Polish Soldier Migrants (1947-48). Melbourne, Polish Museum and Archives in Australia.
If you know of other books which you think should be here, please contact me through tundern AT yahoo.com.au.
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