'We Knew Things Would Get Better:' A Family Migration Story

Abstract

In the years immediately following the Second World War, Australia accepted its largest ever intake of refugees in a reconfigured immigration scheme that would have enormous consequences for the country’s future. After some early setbacks, most of the migrants who were accepted for resettlement came through the many Displaced Person’s camps that had been set up in Germany and Austria at war’s end. With the help of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and its successor the International Refugee Organisation, hundreds of thousands of displaced persons who couldn’t or wouldn’t return to their countries of origin were cared for and then resettled all over the world, almost 200, 000 of them in Australia.

This thesis charts the migration history of two families who took part in this scheme, both of whom had their origins in the Soviet Union, one of them Russian, one Ukrainian. It is the story of my own family. Beginning with an exploration of the circumstances of their pre war lives, it follows the reasons for their displacement during the war and their post war efforts to avoid repatriation to the Soviet Union and instead, to seek resettlement that eventually brought them to Australia.

Each family story highlights the ways in which persons displaced after the war were in many ways victims of their circumstances. But, very crucially, they were not only that. With their complex backstories, both families were also very decisive about how they conducted their journey both to and from displacement, manoeuvring their way towards the best outcomes they could get, and simplifying their backstories along the way to be able to get there.