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EVA ENGELMAN

THE IMMIGRANT'S

STORY
,
HE NUMBER OF IMMIGRANTS arriving in
Australia from Europe increased rapidly just
before and after the Second World War. As a
postwar immigrant myself I would like to
comment on how my experiences differ from the main
characters in three Australian books.
Moniek Prochownik, the unfulfilled artist in Alex
Miller's novel Prochownik's Dream (2005), migrated
to Australia looking for dignity and freedom. Perhaps it
was due to his bad war memories, his first work experiences, or his over-protective family, that he failed to
take the opportunities that Australia offered.
Fcliks and Komelia Skrzynecki, remembered by
their son Peter in his memoir The Sparrow Garden
(2004), arrived with pre-existing prejudices, homesick
even before they reached Australia, and spent their
whole life amongst fellow Polish immigrants.
Raimond Gaita's portrayal of his father in Romulus,
My Father (1998) sho.ws that he was an honest person,
good family man, friend and tradesman, but he was
unable to be a suc~essful immigrant because of personal misfortunes. '.

HE FIRST TIME I heard the term emigrant or


immigrant was in 1939 when, aged twelve, I
attended a farewell dinner in Prague in honour
of my cousin Rita and her husband John. They
were leaving for Australia because of the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. I could understand that, for
"political reasons", they were leaving behind their
families and native country with little hope qf ever
returning.
I watched the tearful faces of my relatives and listened to their different comments, some about recklessness and others about courage for undertaking such a
long voyage. I had no idea that seven years later, as the
only family survivor of the war, I would embark on an
identical journey.
In 1945 Rita and John succeeded in tracing me
through the Red Cross. Letters were exchanged

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,
between Prague and Sydney about travel arrangements.
For the sum of one pound, John and Rita obtained my
landing permit, number 39837, which permitted them
to guarantee my maintenance in Australia. The authorities had to be convinced that I was of sound health and
good moral chatacter. This presented no difficulties, as
I was only nineteen.
.
According to the passenger list of the converted
freighter Ville d 'Amiens, I arrived at the Port of
Sydney from Marseilles, via New Caledonia, on
November 25, 1946. Although I had a valid passport
with an Aust-ralian visa, an Aliens Registration
Officer filled out an "Application for Registration"
form with my personal details. He requested an additional photograph and took my fingerprints. The document was ready for my signature and I hoped I would
now be allowed to enter Australia. But my disembarkation was further delayed as, after a three-month
voyage, our luxurious but battered ship was so dirty
that the local wharfies refused to board and unload our
luggage.
Before our departure from Prague I had received
two puzzling photos from my cousins. One was of Rita
wearing a white uniform, standing in front of a shop
window displaying the sign "Delicatessen". Her plain
apparel was a far cry from that of the socialite I remembered, who always dressed immaculately in outfits
from her parents' fashion boutique. The other photo
showed John, formerly a lawyer, wearing baggy shorts,
knee-high socks and something vaguely resembling a
soldier's headgear.
The mystery was solved upon my arrival and gave
me an insight into Australia. John's shorts and digger's
hat were the "livery" worn by friendly aliens who volunteered for quasi-military duties. Rita's photo had
been taken in front of the Continental Delicatessen in
Macleay Street, Potts Point, where my cousins served
cold meats and salads prepared in a tiny kitchen. They
worked from morning until midnight, using a cookbook
written by Marie Janku-Sandtnerova (a sort of Czech

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THE IMMIGRANT'S STORY

Margaret Fulton). The shop assistant, Vera, born and


bred in Sydney, became Rita's lifelong friend and business partner.
After the lease on the shop expired, many customers
kept in touch with my cousins, which allowed me to
meet many of their friends. These included well-known
locals such as the journalist Rupert Lockwood, the
Canberra lobbyist Jack Smith, and the brother of the
popular singer Gladys Moncrieff, all of whom accepted
us immigrants into their midst.
Opportunities for immigrants in the postwar period
were endless. John and Rita's first venture, the delicatessen, was followed by a goulash bar at Kings
Cross; a dry-cleaning agency in Redfern; a shoe shop in
Ashfield; an import-and-export finn; and a company
producing ethical drugs.
Through hard work Rita and John managed to
redeem some of the upper-middle-class lifestyle they
left behind in pre-war Europe, and took time off for
short holidays, Rita enjoying her hobby of horse riding
and John taking up golf. They also succeeded in fitting
into the mainstream by accepting the Australian way of
life. They became my role models and mentors, and
made it easier for me to link with Australian customs
and standards.
Surviving "the final solution" had convinced me
that whatever the future brought must be an improvement on the war years. And destiny was kind to me. I
did find in Australia the regular, free and simple life I
was seeking.
Some, unusual events introduced me to my new
homeland. A friendly customs officer showed compassion when inspecting my only piece of luggage, a halfempty old suitcase, but confiscated a paper balof
poppy seeds, which I had brought as a present for Rita
to enable her to make her favourite poppy-seed cake; a
retired high school teacher held free English lessons in
which he gave me my first taste of Shakespeare; somebody asked me to translate from Chinese, not realising
that an immigrant coming from Europe was unlikely to
know Chinese.
The outre events did not end there. Years later at a
government seminar for Nesbians (AI Grassby's word
for immigrants from non-English-speaking backgrounds) a delegate representing Turkish women
demanded compensation from the government for
being tricked into coming to faraway Australia instead
of Austria as promised.
The late 1970s were still days when my husband
could lecture at a university having only a masters
degree (without a PhD) and I became a company secretary with only a bookkeeping diploma. Of course,
not all postwar immigrants would agree with my
enthusiastic assessment of a friendly country full of
opportunities.

LEX MILLER'S novel Prochownik's Dream portrays Moniek Prochownik as having the
chance to become a successful immigrant
because of his thorough knowledge of
English, acquired while working for ten years in Britain
before his arrival in Australia.
Moniek, a fourteen-year-old boy with an ambition to
become an artist, was separated from his parents during
the war and sent to a labour camp in Poland. He arrived
in Australia with his wife Lola, not as a stateless refugee,
but as an immigrant looking forward to enjoying here the
dignity of personal freedom.
Such hope was dashed on the first day he spent on the
moulding line of the Melbourne Dunlop plant, when he
felt obliged to change his name from Prochownik to
Powlet. Moniek considered the factory his second
prison-after the Polish labour camp-but he never left.
Despite a talent for painting and knowledge of English,
he failed to take advantage of the opportunities Australia
offered. Evidently he had no will to succeed, perhaps
feeling constrained by the experiences of his youth.
Was Moniek's lack of effort also partly due to the
(perhaps unintentional) absence of support from his
loving wife and his two sons, Roy and Tony, both born
in Australia? The over-protective Lola was proud to
watch her husband spend evenings drawing and guiding
Tony to become a painter. However, Lola put away
Moniek's paintings in an old suitcase, and they were
never exhibited. Did the family realise that Moniek's last
chance of being recognised as an artist in Australia thus
disappeared? At the end of the book, Prochownik's
dream had not been realised, 'as Tony had not yet painted
his father's portrait.
Roy, Tony's older brother, understood that his father,
by putting on a brave front, was trying to hide his frustration with his family. Roy came to the rational conclusion that "perhaps one lifetime was not long enough to
become an Australian".

ETER SKRZYNECKI'S memoir The Sparrow


Garcfen was ~ublis~ed fifty-fi~e yea~s after his
'family's arrIval 111 AustralIa. HIS mother
.. Komelia grew up in a Ukrainian village and
described her family (I am not sure if her father, a
Hungarian Jew, was included) as often hungry but happy
"surviving all that and the war". Kornelia separated from
Peter's father before their son was born. She met and
married Feliks during the postwar European upheavals.
Feliks Skrzynecki was born in Poland in the village
ofRaciborow. He was a working-class man, used only to
labour on the land. The merriory of the idyllic life on the
fann "amongst fields of rye" sustained Feliks through
his whole life.
Peter ",as born in 1945, in a Gennan household
where his mother worked during the war years as a ser-

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THE IMMIGRANT'S STORY

vant. He says he clearly remembers being in his


mother's womb and being born. "Her crying was for a
loneliness and pain, being far away from her home in the
Ukraine." 'Perhaps the author's poetic imagination is
playing a part here.
Early postwar immigrants came to Australia from
various walks of life, for political, economic, family or
other reasons. Some had landing pennits from guarantors who vouched to provide accommodation, maintenance and jobs. The Skrzynecki family was granted a
government-assisted passage (with a two-year contract
to undertake any work assigned to them). As displaced
persons, Feliks, Kornelia and four-year-old Peter left the
Gennan camp Lebenstadt in October 1949, on the
General R.M. Blatchford, sailing from Naples.
In contrast to Moniek Prochownik, who was happy to
leave his refugee status behind and hoped for a good life
in Australia, the Skrzynecki family seemed depressed
and homesick even before they reached Sydney Cove.
Peter described the crossing of the Red Sea as the "severance of the umbilical cord that bound his parents to
Europe and in particular, Poland and the Ukraine", and
encapsulates their grief and sorrow in an untranslatable
Polish word, zal.
I found some common ground with Peter. We both
contacted the Australian Archives for passenger lists of
the ships that brought us to Australia. The General R.M.
Blatchford included the Skrzynecki family under numbers 529, 530 and 531. The Ville d'Amiens showed my
name under number 194. Peter shed tears because of the
indignity suffered by his parents when listed as numbers.
But it was a mystery to me why he was offended when
the newcomers were considered as labourers and "not as
convicts, squatters, .or landed gentry". I remember my
travel number, L983, on a list of "passengers" taken to a
concentration camp. Out of a thousand only I I3 survived, my family not being amongst them.
As Peter obserVes: "Adolf Hitler was dead. The
Holocaust was over. The Allies had saved the people of
Europe ... This was a new beginning. Decisions had been
made." I made my decision to leave the old country and
was happily settled in Australia three years before the
Skrzynecki family was being processed at number 13
wharf at Pynnont by officers of the Department of
Immigration. From there the newcomers travelled to the
reception centre in Bathurst, "roughing it" for two weeks
in corrugated-iron Nissen huts before moving further
west. (I hardly dare to mention that I spent many happy
years on a ridge near Bathurst living in a dwelling of corrugated iron.)
The Skrzyneckis' destination was the Parkes migrant
camp. Peter remembers his stay there as a happy time,
but his mother, who worked in Parkes as a domestic,
vowed never to revisit the town or the camp again. Feliks
was employed as a pipe layer by the Sydney Water

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Board and visited his family for a few days each month.
After Feliks' two-year contract was completed, the
Skrzynecki family was free to go where they pleased.
They went only as far as western Sydney. With a deposit
of 270 and a loan of 1600, they became, within four
years, owners of a cottage at 9 Mary Street, Regents
Park, with a creek, garden and fruit trees. Feliks stayed
in his first job with the Water Board until his retirement.
The house in Mary Street became Peter's parents'
refuge, from which they never moved, and the "sparrow
garden" came to be their paradise. And yet, why this
ferocity, when Feliks "violently clubbed to death small
bodies of sparrows, trapped under wire netting which
should have protected his lettuces"? Peter suggests that
this was the only way his father could assert authority.
Feliks and Kornelia were law-abiding citizens and
loving parents. They made sure their son received a
Catholic education, but they attended mass only when it
was celebrated by a Polish priest, and arranged to be
buried in a family plot in the Polish section of
Rookwood Cemetery.
For their friends they' chose only Polish and a few
other immigrants from displaced persons' camps. In this
context two of Peter's statements come to mind: that life
in Australia will be for all of them "a far cry from the
lives they left behind as consequences of displacement
and dispossession"; on the other hand that "children
grow up in Australia to a far better life than their parents
had left behind in Europe".
The immigration angle provides the major theme in
The Sparrow Garden. I found it difficult to ~nderstand
why Peter exaggerated the intolerance of the Australian
immigration officials, politicians and some inhabitants,
who were not used to the postwar influx of refugees.
After all, that is what we were, "not convicts, squatters,
or landed gentry". I think Associate Professor Peter
Skrzynecki OAM would concede that the second generation of immigrants can choose their trade or profession
without being discriminated against. Shouldn't he also
admit that his parents, only four years after arriving in
Australia, already owned their home and could select
their own way of life? It unfortunately did not include
adjusting fully to Australia.
IMOND GAITA'S biography, Romulus. My
Father, is more than just a description of how
a family of refugees deals with life in a new
ountry. It is an attempt to understand a man
from whom Raimond learned three fundamental things:
"what a good workman is; what an honest man is; what
friendship is".
Such a man is called, in Yiddish, a Mensch: an
upright, honourable and decent man. With such virtues
Romulus should have become a successful settler and fit
easily into the local community. Instead, he and his

Ri

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THE IMMIGRANT'S STORY

family became "victims of misfortune, in their different


ways, broken by it, but never thereby diminished".
Romulus was born in the Banat, then a Romanian
part of Yugoslavia. By the time he was seventeen, he
had completed his apprenticeship as a blacksmith and
was recognised by his master for his workmanship.
Looking for better prospects, he left for Germany, but
his plans were cut short by the beginning of the war.
Romulus was conscripted to work in a munitions factory in Dortmund in the Ruhr Valley. There he fell in
love with a sixteen-year-old chemistry student,
Christine Anna Doerr. Romulus, despite his dark complexion, was accepted into her middle-class German
family due to exceptional times: he supplied them with
otherwise unobtainable goods through the black market.
He luckily avoided being caught and
imprisoned as a black marketeer. He
could also have been executed for his
association with a pure Aryan maiden.
After the war, Romulus realised that
Christine, due to her mental and physical condition, was unable to look after
their baby son. Although her parents
were happy to care for their grandchild
and although Romulus, with his trade
and skills, looked forward to a prosperous future in postwar Germany, he gave
in to the whim of his sickly wife, who
believed that life in a wanmir climate would cure her
ills. Did some of the experiences of the war years spent
in Germany influence Romulus' decision to leave
Europe?
Thus, in 1950, Romulus and Christine, with fouryear-old Raimond, sailed to Australia on the Hersey
under an assisted passage scheme and docked at Port
Melbourne. From there, the family transferred to
Bonegilla, a reception camp for immigrants. Romulus
was sent to work on the construction of Cairn Curran
Reservoir on the Loddon River in central Victoria,
where accommodation was provided for men only. A
skilled tradesman, Romulus was put to work with a pick
and shovel, which he accepted as repayment for the free
passage he could not have otherwise afforded. He
looked forward to a new life for himself and his family
after fulfilling his two-year bond.
When Romulus received news from Bonegilla that
Christine was neglecting Raimond, he felt he had no
option but to obtain permission to keep his son, for at
least a month, at the workers' camp at Cairn Curran. His
two new friends, Romanian brothers Pantelimon and
Mitru Hora, helped to look after Raimond. When the
authorities revoked the privilege, father and son moved
into a nearby farmhouse, "Frogmore", near Baringhup.
Christine joined them and Romulus hoped that,
although the accommodation was primitive, without

electricity or running water, it offered some hope of


keeping the family together.
It was to no avail: "A troubled city girl from Europe
could not settle in a dilapidated farmhouse in a landscape that highlighted her isolation." Longing for company, Christine began a relationship with Mitru, and
eventually followed him to Melbourne.
By then Romulus, released from his contract, had to
take up a job in a tool-making factory and at the same
time look after six-year-old Raimond. He did not complain about his predicament, or become bitter or blame
the government for taking advantage of him. There was
no woman in Romulus' home to bring up a child.
Christine, depressed and suicidal, only occasionally visited the farm. The only help came from his friend
Pantelimon (known as Hora). When
staying with Romulus and Raimond at
Frogmore, Hora had to intervene
between father and son, because of
Romulus' strict behaviour towards
Raimond. Only Romulus' animals,
Rusha the cow, Marta the cat, Orloff the
dog and especially Jack the cockatoo,
seemed to have a calming influence
over Romulus. Nevertheless the two
friends formed a close relationship, and
openly discussed their different experiences-Romulus under the German
occupation and Hora under the communists.
Romulus accepted a neighbour's offer to use his
workshop. This enabled him to return to his trade and
begin manufacturing wrought-iron furniture. His reputation as a skilled artisan soon spread among farmers of
the region to neighbouring towns and even as far as
Melbourne. According to Raimond, his father's work
"both expressed and formed much of his character. His
sense of the importance of work and of its moral and
spiritual requirements was simple and noble."
Most postwar immigrants, not long after their arrival
in Australia, had steady jobs, their own homes, a car, and
could afford to look after their children's education.
Romuhls, in contrast, had to cope with the suicide of
Mitru an~' Christine and the feelings of guilt that rieit~er
he nor his friends had realised how far his wife's life was
affected' ~y her psychological illness. It seemed that not
even Chri.stine's frequent hospitalisations and her stormy
relationship with Mitru fully explained her incapacity to
care properly for her children. Their two little girls
became wards of the state, as the authorities denied
Romulu~ permission to adopt them.
The painful times were, to some degree, alleviated
by Ronllil4s' prospering business. He was known as an
honest man who would not do careless or shoddy work.
And yet, the thirty-seven-year-old Romulus felt isolated among his neighbours and longed for sociable

Roy came to
the rational
conclusion that
"perhaps one
lifetime was not
long enough
to become
an Australian".

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THE IMMIGRANT'S STORY


European society. Perhaps he was trying to bring a little
bit of Yugoslavia to this country through corresponding
with a young woman named Lydia whom he intended to
marry. After two years she arrived in Australia-but with
a husband, brother and mother.
After this betrayal on top of his other misfortunes,
Romulus admitted himself to the Ballarat psychiatric
hospital, where Raimond-a boarder at St Patrick's
College in Ballarat-visited him. Romulus' mental
breakdown reduced his confidence and spirit, which was
a shock to Raimond, who realised that he would never
again be able to accept his father's authority.
Romulus released himself and returned to Frogmore.
Sometimes he was able to hide the signs of his sickness,
at other times his condition was so bad he had to be rehospitalised. Nevertheless he later married a young
Yugoslav divorcee from Melbourne, Milka, who was not
only able to deal with Romulus' illness, but she also
shared his love for animals and was a supportive and
willing worker.
Still feeling depressed and imprisoned in Australia,
Romulus finally revisited Yugoslavia, not realising that
the pre- and postwar jovial atmosphere of Europe,as
romanticised in his memories, was no more.
Disappointed, he returned to Australia.
Luckily I had no romantic dreams about my former
homeland, so it was no big surprise that on my first visit
to the Czech Republic after the collapse of the communist system I found that my grandfather's house in
Prague had been given by the state to total strangers.
They claimed that no heirs had survived the war,
although they were well aware of my existence. I
appeared in 1991 at the Appeals Court. It would have
been difficult for the judge to deny my ownership, and
after all legal documents were re-examined, part of the
house was eventually returned to me.
I thought I would have some free time in the beautiful city of my birth, but it was not to be. One of the tenants, an international bank, disputed the court's decision
and brought over an English QC to test my identity.
Although I had strict instructions not to interrupt the
proceedings, I could not help but call out to the arrogant
QC: "Don't treat me as an intruder, you are the one sitting in my parents' dining room!" Eventually I won, and
was happy to fly back home to Australia.
The visit to Europe failed to satisfy Romulus' hopes
and it did not make his adjustment to the Australian way
of life any easier. He and Milka recognised the generosity and decency of their neighbours and friends, but both
felt that the recently emerged "multiculturalism", which
should have brought a changed attitude towards New
Australians, was "not free from condescension by the
very people who sang its praises".
Romulus finally conceded that Christine did not

98

deserve to lie in an unmarked grave. About twenty years


after her death, Raimond returned from London, where
he was working, to help his father build a monument in
Christine's memory. When Barbara and Susan,
Raimond's half-sisters, then visited their mother's and
father's grave, Romulus felt that whatever might happen
in the future, nothing could undo the good of the family
members finding each other.
HE MORE THINGS CHANGE the more they stay the
same. Take for instance the humble Bathurst
telephone directory. In 2003, the Department of
Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous
Affairs had three simple entries:
General Enquiries
Australian Citizenship
Complaints
By 2007 the number of entries had nearly tripled and
included the following:
Immigration dob-in line
Employees Work Rights checking line
Employees Work Rights feed-back line
Client services fax-back line
General skilled migrant infonnation
In 2005 a culturally diverse working group arranged
a multicultural gathering in Bathurst to highlight the
bright future for immigrants and their children and
acknowledge their ethnic, cultural, social and religious
diversity. I sat next to a lonely-looking couple with two
little girls. They were refugees from Iran. The Qusband,
in his late thirties, told me in broken English that while
working as a labourer in a factory he had no opportunity
to better his position and still had problems communicating with his co-workers. They were superficially
polite and friendly, but had no desire to mix with his
family and compatrio'ts. His wife felt lonely and
unhappy because they missed their relatives and friends.
They decided to stay in Australia, for the sake of their
children's future.
My Iranian acquaintance would have agreed with the
statement that "perhaps one lifetime was not long
enough to become an Australian". And yet, all the families in my story decided to stay in Australia.
According to anthropological studies and archaeological excavations, large movements of populations
date back as far as the Stone Age period. One of the earliest written stories of migration is Yahweh's call to
Abram, in Genesis 12: "Leave your country for the land
I will show you ... So Abram went." Given the continuing upheavals around the world, large-scale migration
looks likely to be with us for some time to come. We can
only accept that some of us will succeed and be happy,
and others will not. To solve all the problems of immigration would require the wisdom of Solomon.

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