Ambivalent Experiences of Encounter

Philipp Strobl

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Chapter 6 Ambivalent Experiences of Encounter

In: A History of Displaced Knowledge: Austrian Refugees from National Socialism in Australia

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Philipp Strobl

Philipp Strobl
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Pages:: 196–224

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004714939_007

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After they escaped the clutches of the Nazis, this book’s protagonists were scattered throughout different parts of the world before they finally came to Australia. Some of them took extended stays in other countries, such as Switzerland, Greece, France, Belgium, the United Kingdom, or Portugal, as we saw in the last section. During that time, they had managed to get a visa, the funding necessary to finance the long ship journey, and the landing money required of non-British citizens without a sponsor to enter Australia.¹ Their journeys brought them to Australia via different routes. The majority of them (18 out of 26) came through British or French ports, using the British Orient Steam Navigation Company, which provided the most frequent connections to Australia through the Suez Channel and over the Indian Ocean. Five of them took a different route through the Americas and the Pacific Ocean. The most frequently used connections on these routes were provided by the New Zealand Union Steamship Company. Sylvia Cherny, who arrived in 1941, shortly before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, travelled on board one of the ships of the American Matson Line. The Italian Lloyd Triestino shipping company brought two of this book’s protagonists to Australia on a route through the Indian Ocean. Intercontinental travel was almost exclusively by ship. Only one of them used the services of airlines. Starting from the early 1930s, Dutch, British and, Australian companies were attempting to provide regular air connections to Australia.² Helen Roberts came to Sydney with an aircraft of the Royal Dutch Indies Airways. In 1938/1939, the average travel time between the United Kingdom and Australia was about six weeks. A flight may have cut the time to about 10 to 16 days with multiple layovers in Asia.

The refugees remembered the weeks aboard the ships as being very monotonous. There was not much for them to do. Most of them had booked one of the tourist class cabins, which separated men and women. Annemarie Mutton described her journey as follows:

We came in a so-called one-class liner, Ormonde. We were very much downstairs. Ernest shared a cabin with 3 other men, I shared a cabin with 5 other women and a baby. We were separated and shared inadequate facilities with a large number of British migrants from the North of England and some Italians. We met each morning to wander around fairly aimlessly.³

Sylvia Cherny also described the loneliness she felt during her journey in her memoirs: “As I spoke very little English, I felt very timid to go to the restaurant […] and so, for most of the journey, I lived on sandwiches […]. We travelled cabin class with strict instructions from our mother, not to leave the ship on route.”⁴ Marie Bergel recalled her reactions when immigrants on her ship played Viennese folk songs, however, she also mentioned that she had earned her first British currency aboard the ship: “There were seven other refugee families on board of the Anchises. At Christmas eve they played ‘Wien, Wien nur du allein.’ I cried bitterly. I still felt as a Viennese. I did the feet of an officer at the ship. That was my first earning in a foreign country.”⁵ Sometimes the five- to six-week journey brought people closer together and some of the refugees made their first Australian friends on the boats, as John Hearst recalled: “We got on to the Orama and we met Jury and Rosie Kabosch and we were friends ever since we had the boat trip together.”⁶

Table 3

Information about the refugees’ journeys (author’s compilation)

Nationality of the transport company	Name	Name of vessel	Company	Port of arrival	Year of arrival
United Kingdom	Charles William Anton	ss Orford	Orient Steam Navigation Company	Sydney	1938
	Grete Vanry	ss Otranto	Orient Steam Navigation Company	Sydney	1939
	Joan Lynn	ss Anchises	Orient Steam Navigation Company	Adelaide	1939
	Marie Bergel	ss Anchises	Orient Steam Navigation Company	Adelaide	1939
	Paul Hirsch	rms Otranto	Orient Steam Navigation Company	Melbourne	1939
	Annemarie Mutton	rms Ormonde	Orient Steam Navigation Company	Melbourne	1938
	Irma Weiss	rms Strathmore	Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company	Sydney	1939
	Ernest Bowen	rms Ormonde	Orient Steam Navigation Company	Melbourne	1938
	Kurt Selby	rms Orontes	Orient Steam Navigation Company	Melbourne	1938
	Reinhold Eckfeld	hmt Dunera	Royal Navy	Sydney	1940
	Henry Michael Teltscher	hmt Dunera	Royal Navy	Sydney	1940
	Gustav Bratspies	hmt Queen Mary	Royal Navy	Sydney	1940
	John Hearst	ss Orama	Orient Steam Navigation Company	Melbourne	1939
	Bruno Bush	ss Moreton Bay	Aberdeen & Commonwealth Line Ltd	Fremantle	1946
	Elisabeth Ziegler	rms Strathaird	Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company	Sydney	1939
	Hans Eisler	ss Orama	Orient Steam Navigation Company	Sydney	1939
	Olga Agid	rms Ormonde	Orient Steam Navigation Company	Melbourne	1939
	Viola Winkler	rms Orontes	Orient Steam Navigation Company	Sydney	1939
New Zealand	Gerhard Felser	rms Niagara	Union Steam Ship Company	Sydney	1938
	Hanny Exiner	tss Maunganui	Union Steamship Company	Melbourne	1939
	Sue Copolov	rms Aorangi	Union Steamship Company	Melbourne	1938
	Richard Tandler	rms Aorangi	Union Steamship Company	Melbourne	1938
Italy	Gertrude Langer	Remo	Lloyd Triestino Soc.Anon.di Nav., reg. Genoa	Sydney	1939
	Paul Herzfeld	Esquilino	Lloyd Triestino Soc.Anon.di Nav., reg. Genoa	Adelaide	1939
United States	Sylvia Cherny	ss Mariposa	Matson Lines	Sydney	1941
Netherlands	Helen Roberts	Lockheed 14-wf62 Super Electra	Royal Dutch Indies Airways	Sydney	1939

When the refugees finally arrived in Australia after their long journey, a new part of their life started with them facing an unknown living situation. None of them had previously been to Australia, and the culture and society of the British semicolonial country was unknown and strange to all of them. What they did and whom they met and socialized with during those early days was essential for how they continued their future life paths “Down Under.” Subsequently, these experiences frequently determined whether and how the refugees applied their cultural capital in their new homeland. This section of the book investigates this initial and determining phase of their lives. It examines everyday intercultural encounters in so-called contact zones—a term coined in 1991 by the linguist Mary Louise Pratt to describe social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power.⁷ These considerations are informed by an extended multilayer concept of identity formation, which is a useful tool for reconstructing and comprehending the dynamic and “hybrid” patterns of identities involved in migration processes.⁸

As “strangers”⁹ in a new land, this book’s protagonists experienced what has been described as “everyday otherness,” a form of “cultural crisis—reflecting both danger and opportunity—as long-term regional residents and new ‘visible migrants’ engage in the challenges of intercultural interaction.”¹⁰ Their first experiences of encounter are of particular interest for this analysis since they shaped their sense of belonging and subsequently affected the dynamics of their identity formation process, the ways in which they imagined their future lives in Australia, and, ultimately, the ways in which they applied their cultural capital. A focus on the interactions between the refugees and the local population can help to analyse everyday intercultural encounters¹¹ between Austrian refugees as “the strangers” and Australians as “the locals.”¹² Thus, this section uses refugee memories to discover and question their everyday-life situations, such as encounters in the workplace, or the neighbourhood grocery store after their arrival. Influenced by the “new biography” school of thought,¹³ it observes these sources in their context of origin and considers the fact that their “genuine truth” is not constituted by historically secured facts but rather by the pictures and fragments of the past they offer. Then, it categorizes and compares refugees’ memories and contextualizes them against the literature on identity formation. This allows the demonstration of the dynamics and hybridity of self-identities, as well as the complex ways in which encounters impacted upon their social relations and their acculturation.

Researching memories of everyday encounters offers reliable insights into the intercultural, social coexistence of people. Encounters with “everyday otherness” can be difficult because they imply the possibility for conflict, misunderstanding, and antagonism.¹⁴ They constitute important situations in the lives of this book’s protagonists that “may facilitate, or impede mutual understandings and integration” during a crucial phase within the migration process.¹⁵ The researching, comparing, highlighting and analysing of the memories of selected key moments in the arrival process of refugees of the Second World War in Australia has not yet received much scholarly attention. More research on these processes is needed and will improve the understanding of the complexities, challenges, effects, and strategies of encounters between refugees and members of a host society. Upon their arrival in Australia, all the members of this book’s sample group had no previous personal experience of Australia and thus occupied positions of “strangers” in the sense that they “observed specific behaviours, habits, and lifestyles” and experienced “norms of conduct which might [have been] surprising or strange to them, both in a positive and negative way.”¹⁶ Memories of their encounter experiences offer a reflective judgement of the meaning of their experiences. They show how refugees recalled their experiences of “everyday otherness” upon their arrival, a process that, as has been shown in an earlier study, sustainably affected the formations of their identities in Australia.¹⁷

6.1 Refugees in Australia: A Brief Historical Introduction

Refugee migration to Australia has a short history compared to other states. Many factors are responsible for this, not least the fact that most of the refugees of the 19th and early 20th century may have “perceived the country to be too remote,” as historian Klaus Neumann put it in his recent book about Australia’s responses to refugees.¹⁸ The country was barely touched by the major refugee movements of the late 19th century. During that time, no distinction was made between forced and unforced migrants and there were no humanitarian provisions for the former, who instead often relied on the assistance of family, friends, and volunteer organizations. Refugees had to meet the standard immigration criteria.¹⁹ Among the few refugees that came during the 19th century were German Lutherans, who fled religious persecution in Prussia and settled in South Australia during the 1830s and 1840s, Lebanese escaping civil conflicts during the 1860s and 1890s, and Russian Jews escaping pogroms during the 1890s.²⁰

When the first Australian parliament convened on May 9, 1901, refugee issues were not to be found on any agendas. Three-quarters of a century would pass before a comprehensive refugee policy was announced in parliament: until the 1970s, refugees were regarded as regular immigrants. Once arrived in Australia, “they were supposed to leave behind their experiences of suffering, and their allegiances to their native countries.”²¹ The Jewish refugee crisis of the 1930s was vital in raising an awareness of refugees as a special and vulnerable group. And between 1936 and 1939, because of a growing awareness of the Nazi terror against the Jewish population as well as because of a slow recovery of the Australian economy, there was a gradual relaxation of alien immigration policies.²² However, there was still no such thing as a “refugee” status and refugees were still regarded as regular migrants. Only during the early 1940s did the Australian government explicitly consider its obligation toward refugees.²³ From its very inception, Australia’s immigration policy was “highly selective, tightly controlled and carefully managed.”²⁴ The fact that the country neglected to implement a refugee policy after federation, however, “was not mere oversight.”²⁵ It was “necessary to preserve its discriminatory immigration policies and desired cultural homogeneity, which would, by definition, be compromised by agreeing to accept refugees on an unpredictable humanitarian basis,” as historian Katrina Stats has written.²⁶

According to Andrew Markus, Australians, from the turn of the 19th century, developed a “clear concept of themselves as […] superior to all non-European [high-status]²⁷ people.” Thus, as he claims, “discrimination on the grounds of race became normal, accepted behaviour.”²⁸ From its first foundational meeting onward, the Australian parliament designed laws such as the Immigration Restriction Bill or the Pacific Island Labourers Bill to exclude those who were regarded as “undesirable.” As a result, Australia’s population became more racially homogeneous during the first four decades of the 20th century.²⁹ Until 1948, Australian residents were British subjects. They originated overwhelmingly from the British Isles, either by birth or by descent. Australia’s Chinese-born population, which constituted the largest non-indigenous, non-European minority, for example, shrank from 29,000 to 6,400 during those four decades.³⁰ This, however, should not overshadow the fact that the predominantly British-Australian settler society developed its own sociocultural specifics, for example, through contacts between the British and the indigenous population or other marginalized groups, often under highly asymmetrical relations of power, which also affected identity formation.³¹

When the League of Nations High Commission for Refugees introduced identity certificates, so-called Nansen passports, as emergency passports for people displaced in Communist Russia, Australia—protected as it was from obligations toward refugees by distance—regarded refugees as an exclusively European problem.³² When the 1926 intergovernmental conference was convened by the League of Nations, Australian prime minister Stanley Bruce avoided addressing the refugee issue, as he expected “great difficulties.”³³

Racial prejudices and negative attitudes toward immigration increased further during the Great Depression of the 1930s and reinforced the already dominant assumption “that Australia should remain as British as possible.”³⁴ At that time, even informed opinion was still cautious about the number of immigrants Australia could absorb, and it was repeatedly stressed that immigration should be on a “modest scale.”³⁵ Various professional associations strongly opposed the intake of refugees. Representatives of doctors and dentists, architects, engineers and accountants, as well as lawyers, were among the main groups working to prevent refugees with professional qualifications from entering Australia, because of their fear of competition.³⁶ Furthermore, refugees were accused of working under conditions of “sweated labour” and of establishing “backyard industries, where industrial awards were not observed.”³⁷ These strong negative public reactions are crucial in understanding the government’s reserved response to the refugee crisis, as Suzanne Rutland wrote.³⁸ And accordingly, the Lyons government tried to avoid making any commitments toward refugee protection. Prime Minister Lyons, for example, declined to sign the 1933 League of Nations Convention Relating to the International Status of Refugees, which enshrined the key principle of refugee protection, non-refoulement, and would later serve as a model for the UN Refugee Convention. Because of this, Australia was not bound to refugee protection.³⁹ The right-wing government of Robert Menzies followed this direction. Additionally, Canberra’s bureaucrats resented an immigration policy being thrust upon them by circumstances over which they had no control, with large sections of the public concerned about “labour displacement and racial blending.”⁴⁰

The events of the spring 1938 Anschluss, when Nazi Germany occupied Austria and triggered a large wave of refugees, thus coincided with a general atmosphere of mistrust toward migrants in Australia. Increased numbers of refugees from Nazi oppression prompted the international community to consider their response to the refugee crisis in July 1938. The Evian Conference was portrayed as a concerted, global effort to cope with the problem of displaced minorities, however, it was not successful, because of the lack of interest of its members in taking refugees.⁴¹ Australia’s participation was based on the premise that no country would be expected to receive a greater number of immigrants than was already permitted by their existing immigration legislation.⁴² Like most of the other participating states, Australia, maintained a negative position on the liberalization of its immigration policy,⁴³ and potential asylum-seekers faced strict requirements influenced by antisemitic and racist criteria.⁴⁴ The Australian delegate summarized the official Australian stance vis-à-vis the intake of refugees as follows: “it would no doubt be appreciated that as we have no racial problem we are not desirous of importing one.”⁴⁵

Antisemitism existed in Australia, although in a different form than it took in the Nazi state or in Eastern Europe countries. As Rodney Gouttman has described in his study about antisemitism in Australia, the phenomenon existed and it can be argued that “while in this epoch the problem of antisemitism in Australia never approached the virulence experienced elsewhere, the fear that this odious prejudice could break out at any time also had a profound and defining effect on the behaviour of Australia’s Jews.”⁴⁶ It manifested itself amongst other things in the requirement for a quick assimilation of newcomers and “Non-Anglo,” or “foreign” Jews who arrived in Australia were required to assimilate immediately into an Anglo-Jewish population. This often overlooked fact is particularly interesting, since their effect upon Jewish attitudes and behaviour, both towards the Gentiles among whom they live and within their own community is frequently a missing element in the study of antisemitism.⁴⁷ However, despite the pressure Jewish communities put on newly arriving Jewish refugees in terms of assimilation, since Jewish refugees from Russia had already arrived during the 1920s, anecdotes about discrimination of Jews in professional life, government departments, clubs and large retail stores mounted.⁴⁸ Hilary Rubinstein and Suzanne Rutland have provided lists of agents of antisemitism, ranging from different individuals, and organizations, to fringe and mainstream media.⁴⁹ Antisemitism, as Rodney Gouttman has shown, was expressed mainly in three forms during the 1930s. Some left-wing labour politicians, such as Frank Anstey, took up such themes when depicting Jews as “arch bloodsucking capitalists.”⁵⁰ Furthermore, anti-Jewish animus turned up in the rhetoric of the Labor Premier of New South Wales Jack T. Lang during the 1930s and 1940s.⁵¹ Xenophobic nationalists and racists also had their version of the “evil Jew.” Such views were regularly published in The Bulletin with its emblematic fat capitalist John Bull Cohen, Smith’s Weekly, and The Truth.⁵² The Bulletin, for example, regularly stressed that “the refugees would form unassimilable colonies in the already overpopulated cities of Sydney and Melbourne,” fearing that they would become “foci of disorder and racial tension.”⁵³ In the second half of the 1930s, there was a certain but limited spread of pro-Nazi propaganda, particularly in South Australia,⁵⁴ while only one year after the outbreak of the war, the small xenophobic and clearly antisemitic Australia First Party was established.⁵⁵

Indeed the question of Australia taking large numbers of refugees became most poignant in 1938, when more than 20,000 visa applications matched the strict Australian requirements.⁵⁶ One year later, Australia restricted the annual number of “Jewish migrants” to 5,000 over a period of three years.⁵⁷ But even the announcement of that figure generated a public outcry, as letters written to politicians and stored in the National Archives of Australia that refer to an “invasion” by refugees and to “Jewish refugees” as “exploiters of humanity” indicate.⁵⁸

Immigration to Australia came to an abrupt halt when the war broke out in September 1939. Only two days after Australia declared war on Germany, the government declared a freeze on all immigration.⁵⁹ Despite its own restrictive regulations, however, the country showed in the years to follow that it was willing to accept non-Jewish migrants, even while the war was in progress. As far as Jewish refugees were concerned, however, Australia remained relatively unaccepting.⁶⁰

After the outbreak of the Second World War, in September 1939, the Australian government introduced the National Security Act.⁶¹ It was an acute security measure that passed absolute power to the executive. Additional plans had been made for the internment of aliens, as well as other measures to control their movements and activities.⁶² Migrants from Germany were labelled “enemy aliens” regardless of their background. The same fate befell people from Austria, which was legally a part of the German Reich at that time, as well as people from other countries at war with Australia. Under the National Security Act, not only aliens but all Australians lost many of their civil rights. The act gave the government emergency powers that enabled it to govern without recourse to parliament and the legislative process.⁶³ Enemy aliens had to report regularly to the police. They were also forced to endure restrictions placed on their travel, movement, and the possession of personal items such as cameras, cars, and maps. Those who were believed to pose a security risk to Australia were even interned. Most importantly, however, enemy aliens were banned from naturalization. An offence against the National Security Act was punished with either imprisonment or “a fine of any amount.”⁶⁴

Officials, in general, had plenty of scope in enforcing the act, which stated that “any person who is found committing an offence against this Act, or who is suspected of having committed, or being about to commit, such an offence, may be arrested without any warrant.”⁶⁵ The Australian government, however, did not distinguish between regular migrants and refugees. As soon as war was declared, German and Austrian nationals officially became enemy aliens. This created a critical situation for refugees, who had lost their civil rights (or parts of them) twice at that moment: first, during the Nazi oppression in their old homelands and, second, in their new homeland of Australia. Furthermore, social inclusion and exclusion were rather focused on perceptions of loyalty and disloyalty. Anyone who spoke a foreign language could be seen as potentially disloyal and authorities frequently argued that “homeland allegiances continued to define the loyalty of the immigrant.”⁶⁶

In this early phase, after the outbreak of the war, there was only limited possibility for refugees to exercise agency and make themselves publicly heard. The majority had just arrived and their most important goals were to secure their living and to learn the English language. In general, the Australian public was not receptive to the refugees’ difficult situation. Antisemitism was present in the labour movement and among the labour unions. There were also orchestrated campaigns against refugees by some branches of the Returned Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Imperial League of Australia, and various municipal and shire councils and government ministers received numerous letters and petitions demanding mass internment.⁶⁷ A number of letters from the general public indicate attitudes toward people of non-British origin. In 1940, community organizations urged the Australian prime minister to “give harsher treatment to those of alien origin.”⁶⁸ A representative of the Korong Vale Soldiers’ Welfare Committee even demanded that the prime minister “immediately intern all aliens of enemy origin in Australia, who have become naturalised during the last ten years, as well as those not yet naturalised.” The Constitutional Association of New South Wales urged the government to “intern forthright all persons of enemy origin—whether naturalised or not—who have entered Australia since 1st January 1920,”⁶⁹ Also, the Security Service in Sydney was convinced, “a person born and bred in in Germany, of German parents, will never be anything but a German at heart. […] in the event of an invasion, such a person would unhesitatingly resume his German obedience.”⁷⁰ Even the Labour politician Arthur Calwell, who became Australia’s first immigration minister in 1945, justified the strict regulations as follows: “for the war as the democracies wage it is largely an affair of improvisation, and in urgent situations which demand prompt and effective action, there is little time to weigh the niceties of human rights.”⁷¹

6.2 Hybrid Identity Formations: A Theoretical Framework

The classic expectation of immigrants and refugees, often also portrayed in older literature, was that they make their home in a foreign place, adapt to another environment, and then assimilate to the culture of the receiving country.⁷² They are expected to reduce and finally terminate their links and ties with their home country.⁷³ This picture has lost much of its relevance since research has shown that transnational ties in many cases remain important determinants of identity-shaping processes. The increased research on migration, and the realization that migrations are complex, reciprocal, and dynamic processes, has led to the understanding that assimilation theories are inappropriate for explaining the interacting identities that migration processes create. Recent research particularly stresses the role of imported and adapted cultural capital as the migrants’ and refugees’ “treasure chest”⁷⁴ and increasingly reveals migrants and refugees as “cultural translators” and “agents of knowledge” who live, work, and think between at least two different spaces.⁷⁵ Building on ideas of multiple and diverse identities, political scientists Hani Zubida, Liron Avi, and Robin Harper suggest a theoretical approach to the topic based on sociologist Mario De La Rosa’s conceptual framework of identity formation. They identified four modes of identity:⁷⁶

1)“Neither here nor there”: Low level of cultural identification with the refugees’ culture of origin and low level of cultural identification with the prevailing host society’s mainstream values;
2)“Here and not there”: Low level of cultural identification with their culture of origin and high level of cultural identification with the prevailing host society’s mainstream values;
3)“There and not here”: High level of cultural identification with their culture of origin and low level of cultural identification with the prevailing host society’s mainstream values;
4)“Both, here and there”: High level of cultural identification with their culture of origin and high level of cultural identification with the prevailing host society’s mainstream values.

Assigning a non-directional and multidimensional meaning to these four terminological modes is crucial, since labels alone are insufficient to shape our understanding of how refugee identities are formed.⁷⁷ Thus, a more open perspective that recognizes the hybrid nature of identities allows us to understand and question the processes in which ties to the host country, the country of origin, both of them, or neither of them create dynamic patterns of identity. This helps us to gain insights into the “hybrid” nature of identities, showing that refugees can hold different, even contradicting, identities with loose boundaries. Hybridity, as related to migration, is usually conceived as the process of cultural mixing in which immigrants and refugees “adopt aspects of the host culture and rework, reform, and reconfigure them in production of new hybrid cultures or hybrid identities.”⁷⁸ It can, therefore, be promising to envisage the process of identity formation as “hybrid” in order to understand the complexities emerging from the encounter experiences of different cultures.

6.3 Encounter Situations

Until the refugees had formed their own associations (the Association of Jewish Refugees in 1942 and the Association of Refugees in 1943) to exercise more efficient collective agency, there were only very few organizations in Australia that dealt with the refugees during the late 1930s and the Second World War period.⁷⁹ Apart from a few denominational organizations such as the Australian Jewish Welfare Society (ajws), the Jewish communities of Melbourne and Sydney, and some Christian churches and organizations, refugees who made it to Australia had little official, institutionalized support.⁸⁰ Those who were allowed to enter the country technically arrived as migrants: the government expected them to produce enough financial capital and the necessary skills to provide for themselves, thus it did not see any need to support and assist them. Due to the official refusal to treat refugees differently from regular migrants, most of the new arrivals, particularly those who were not members of a religious community, were on their own. To make things worse, public discourse was largely against them and they were widely perceived as a threat to the labour market, as well as to the homogeneity of the “British” society.⁸¹ Consequently, “Jewish refugees encountered enormous difficulties in gaining a foothold in their new Australian environment,” as Konrad Kwiet put it based on his observation of different refugee stories.⁸²

In this context, it seems particularly promising for this book to examine refugee memories of encounter experiences during their initial contact phase after the refugees’ arrival to see how they remembered and depicted “everyday otherness.” It is important to understand how locals and refugees responded to each other and how their individual response to the challenges of their intercultural encounters affected their identities. After arriving in their new host countries, many refugees tried to establish social ties in order to counter notions of “otherness” and promote themselves and their cultural capital. Their strategies of establishing such ties are also highly relevant for this study. The fact that almost all of them had hastily escaped into a different social and cultural context without any prior time for preparation and that they, as well as the members of the host society, had diverging ideas of how they ought to behave in everyday life situations, further affected the formation of their identities.⁸³

Class affiliation was another important factor that determined the procedure of making contacts among the members of the host society. Most of this book’s protagonists belonged to the educated Viennese upper and middle classes, as shown in Chapter 3. A substantial number of them had pursued middle-class professions in Austria. Many worked as doctors, artists, lawyers, or tradesmen before coming to Australia. Their escape, in most cases, represented a considerable biographical disruption. In Australia, refugees were expected to fully assume the predominant values and norms and to gratefully carry out the jobs Australians did not want to do themselves. In most cases, they ended up doing low-paid casual and domestic work that differed greatly from their former middle-class professions.⁸⁴ These different expectations caused difficulties and tensions in gaining a foothold in their new and alien environment,⁸⁵ as the analysed memories show.

Depending on the refugees’ needs and interests, as well as on the expectations of local Australians, the process of making contacts was highly dynamic and hybrid, and turned out to be different in every single case. As we will see, refugees had very ambivalent experiences when interacting with their new fellow countrymen, ranging from friendly support and sympathy, tolerance, rejection, bullying, antisemitism, to violent assaults. In many cases, they described more than one different type of experience. By and large, three everyday life situations of encounter with their new fellow citizens dominated almost all depictions:

–Immediate encounters after their arrival;
–Everyday neighbourly encounters;
–Encounters in the workplace.

6.3.1 Immediate Encounters after Arrival

The experiences the members of our sample group had upon their arrival after their long journey around the world were particularly important for the ways they imagined their future in their new homeland. It was a time when they gained their first impressions of Australia. Therefore, it is not surprising that the moment of arrival dominated the refugees’ depictions of their past. Most of them were in a precarious financial situation. Their sudden escape from Austria had left them with scarce resources. By the end of 1938, it was practically impossible to take more than 10 Reichsmark out of Germany due to discriminatory Nazi taxation laws.⁸⁶ Consequently, refugees generally arrived in Australia either with very little financial capital or with debts because of the high cost of the passage to Australia and the fact that most of them had borrowed the so-called landing money required to enter the country. “Those who arrived before the outbreak of the war had great difficulties to find a job. Their slender financial resources dwindled dangerously,” as one refugee put it.⁸⁷ Since there was virtually no financial backing from the government, some of the refugees depended on the support of denominational aid organizations (such as the Jewish Welfare Society, or local Jewish communities). Many, however, were left entirely on their own, especially those who were not members of a denominational organization.

Some had distant relatives or casual acquaintances who supported them and helped them settle in. Some mentioned that Australians supported them by picking them up at the port or assisting them with accommodation. Marie Bergel, who arrived in Adelaide in 1938 with her husband and her two daughters, recalled: “A Ms. Solomon picked us up with her car and wanted to show us the Synagogue. […] We were welcomed by the rabbi. He offered us his help and support. Ms. Solomon organized accommodation for us.”⁸⁸ Annemarie Mutton, who arrived with her husband in 1938, recalled being picked up at the port by acquaintances:

We arrived in Melbourne for disembarkation very early in the morning. We were met at the ship by Dr. Bill Wishart and his wife Olive, who had guaranteed for us. They took us in their car to their house in Auburn Road, Hawthorn. They gave us a room with a double bed. […] They had arranged a sort of housekeeping job for us […] not far from them.⁸⁹

As the Viennese art historian Gertrude Langer described, she and her husband were welcomed at the port “with open arms.” She even recalled having had “the most wonderful time socially, really immediately.”⁹⁰ Australians also supported the Langers’ search for jobs. In her case, a local professor of architecture arranged a job in an architectural company for her husband. Elisabeth Ziegler, who arrived in Sydney in June 1939 together with her husband, had similar experiences: “We came to Sydney and Mr. Starr was there waiting for us. […] We were lucky that Mr. Starr had friends who lost their housemaid. And I started to become a housemaid with them. They were very nice.”⁹¹

Others had no personal contacts and received no support from aid organizations or private supporters. In their cases, memories of isolation and loneliness were particularly dominant. Viola Winkler, who arrived in Sydney, described her feelings of alienation: “Everything was strange in Australia: the landscape, the language, no one was friendly, and no one attempted to help us. I had the greatest difficulties finding a job.”⁹² Arriving in mid-1938, Kurt Selby was not welcomed at the port by anyone and had to organize accommodation by himself. He even suffered occasional antisemitism, as his daughter recalled: “He lived alone in a boarding house when he arrived. He was attacked for being Jewish and went to the police.”⁹³ Helen Roberts, who had organized a job for herself in Sydney prior to her escape, had to find out after her arrival that the job was already taken by someone else. “I put an ad in the Sydney Morning Herald. We got a letter from a man who said he was a doctor and he can send us a permit. When we came here there was nothing. And he said there was everything here for us but there was nothing,” she later stated in an interview.⁹⁴ John Hearst, who arrived in Melbourne together with his wife, gave insights into another aspect of the treatment refugees in search of a job had to accept:

In March 1939 we arrived here. The next day they [members of the Jewish Welfare Society] picked us up and brought us to the boarding house and then we were invited to go to the office of the Jewish Welfare Society and then they will see that they get us some employment. The easiest way to get employment was to work as a married couple. […] It was a fantastic thing. You should have seen how we were examined. There came a bloke named Joseph. He looked at Mummy [his wife] and touched her arms and said: Oh, she is quite strong—should be alright. Looked at me: Oh, he’s quite alright too. Could be quite useful. I felt like on a slave market—it was terrible.⁹⁵

6.3.2 Everyday Neighbourly Encounters

The neighbourhood was a very important place for encounters with the local population. The experiences of encounter of the refugees varied greatly depending on their specific situation and the neighbourhood they chose. Some described coming into a very friendly and supportive neighbourly environment. “As a corollary we appreciated the instant assistance, given us from all of our neighbours when a grass fire broke out in our back garden,” Annemarie Mutton recalled in her memoirs and further stated:

In Hawthorn, we had already established an image of ourselves as people, not only just aliens, or, colloquially, bloody reffos. […] The Australians, we met through letters of introduction and then by being handed around a bit were hospitable and kind. An Australian friend even lent us his car.⁹⁶

After her arrival in provincial Brisbane, Gertrude Langer described the fast and instant support she received from some of her neighbours:

I was still in my room thinking what to do, not knowing quite where to turn, when all of a sudden, I was told to come down into the hall, there was a young lady there asking for me. So, I said, “Well, that can’t be so because I do not know a single soul in Brisbane.” “Oh, yes. She said she wants to meet Dr Langer.” So, I said “all right,” so I went down and there stood a very tall woman, young, there with a bunch of flowers. […] Well, anyhow, Margaret and I became friends almost immediately and I had my first friend in about 24 hours. She couldn’t do enough for me. She said “What can I help you with first?” I said, “Finding a place where to live.”⁹⁷

Elisabeth Ziegler, who moved into a small town in the Hunter Valley, north of Sydney, described some initial difficulties when she encountered her new neighbours:

When we came to this little town, we were like a wonder to them [the neighbours]. They had never seen a Jew or a foreigner before. It was much harder for them than for us, [they were] a little bit suspicious at first probably but it worked out well.⁹⁸

Before she moved to the small town, she had lived, rather isolated, in Sydney, as she described.⁹⁹ The isolation they encountered in their neighbourhoods was a dominant issue in many memories. After his arrival in Melbourne, John Hearst described initial difficulties in finding local friends: “We had not many Australian friends—only one neighbour.”¹⁰⁰ The Viennese writer Paul Hirsch, who arrived in Melbourne aged 47, stated in one of his autobiographical postwar writings: “At first, there were not many Australians around when we [a group of German-speaking refugees] met.” He further wrote in a letter to a friend in the United States: “We have been living here in complete isolation. There are almost no people to have at least some kind of interesting conversations with.”¹⁰¹

Some refugees described that they encountered an atmosphere of hostility and rejection in their neighbourhoods. Viola Winkler recalled:

People were not used to refugees and kept away. There were no English classes and no welcoming things. I had to be on my own. People used to abuse me in the bus: “reffo go home to where you came from” […] From September 1939 on we became enemy aliens. We were treated as if we were one of the Nazis. […] We were outcasts.¹⁰²

Annemarie Mutton recalled antisemitic encounters in her neighbourhood and the suspicious behaviour of governmental officials toward them:

Emil [a friend] and I were attacked by a stranger after leaving the office after hours. The police came and asked: “Did he attack you because you are a Jew?” We were kept over an hour to answer questions of our origin. […] We confirmed the same story but were listened to with suspicion.¹⁰³

Making local friends was a key event that featured prominently in the refugees’ memories. Again, we can see from the recollections that this game-changing event usually happened faster in the case of refugees who had someone to support them, as the above-mentioned story of Gertrude Langer showed. If refugees were left on their own and thus felt isolated in their neighbourhood, making local friends took them much longer. Viola Winkler recalled such a pivotal experience which substantially affected her future life in Australia:

After some years in Australia, I met a painter who introduced me to local people and artists in Sydney. This woman changed my entire life in Australia. She showed me the best places in Sydney—sometimes it just needs a kind-hearted person to make the world a better place for others.¹⁰⁴

Another space of encounter, which concerned the refugees’ children, was school. Joan Lynn, who arrived in Adelaide aged three, recalls: “I do not remember any insults from Australians except for one boy in school. There was this kid who did not want to sit next to me because he claimed I was a Nazi.”¹⁰⁵ Others felt isolated because of language and ethnic barriers: “My sister and I at first had only one friend in school. She was a German girl to whom we spoke exclusively German. We had problems learning English during the first years,” Sue Copolov, who arrived in Melbourne in 1939 at the age of 10, remembered.¹⁰⁶ Annemarie Mutton recalled the xenophobia that she and her husband encountered when they attended an open day of a local school:

It had been announced by a note to the parents to make an effort to come and see the school, if possible fathers also. Ernest [her husband] made a valiant effort to desist from going to the office early but to come with me to see Muriel’s school and meet her teachers. The headmaster was introduced to us, or we to him. He looked at Ernest and said: ‘Well, thanks for coming Mr. Bowen, of course our men, our fathers have to go to work, they can’t come.’ Ernest was so devastated, so enraged, so hurt, he left at once. He never again came to any single function of any of the children’s school or activities.¹⁰⁷

Mutton’s memories give an interesting insight into the differing gender roles between Australia and Austria refugees had been confronted with. Coming from a Jewish upper-middle class background where much value was placed upon education and Kultur,¹⁰⁸ supporting their children’s education by getting to personally know their school environment was most likely essential to Bowen. In Australia, however, the emerging rituals of a male- and companion-centred leisure and professional culture created a different habitus that “gave men a social territory away from women and children,” which was an important part of their identity.¹⁰⁹ Women, as Jill Conway described, thus were relentlessly assigned to marriage and motherhood.¹¹⁰

Some of the refugees settled in ethnic or religious communities which offered them a place to live together with people who shared the same fate and ethnic or religious background. This helped them to overcome feelings of isolation, as Kurt Selby’s daughter recalled: “He settled in a Jewish community and had most of his contacts with other members of his group. It was a safer little world he created for himself and his wife.”¹¹¹ Bruno Bush, who arrived in Sydney after the war, also described that he found a home in a Jewish community in Sydney: “We spoke Yiddish at home. My children went to a Jewish Kindergarten and got a Jewish education.”¹¹²

6.3.3 Encounters in the Workplace

The workplace was the third major place where refugees encountered local Australians. For many of them, their place of employment offered the most intense opportunities to make new social contacts. Viola Winkler’s description of her hasty and unspectacular wedding three months after her arrival in Sydney, with only two of her husband’s “workmates” in attendance, indicates the importance of contacts made at the workplace: “We married in a registry office. He [her husband] brought two workmates with him as witnesses, they brought along a sponge cake, we had this for lunch, there was nothing else, my husband went back to work.”¹¹³ Marie Bergel opened up a grocery store in Adelaide with her husband in 1941. She recalled: “Many people came to see the new strangers with their strange accent. In the end, it [her shop] was like a club. We made many friends.”¹¹⁴

The workplace, however, also offered a framework for tensions and negative encounters, especially during the first months after the refugees’ arrival. John Hearst, who had managed a furniture store in Vienna, for example, had found employment as a domestic servant along with his wife after his arrival in Melbourne. He recalled being exploited by his employer: “We found a job as housekeepers: Alice [his wife] had to cook and I had to mow the lawn and wash the car. We got accommodation and very little pocket money. […] I felt like on a slave market. Alice was crying all day, ‘we are treated like slaves’.”¹¹⁵ Helen Roberts, who also worked as a domestic servant after her arrival in Sydney, described similar conditions: “I had to go there and do the sewing for them. They treated me like the last servant. I remember I was so hungry because they did not give me anything to eat. The things I had to sort of go through were just incredible.”¹¹⁶ Hans Eisler, who found a job on an agricultural farm, described even worse conditions:

That’s probably the worst four months of my life because the people I worked for on the poultry farm were very cruel. They made me sleep in the barn. I was bitten by rats […] They gave me food once or twice a day and if I asked for more, they refused it. No meat. One egg, and jam on Sundays was the big treat. They were the meanest people I have ever met. They were supposed to pay me five shillings a week. I did get it a few times but certainly not weekly. I was completely dependent on them. I could not speak English. I did not know what to do.¹¹⁷

Besides poor working conditions, some refugees recalled being bullied by their workmates. In an interview, Hans Eisler, again, recalled:

They were rather cruel, particularly to me because I was younger. It was bastardization exercises—having to shove pears with your nose through cow dung. I remember very distinctly the day war was declared—I’d only been there about a month. It was Sunday night, the fire was going, and Menzies [Australian prime minister] declared war on Germany. And I felt so good. They played the national anthem, “God save the King.” I stood up and they all laughed at me. Then, when I sat down, they removed the chair and I fell […]. They had a lot of fun at my expense, and that hurt at the time […]. Then came the Jewish holidays and I remember asking to be excused […] and that sort of set me aside from the rest.¹¹⁸

During the First World War, xenophobic debates about the restriction of immigration as “the most insistent of all our problems” rose and continued to rise during the 1920s and 1930s, “including bolstering White Australia through immigration while excluding ‘undesirables’, and maintaining the ‘White Australia’ policy in the face of geopolitical opposition.”¹¹⁹ Some parliamentarians, especially those associated with labour ideas, also resisted the mass immigration from Europe, because they feared “that the fewer workers there are in Australia the more work there is for those who are here.”¹²⁰ Since all governments during the 1920s and 1930s repeatedly gave assurances that refugees would not occupy jobs Australians could do, elements of the public generally reacted very emotionally on that issue.¹²¹ Bullying and negative public reactions whenever well-qualified refugees tried to obtain one of the more prestigious jobs were widespread. Thus, refugees faced considerable difficulties when trying to re-establish a sound economic existence in their former professions.¹²² The country’s labour unions were fiercely protectionist and among the main agents to oppose migration. Fearing exacerbation of Australian unemployment and preferential treatment for immigrants, labour unions in Victoria, for example, repeatedly called for limiting and controlling migration.¹²³ In general, they claimed that immigrants would “drive down wages” by having “six men competing for one job” so that “working men [would] fight … for jobs like dogs for a bone.”¹²⁴ Ernest Bowen’s wife remembered the uproar caused by her husband’s appointment as a foreman in a woollen mill:

Ernest was introduced to the Laycocks, owners of Laconia Woolen Mills. They employed him as a foreman. He was a well experienced, well trained textile man and well qualified to reorganize this or that procedure. However, the Depression still left many people unemployed and the factory workers went on strike because they said this sort of job should be given to an Australian. It had not been proved that Ernest had qualifications not obtainable in Australia of an Australian born citizen. The case came to court.¹²⁵

Gertrude Langer’s husband, the architect Karl Langer, encountered similar reactions when he was appointed town planner for Brisbane (Queensland), as his wife described:

The returned soldiers made such a campaign against him that he declined the job before he even started it. They pulled his name through the papers and I do not know what all, even through parliament, and Karl nearly lost his health over it. It was so upsetting; you have just no idea. […] It was so absolutely terrible what they did to him.¹²⁶

6.4 Analysing Experiences of Encounter

The Australian government expected refugees from National Socialism to cater for their own needs and deal with their own costs of living: they were “expected […] to adapt in record time to the norms and values in their new country,” as historian Konrad Kwiet noted.¹²⁷ All in all, not much was done to support their acculturalization. There was generally little public knowledge about the refugees’ sensitive situation. Some of them were able to gain support from Jewish communities. Non-religious refugees and those who belonged to different faiths, however, in most cases did not receive any support at all. These factors complicated this book’s protagonists’ settling in process and, in many cases, influenced their level of identification with their new host society. This was also important for shaping the ways in which they exercised agency and applied their cultural capital in their new host environment.

“Class” was a key factor that affected refugee encounters and offered an additional source of conflict. The members of our sample group had left a society characterized by a marked class distinction and came into one that was much less segmented socially.¹²⁸ At the same time, most of them had belonged to the educated upper and middle classes and suffered an intense biographical disruption. They had pursued middle-class professions in Vienna and, after their escape to Australia, were expected to do the jobs that Australians did not want to do. Consequently, many recalled being exploited as cheap labour, or even as “slave labour,” as John Hearst put it. This sometimes led to tensions with the local population, which also affected encounter situations.

Refugees recalled that encounters with locals during that phase took place mainly in three different contexts: immediate encounters after their arrival, everyday neighbourhood encounters, and encounters in the workplace. The experiences they had on these occasions affected the nature of their cultural identification with their host society and the ways in which they applied their cultural capital and exercised agency to promote their knowledge. The first phase of encounters, immediately after the refugees’ arrival, carried the most diverging memories. Some of the refugees recalled being welcomed at the port and having found shelter and accommodation. They even mentioned that their hosts had organized jobs for them. In those cases, the initial arrival phase was not remembered as a time of isolation and desperation but rather as a new, challenging but positive experience. Interviews with Marie Bergel, Annemarie Mutton, Gertrude Langer, and Elisabeth Ziegler, who recalled having enjoyed local support, show that they engaged themselves more intensely with their new host society and generally identified more positively with their host culture, at the same time either keeping up ties to relatives and friends in their country of origin, or to other members of the exile community. Others recalled the first weeks and months after their arrival as a period of isolation and alienation. As John Hearst’s memories show, they sometimes also felt exploited: many regarded themselves as helpless and felt that they were at the mercy of Australians. Prevailingly negative reports on their early encounters and their isolated living situations indicated an initial low level of identification with Australian society. As we can see, encounter experiences were highly individualized. In general, there were no apparent class or age-specific differences: all of those interviewed for this paper came from an upper-middle-class background. Roberts and Hearst had even established contact with Australians before coming to Australia, however, they nevertheless perceived their initial encounters as rather unsupportive.

Encounters in the neighbourhood were remembered with similar variety. As many interviewees pointed out, social capital and networks played a substantial role in overcoming feelings of isolation. Many stressed the importance of having been introduced personally or by letter to their neighbours. Therefore, as they described, personal reference was essential for them to extend their social contacts in their neighbourhoods. In general, older refugees sometimes felt stuck “in between two worlds” thus keeping a lower level of cultural identification with their new host society. A good example of this is the experience of the writer Paul Hirsch (pen name Paul Hatvani), who came to Australia at the age of 47 and later described his feelings of identification and belonging with the words “neither here, nor there.”¹²⁹ In contrast, others, such as Kurt Selby, who decided to settle into ethnic or religious neighbourhoods created a “new home away from home” for themselves, incorporating many aspects of their old home context in Australia, including culture and language.

The workplace was the last space of encounter analysed in this section. In most cases, refugees were initially unable to find employment in Australian companies since there were only few jobs available due to the difficult economic situation. Consequently, most of them started their own businesses, based on their European knowledge and cultural capital. In some cases, they made a living by referring to and identifying with their Austrian or European culture. The Adelaide-based refugee Marie Bergel, who opened a European deli, or Charles William Anton, who founded the first Austrian-style ski club in New South Wales inspired by the Austrian Alpine Club (Alpenverein), are only two of many examples of refugees who identified themselves professionally with elements of their former home culture. In these cases, ties with the old home country remained strong and the refugees at the same time developed a high level of cultural identification with their new host society. Refugees who were able to compete on the labour market because of their sought-after professional know-how usually had different experiences. They almost unanimously faced waves of resistance and hostility directed toward foreigners who were suspected of taking away high-level jobs from Australians in times of economic tension, as the life trajectories of Karl Langer and Ernest Bowen show.

Nossal, “Australian Responses,” 135; Kwiet, “Re-Acculturation,” 39; Neumann, Across the Seas, 32.

Robin Higham, Britain’s Imperial Air Routes, 1918–1939 (Strout: Fonthill Media, 2016).

slv, Annemarie Mutton, papers, ca. 1930–1987. [manuscript], ms box 2685/9–10.

Cherny, Who is Sylvia?, 32.

Interview with Marie Bergel, n.d. (sound recording), n.d. (in the possession of Joan Lynn).

Interview with John Hearst, n.d. (sound recording) (in the possession of Gary Hearst).

Marie Louise Pratt, “Art of the Contact Zone,” Profession 91 (1991): 33–40, 33.

This section is closely informed by a paper i published in 2021 in the journal Zeitgeschichte, see Philipp Strobl, “Austrian-Jewish Refugees in Pre- and Wartime Australia. Ambivalent Experiences of Encounter,” Zeitgeschichte 21 (2021): 253–271; Mario De La Rosa, “Acculturation and Latino Adolescents’ Substance Use: A Research Agenda for the Future,” Substance Use & Misuse 37 (2002): 429–456; Hani Zubida et al., “Home and Away: Hybrid Perspective on Identity Formation in 1.5 and second Generation Adolescent Immigrants in Israel,” Glocalism: Journal of Culture, Politics and Innovation (2013): 1–28.

Alfred Schuetz, “The Stranger: An Essay in Social Psychology,” American Journal of Sociology 49 (1944): 499–507.

David Radford, “‘Everyday Otherness’—Intercultural Refugee Encounters and Everyday Multiculturalism in a South Australian Rural Town,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (2016): 2128–2145, 2130.

The concept of “interculturalism” emphasizes processes that take place between culturally different individuals during their encounter, see Aleksandra Winiarska, “Intercultural Neighbourly Encounters in Warsaw from the Perspective of Goffman’s Sociology of Interaction,” Central and Eastern European Migration Review 4 (2015): 43–60, 44.

Schuetz, “The Stranger.”

See Prager, “Überlegungen zu Biographie”; Strobl, “‘Ich habe nie die Absicht gehabt,” 58–79; Levke Harders, “Migration und Biographie: Mobile Leben schreiben,” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften 29 (2018): 17–36.

Radford, “Everyday Otherness,” 2131.

Winiarska, “Intercultural Neighbourly Encounters,” 44.

Marinus Ossewaarde, “Cosmopolitanism and the Society of Strangers,” Current Sociology 55 (2007): 367–388.

Strobl, “Austrian-Jewish Refugees.”

Neumann, Across the Seas, 5.

Stats, “Characteristically Generous,” 179.

Stats, “Characteristically Generous,” 178.

Neumann, Across the Seas, 1.

Rutland, “Refugee Migration,” 80.

Stats, “Characteristically Generous,” 179.

Stats, “Characteristically Generous,” 180.

Stats, “Characteristically Generous,” 181.

Generally, only people from the United Kingdom and northern Europe were seen as high-status immigrants. Migrants from southern or eastern Europe were usually regarded as a distinct racial group. See Markus, Australian Race Relations, 145.

Markus, Australian Race Relations, 111.

Neumann, Across the Seas, 15.

Neumann, Across the Seas.

For more information on Australian settler colonialism, see Fiona Paisley, “The Italo-Abyssinian Crisis and Australian Settler Colonialism in 1935,” History Compass 15 (2017): 8–11; Georgine Clarsen, “Mobile Encounters: Bicycles, Cars and Australian Settler Colonialism,” History Australia 12, no. 1 (2015): 165–186; Lisa Slater, Anxieties of Belonging in Settler Colonialism: Australia, Race and Place (New York: Routledge, 2019).

Stats, “Characteristically Generous,” 182.

Wiemann, “German and Austrian Refugees,” 4.

Wiemann, “German and Austrian Refugees,” 45. For more information on media reactions to Jewish refugees who came to Australia during the 1930s, see Philipp Strobl, Die Flüchtlingskrise der 1930er Jahre in australischen Tageszeitungen. Eine medienhistorische Diskursanalyse (Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovač, 2019).

Rutland, “Refugee Migration,” 83.

Rutland, “Refugee Migration,” 84.

Stats, “Characteristically Generous,” 182. Under international human rights law, the principle of non-refoulement guarantees that no one should be returned to a country where they would face torture, cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment and other irreparable harm.

Binoy Kampmark, “‘Spying for Hitler’ and ‘Working for Bin Laden’: Comparative Australian Discourses on Refugees,” Journal of Refugee Studies 19.1 (2006): 1–21, 2; Bartrop, Australia and the Holocaust, xii.

Kampmark, “Spying for Hitler,” 6.

naa, A461, M349/3/5, Cable from High Commissioner Bruce to pm Joseph Lyons, 5 April 1938.

Rutland, Australia, 57.

Lang, Fahrt ins Blaue, 41.

Southern Cross, October 21, 1938, 10.

Rodney Gouttman, “Was It Ever So? Anti-Semitism in Australia 1850–1950?,” Humanities Research 12 (2005), 55–65, 56.

Gouttman, “Was It Ever So?,” 55f.

Gouttman, “Was It Ever So?,” 58.

Rubinstein, Jews in Australia; Rutland, Edge of the Diaspora.

Peter Love, ““The Kingdom of Shylock”: a case study of Australian labour anti-Semitism,” Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal 12.1 (1993): 54–62.

Rutland, Edge of the Diaspora, 197, 230.

Gouttman, “Was It Ever So?,” 59.

Rutland, “Australia and Refugee Migration,” 82.

Rachael Kohn, “Lutherans and Jews in South Australia, 1933/ 45,” Australian Journal of Jewish Studies 9.1–2 (1995): 45–61.

Gouttman, “Was It Ever So?,” 59.

Lang, Fahrt ins Blaue, 41.

Bartrop, Australia and the Holocaust, 115ff.

naa, A445, 235/5/6, Department of Immigration, “Protests re Jewish Immigration”; naa, A433, 1943/2/4588, Department of the Interior, “European Refugees—Views of Public Readmittance.”

Bartrop, “Almost Indescribable and Unbelievable,” 555.

Bartrop, “Unbelievable,” 555.

Glaros, “Injustice,” 38.

O’Brien, “Citizenship,” 207.

Commonwealth of Australia Numbered Acts, National Security Act 1939 (No. 15 of 1939), http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/num_act/nsa193915o1939257/, accessed on February 23, 2023.

Comp. National Security Act 1939 (No 15 of 1939), in Commonwealth of Australia Numbered Acts, http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/num_act/nsa193915o1939257/, accessed on January 31, 2023.

O’Brien, “Citizenship,” 210.

O’Brien, “Citizenship,” 212.

O’Brien, “Citizenship,” 211.

Quoted in Neumann, Across the Seas, 58.

Noel Lamidey, Aliens Control in Australia, 1939–1946 (Sydney, 1974), 1.

Strobl, “Austrian-Jewish Refugees,” 258.

Kenneth D. Madsen and Ton van Naerssen, “Migration, Identity, and Belonging,” Journal of Borderlands Studies 18 (2003): 61–75.

Strobl, “Gertrude Langer.”

Zloch, Müller, and Lässig, “Wissen in Bewegung”; Lässig and Steinberg, “Knowledge on the Move,” 313–346; Simone Lässig, “The History of Knowledge,” 29–58; Strobl, “Migrant Biographies”; Westermann, “Migrant Knowledge”; Strobl, “From Niche Sport to Mass Tourism.”

Zubida, “Home and Away,” 3–4.

Zubida, “Home and Away,” 4.

V.S. Kalra, Raminder Kaur, and John Hutnyk, Diaspora and Hybridity (London: Sage, 2005), 71.

Philipp Strobl, “Collective Refugee Agency and the Negotiation of Migration Laws in Wartime Australia, 1939–1943,” Historical Journal (under review).

Nossal, “Australian Responses,” 137.

Wiemann, “German and Austria Refugees,” 48; Eva Knabl, Sarah Petutschnig, and David Röck, “‘But sympathy cannot go so far as to permit them to pour into Australia like a cataract’—Die negative Rezeption von Flüchtlingen in australischen Medien,” in Die Flüchtlingskrise der 1930er Jahre in australischen Tageszeitungen. Eine medienhistorische Diskursanalyse, ed. Philipp Strobl (Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovač, 2018), 81–90, 81.

Kwiet, “Refugees in Australia,” 39.

Winiarska, “Intercultural Neighbourly Encounters,” 46.

Wiemann, “German and Austrian Refugees,” 147.

Kwiet, “Refugees in Australia,” 39.

For more information see Burger, Heimatrecht, 150.

Bittmann, Strauss to Matilda, 15.

Interview with Marie Bergel, n.d. (sound recording), n.d. (in the possession of Joan Lynn).

State Library of Victoria, ms12651, Mutton Annemarie, Papers, ca. 1930–1987. [manuscript], c. 1930–1987.

nla, Gertrude Langer Interviewed by Barbara Blackman [sound recording], Oral trc 1171 (transcript), 37.

sjm, au006, title: Liesel Ziegler Oral History Interview.

Winkler, “Augenblick,” 311.

Eleanor Hart (Selby’s daughter), in discussion with the author (sound recording), Melbourne, February 2016.

sjm, au022, Helen Roberts Oral History Interview (audio recording).

Interview with John Hearst, n.d. (sound recording) (in the possession of Gary Hearst).

slv, Annemarie Mutton, papers, ca. 1930–1987. [manuscript], ms box 2685/9–10.

nla, Gertrude Langer Interviewed by Barbara Blackman [sound recording], Oral trc 1171 (transcript), 51.

sjm, au006, title: Liesel Ziegler Oral History Interview (audio recording).

100

Interview with John Hearst, n.d. (sound recording) (in the possession of Gary Hearst).

101

mul, ef 830.912 H669.1 A6/C, letter to Fritz Czuczka, 20.10.1966.

102

ushmm, usc Shoah Foundation Institute testimony of Viola Winkler, Oral History, vha Interview Code: 5134 (audio recording).

103

slv, ms12651, Mutton Annemarie, Papers, ca. 1930–1987. [manuscript], c. 1930–1987.

104

ushmm, usc Shoah Foundation Institute testimony of Viola Winkler, Oral History, vha Interview Code: 5134 (audio recording).

105

Joan Lynn (Bergel’s daughter), in discussion with the author (sound recording), Melbourne, February 2016.

106

Sue Copolov, in discussion with the author (sound recording), Melbourne, August 2017.

107

slv, ms12651, Mutton Annemarie, Papers, ca. 1930–1987. [manuscript], c. 1930–1987.

108

Embacher, “Middle class,” 6.

109

Jill Conway, “Gender in Australia,” Daedalus 114 (1985): 343–368, 351.

110

Conway, “Gender in Australia,” 353.

111

Eleanor Hart (Selby’s daughter), in discussion with the author (sound recording), Melbourne, February 2016.

112

sjm, C007, title: Bruno Bush oral history interview (audio recording).

113

ushmm, usc Shoah Foundation Institute testimony of Viola Winkler, Oral History, vha Interview Code: 5134.

114

Interview with Marie Bergel, n.d. (sound recording), n.d. (in the possession of Joan Lynn).

115

Interview with John Hearst, n.d. (sound recording) (in the possession of Gary Hearst).

116

sjm, au022, Helen Roberts Oral History Interview (audio recording).

117

Glen Palmer, “Reluctant Refugee: Unaccompanied Refugee and Evacuee Children in Australia, 1933–45” (PhD diss., University of Adelaide, 1995), 277.

118

ushmm, Oral history interview with Hans Eisler, Accession Number: 2009.214.61 | rg Number: rg-50.617.0061 (audio recording).

119

Anna Dunkley, “The Immigration Debate in Australia: World War i and Its Impact,” in Parliamentary Library Research Paper Series (2015): 1–17, 13.

120

Dunkley, “Immigration Debate,” 13.

121

Stats, “Characteristically Generous,” 182.

122

Kwiet, “Re-Acculturation,” 43.

123

University of Melbourne Archives, The Victorian Trades Hall: An Archival History, https://bpeddlesdenweds2.omeka.net/items/browse?collection=6, accessed on 02.05.2024.

124

University of Melbourne Archives, The Victorian Trades Hall: An Archival History, https://bpeddlesdenweds2.omeka.net/items/browse?collection=6, accessed on 02.05.2024.

125

slv, ms12651, Mutton Annemarie, Papers, ca. 1930–1987. [manuscript], c. 1930–1987.

126

nla, Gertrude Langer Interviewed by Barbara Blackman [sound recording], Oral trc 1171 (transcript).

127

Kwiet, “Refugees in Australia,” 39.

128

Elaine Thompson, Fair Enough: Egalitarianism in Australia (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1994).

129

Paul Hatvani, “Australien,” 564–571.

Deutsches Literaturarchiv (Marbach/Neckar)

Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes

Gesetzblatt für das Land Österreich

Leo Baeck Institut New York

Monash University Library

National Archives of Australia

National Library of Australia

ÖstAÖsterreichisches Staatsarchiv

Sydney Jewish Museum

State Library of Victoria

United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees Archives

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

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A History of Displaced Knowledge: Austrian Refugees from National Socialism in Australia

Series: Studies in Global Social History, Volume: 54/17 and Studies in Global Migration History, Volume: 54/17

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004714939

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 24 Mar 2025

Subjects
- History
  - Modern History
  - Migration History

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Chapter 6 Ambivalent Experiences of Encounter

Information about the refugees’ journeys (author’s compilation)

6.1 Refugees in Australia: A Brief Historical Introduction

6.2 Hybrid Identity Formations: A Theoretical Framework

6.3 Encounter Situations

6.3.1 Immediate Encounters after Arrival

6.3.2 Everyday Neighbourly Encounters

6.3.3 Encounters in the Workplace

6.4 Analysing Experiences of Encounter

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A History of Displaced Knowledge: Austrian Refugees from National Socialism in Australia

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