Suffering, Redemption and Triumph: the first wave of post-war Australian immigrants 1945-66

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Between 1946 and 1966 large numbers of displaced persons (DPs) came to Australia to escape the horrors of war-torn Europe. Peter Brune's latest work had its genesis in more than 40 interviews he conducted with DPs in the period 2001—2022. He spoke to migrants from Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Greece and Hungary. Inspired by their resilience, their enterprise and their determination to make a new life for themselves in Australia, the author has written about their harrowing war experiences-—drawing largely on their own words—-their reception in Australia and their first responses to an alien culture. Their subsequent reflections on the journeys they undertook and how they fared here are both moving and revelatory. Peter also analyses the Chifley government's immigration policies, which were driven by Arthur Calwell, and the selection criteria that were applied