Fascists in Exile (Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right) [1 ed.] 0367227940, 9780367227944, 9780367696962, 9780429276880

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‘Jayne Persian’s book provides a gripping narrative of how war criminals ­entered Australia after 1945 and the lengthy debates that ensued. Sadly, as fascist ideologies spread once again, Persian’s searching account of A ­ ustralia’s war crimes programme is both timely and instructive.’ Martin Dean, War Crimes Historian ‘Jayne Persian vividly recounts the post-1945 resettlement of displaced persons including individuals who managed to conceal their wartime collaboration and complicity in war crimes. She reflects on the legacy of concealment and subsequent fitful attempts to prosecute when, decades later, the Australian government ceased turning a blind eye. Her book is a notable achievement and deserves to be widely read.’ Peter Gatrell, Professor, University of Manchester, UK ‘Given the passage of time, one would have expected that World War II would have been confined to the dustbin of history. Yet, given the re-emergence of European fascist organisations, together with the increase of antisemitism, Jayne Persian’s new book, Fascists in Exile, is an important and timely publication. As recently demonstrated, the Croatian Ustase is alive and well in Australia. Persian’s concise account of the post-war Australian migration policies through the International Refugee Organisation sheds light on the origins of these fascist movements in Australia. It is a valuable, timely and important contribution to the literature.’ Suzanne Rutland, Professor Emeritus, University of Sydney, Australia ‘An important book that, on the basis of solid archival work, clearly and fairmindedly illuminates a key aspect of the history of the Right in Australia in the second half of the twentieth century. This is the story of migrants from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union whose participation in Nazi war crimes in the Second World War, at first largely concealed from Australian view, were finally after decades subject to (unsuccessful) prosecution. But it is also the story of how the migrants’ anti-communist and anti-Soviet concerns, notably in the “Captive Nations” movement, impacted Australian anti-­communism and thus helped to shape Australian politics.’ Sheila Fitzpatrick, Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

FASCISTS IN EXILE

Fascists in Exile tells the extraordinary story of the war criminals, collab­ orators and fascist ultranationalists who were resettled in Australia by the International Refugee Organisation between 1947 and 1952. It explores the far-right backgrounds and continuing political activism of these displaced persons in Australia, adding to our knowledge of the development of Australian anti-communism in the 1950s. These individuals argued that they had been caught between National Socialism and Soviet communism. What might that have meant for their migration and resettlement trajectories? Beyond ‘Nazi-hunting,’ what can this tell us about the challenge they posed to international and national forms, both in Europe and in Australia? This book demonstrates that fascist ideation could not only survive the war’s end but that it continued to be transnational and transcultural. At the same time, anti-fascist protests and then the war crimes investigations of the late 1980s exposed problematic pasts, a legacy with which Australia is still reckoning. The text will appeal to those with an interest in the far right, Australian migration and refugee issues. Jayne Persian is an Associate Professor in History at the University of Southern Queensland. She is the author of Beautiful Balts: From Displaced Persons to New Australians (2017) and co-editor of Histories of Fascism and Anti-­Fascism in Australia (Routledge, 2022). Her research predominantly focuses on Central and Eastern European displaced persons, many of whom migrated to Australia in the post-war period.

Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right Series Editors: Nigel Copsey Teesside University, UK Graham Macklin Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX), University of Oslo, Norway

This book series focuses upon national, transnational and global manifestations of fascist, far right and right-wing politics primarily within a historical context but also drawing on insights and approaches from other disciplinary perspectives. Its scope also includes anti-fascism, radical-right populism, extreme-right violence and terrorism, cultural manifestations of the far right, and points of convergence and exchange with the mainstream and traditional right. Salazar A Political Biography Second Edition Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses The Italian Far Right from 1945 to the Russia-Ukraine Conflict Nicola Guerra Fascists in Exile Post-War Displaced Persons in Australia Jayne Persian Understanding and Countering Fascist Movements From Void to Hope Joan Braune For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-Studies-inFascism-and-the-Far-Right/book-series/FFR

FASCISTS IN EXILE Post-War Displaced Persons in Australia

Jayne Persian

Designed cover image: Taken New Year’s Eve Celebration, 1963/64, Hobart. Men marked with x alleged to have stated they are prepared to return to Yugoslavia. Ustashi Incidents - Victoria Police Reports, Attorney-General’s Department. Image courtesy of the National Archives of Australia. NAA: A432, 1964/2414. First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Jayne Persian The right of Jayne Persian to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Persian, Jayne, author. Title: Fascists in exile : post-war displaced persons in Australia / Jayne Persian. Other titles: Post-war displaced persons in Australia Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2024. | Series: Fascism and the far right | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023036182 (print) | LCCN 2023036183 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367227944 (hbk) | ISBN 9780367696962 (pbk) | ISBN 9780429276880 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: International Refugee Organization. | War criminals-Political activity--Australia. | World War, 1939-1945--Collaborationists-Australia. | World War, 1939-1945--Refugees--Australia. | Reconstruction (1939-1951)--Australia. | Right-wing extremists--Australia--History. | Fascism--Australia--History. | Australia--Emigration and immigration-History--20th century. Classification: LCC D803 .P47 2024 (print) | LCC D803 (ebook) | DDC 940.53/145--dc23/eng/20231018 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023036182 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023036183 ISBN: 978-0-367-22794-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-69696-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-27688-0 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9780429276880 Typeset in Sabon by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgementsviii Introduction1 Prologue: War Criminals, Collaborators, Quislings and Traitors

9

1 Screening for War Criminals: UNRRA and the IRO21 2 Australian Migration Selection Policies and Processes51 3 Anti-Fascist Protests72 4 The ‘Whole Exiles’ Set-Up in Australia89 5 War Crimes Investigations

134

Conclusion

169

Index

175

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book owes a great debt to both Mark Aarons and the Estonian Archives in Australia for depositing their unique and important collections with the State Library of New South Wales. Mark Aarons’ work in this space has been persistent and impactful. He generously answered my various queries, as did Konrad Kwiet, Michael David and Graham Blewitt. Thanks to Maie Barrow of the Estonian Archives in Australia, Daina Pocius of the Australian Lithuanian Archives, and Sabrina Elias of the Australian Jewish Historical Society; and staff at the State Library of New South Wales, the National Archives of Australia, the National Library of Australia, the National Archives (UK), the Archives Nationales de France and the Wiener Holocaust Library (UK). Thanks also to Kim Moore at the University of Southern Queensland Library. Much of the research for this book was supported by a grant from the Australian Research Council: ‘Russian Immigrants and Anti-Communism in Cold War Australia, 1946-1966’ (DP220102526), with co-investigators Sheila Fitzpatrick, Ruth Balint and Phillip Deery. The University of Southern Queensland also supported this research by granting two research sabbaticals, one at the beginning of the process and one towards the end. I have been very fortunate to work with two wonderfully generous mentors over a number of years: Sheila Fitzpatrick and Ruth Balint. My work has also benefited from collaboration with Evan Smith, who first drew Ferenc Molnár to my attention; our co-authored book chapter has been incorporated here, with his permission. I am also grateful to editors Ruth Balint, Joy Damousi & Sheila Fitzpatrick and Avril Alba & Jan Láníček, for permitting me to incorporate sections of published (forthcoming) material. For research assistance, thank you to Justine Greenwood, Michael Pearson, Kristen Alexander and Annie-Jo Vogler. Thanks also to those who commented on draft

Acknowledgements  ix

chapters: Ruth Balint, Phillip Deery, Alexander Lee and Evan Smith. Ilona Fekete went above and beyond by translating documents and answering my many questions about right-wing Hungarians. First drafts of various sections were presented during a: Visiting Fellowship at the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Leicester; ‘Migration Histories Now’ workshop, Australian National University; ‘Anti-Communism in the Twentieth Century: An International History Perspective,’ Queen’s University Belfast; ‘Histories of Fascism and Anti-Fascism in Australasia’ symposium, F ­ linders University; ‘People of the Cold War World: Refugees, Emigres, and Displaced Persons’ symposium, Institute of Humanities, Ural Federal University; Lessons & Legacies XVI – The Holocaust: Rethinking Paradigms in Research and Representation, Sydney event; ‘Departures as a New Approach to Migration History’ workshop, Australian Catholic University; Australasian Association for European History conference, University of Queensland; and the History Seminar, University of New South Wales. Thanks to the team at Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right: Craig Fowlie and Graham Macklin for commissioning the book and then patiently allowing me to re-set deadlines; and Elizabeth Hart. Grateful thanks also, for various collaborations and academic kindnesses during the writing of this book, to: Karen Agutter, Alexey Antoshin, Jessica Carniel, Raul Cârstocea, Alexandra Dellios, Melissa Forbes, Vashti-Jane Fox, Kylie Freeman, Edmund Goldrick, Justine Greenwood, Andrew Hickey, ­Alexander Korb, Zoe Knox, the late Stuart Macintyre, Anna Mazurkiewicz, Martin Nekola, Ebony Nilsson, Camilla Nurka, Karen Schamberger, Gwenda Tavan and my Twitter crew. Above all, thank you to my husband (and DP descendant) Chris for his unwavering support of this project, and of me. Love always to Anna, Sascha and Luka.

INTRODUCTION

On Boxing Day 1986, the Adelaide Advertiser received an unexpected telex from a Moscow press agency that had covered a public meeting in the ­Ukrainian village of Zarechye, denouncing an elderly man now resident in Adelaide for perpetrating war crimes during the Holocaust: Polyukhovich, 70, resident of Seaton, a township in the country’s south, was forest warden before the Second World War. Serving in the G ­ ebietspolizei [area police] under Nazi occupation. He killed several dozen civilians, mostly Jews, in 1942 and 1943, and took part in the shooting of 725 civilians in Serniki village. The many eyewitnesses who now testify to the Nazi collaborator’s crimes refer to him by the diminutive ‘Ivanechko,’ as he was known in Alexandrovo and Serniki villages.1 Three days later, a nonplussed reporter for the Advertiser interviewed the retired Ivan Polyukhovich, who had worked for 29 years for the Department of Marine and Harbours at Port Adelaide, in his suburban cottage.2 The front page of the newspaper carried a headline reading, ‘I’m that man, but I’m no war criminal.’ Polyukhovich admitted that he had been a forest warden in pre-war Poland (now Ukraine) and under German occupation. However, he argued: ‘If I am so well-known as a monster in this region why hasn’t anything been said for so long? Why does it take 40 years for something like this to come out?’ He was worried about extradition and complained ‘I don’t know why this has all surfaced [now]’ although he ventured that ‘Nazi hunting’ was a popular pastime in the Eastern bloc and that after four decades the number of candidates was wearing thin.3

DOI: 10.4324/9780429276880-1

2 Introduction

Polyukhovich’s complaint is understandable read against the background of his migration history. He had been a post-war ‘displaced person’ (DP), one of the 12 million Central and Eastern Europeans who, at the end of the war in May 1945, found themselves outside their own country, predominantly in Germany and Austria. This mass of people was made up of concentration camp inmates, voluntary and forced labourers, non-German soldiers in military units withdrawing westwards and civilian evacuees, including collaborators, fleeing west from the oncoming Soviet army. They were Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and non-Jewish Poles, ‘Balts’ (Estonians, ­ Latvians and Lithuanians), Yugoslavs, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Czechoslovaks, ­Russians, Belarussians and nationals of Romania, Bulgaria and Albania. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) was charged with assisting with their care and then, as soon as possible, their repatriation. However, around one million DPs – including Polyukhovich – simply refused to return to homes that were under Soviet control. For purposes of political expediency in the context of the incipient Cold War, these recalcitrant DPs were soon relabelled ‘political refugees.’ UNRRA’s successor organisation, the International Refugee Organisation (IRO), ultimately resettled hundreds of thousands of these non-Jewish DPs in the west, in countries including the United States, Canada and Australia.4 Polyukhovich was one of the 170,000 non-Jewish DPs resettled in ­Australia by the IRO between 1947 and 1952.5 This was the second largest resettlement scheme; 415,000 went to the United States and 157,000 to Canada. ­Polyukhovich had been vetted by both the IRO and Australian security officials, who accepted his claim that his name was Jan Poluchowicz and that he had been a ‘farmer’ and a ‘forced labourer’ during the war. He wanted to work as a ‘labourer’ if resettled in Australia, which pleased the Australians, who were primarily interested in recruiting (non-Jewish) anti-communist young and healthy labourers for industrial and agricultural work.6 Indeed, from settlement Australia had been a country in which it was not only possible, but positively encouraged, to leave one’s past behind. Thirty three-year-old Polyukhovich arrived in Australia in 1949, along with his ‘wife’ and her two young daughters.7 Over the next few decades, the Australian government consistently refused Soviet extradition requests and ignored Jewish community lobbying and leftist media pressure to deport alleged war criminals. In the early 1960s, the Attorney-General, Sir Garfield Barwick, had even explicitly assured men like Polyukhovich that, once in Australia, they could ‘turn their backs’ on the past and ‘make a new life for themselves and for their families in a happier community.’8 Similarly, explicitly fascist ultranationalist organisations were given free rein in Australia until the late 1970s when the domestic bombing campaign of the Croatian Ustasha (Ustaše) forced legislative change.9 Now, in 1986, the environment for alleged perpetrators was also changing. Reacting to both international and domestic pressure, the Australian

Introduction  3

government instituted an official inquiry that acknowledged publicly that ‘it was more likely than not that a significant number of persons who committed serious war crimes’ during the Second World War had entered Australia as DPs.10 The War Crimes Act was amended to allow for criminal prosecution in Australia, and a Special Investigations Unit (SIU) was established to investigate allegations and prepare cases for trial. The SIU went on to investigate over 700 individuals, including Polyukhovich, who was charged with wartime crimes in 1990. ___ This book is the first academic history of the ‘crowds of furtive people’ – war criminals, collaborators and fascist ultranationalists - who were resettled in Australia by the IRO between 1947 and 1952.11 The substantial international and domestic literature on the DPs follows, in the main, the post-war western governmental and institutional reticence towards examining those refugees of the far-right.12 This book thus owes a great debt to exceptions to this rule, including Anna Holian’s work on activists in the post-war DP camps in ­Europe and her exposition of the ultranationalist DP argument that they were caught ‘between national socialism and Soviet communism.’13 What might that have meant for their migration and resettlement trajectories? Beyond ‘Nazi-hunting,’ what can this tell us about the challenge they posed to international and national forms, both in Europe and in Australia? While the far right in Australia has often been dismissed by the academy as ‘marginal’ and has thus been under-researched, Annemarie Sammartino argues that historians should be engaging with fascist emigres not merely as ‘a historical footnote’ but as ‘political actors in their own right.’14 There have been published investigations and partisan polemics from both the Jewish and far-left activist communities – and this book relies heavily on their work.15 However, the problematic politics of post-war migrants to Australia has largely been ignored by non-Jewish academics and deliberately omitted by DP ethnic community historians.16 Indeed, right-wing politics and post-war migrants remain almost terra incognita for historians in Australia.17 In a brief discussion of Croatian and Serbian diasporas in Australia, historian Glenda Sluga noted two decades ago the ‘transnational nature of nationalisms and of histories, and of their crooked reach.’ This book aims to answer her call within Australian historiography for: [an] engaged historian, not on a warpath, but committed to airing and discussing subjects that are deemed taboo, whether because of the aggressive emotions to which they may give rise, or because of the challenge they pose to national forms of identity and culture otherwise maintained through transnational means.18

4 Introduction

My main concern has been to move away from both ignorance and polemic, the latter perhaps only possible when perpetrators and collaborators ‘are unable to argue back.’19 My aim has been to firstly delineate the various kinds of far-right DPs and the reasons behind the progressive bleaching of group and individual reputations which resulted in sponsorship by the United Nations for resettlement in the west. After they arrived in Australia, I have been interested in where their ultranationalist, fascist and antisemitic energies were directed. As Peter Gatrell reminds us, ‘thinking through how displaced persons themselves navigated the myriad flows of power and how they understood the process of displacement remains the most challenging issue of all.’20 My sight is always firmly set on the agency of groups and individuals within the varying structural limitations.21 I come to this topic as an Anglo-Australian historian of migration. My initial interest in displaced persons began twenty years ago after meeting my soon-to-be husband’s grandparents – one Polish-Ukrainian, two SovietUkrainians and one Russian. It became apparent that my husband’s paternal grandfather Alexander was a Don Cossack who had served in the Cossack Army under the Germans and had been, therefore, a collaborator. Over 70,000 Cossacks had surrendered to the British in May 1945 at Lienz, in Austria, where they were forcibly, and violently, repatriated to the Soviet Union. Alexander and his young wife Olga had hidden with other escapees in the mountains and spent months evading British patrols. When they were finally captured they were sent to Kapfenberg displaced persons camp. Evading the initial repatriation and first patrols was a matter of extraordinary luck as by the time they were caught the western Allied military authorities had become wary of Soviet violence towards returnees and had ceased all forced repatriations. Although the British knew very well that he had been a soldier under the Germans, Alexander told the IRO that he had been a labourer in Germany during the last years of the war and was thus sponsored to resettle in Australia in 1949.22 This is not, though, an ‘inside’ history. The many nationalities, ethnicities and languages of the heterogenous DP cohort(s) as seen in the countries of resettlement prohibit an easy synthesis; most detailed histories of either collaboration or resettlement focus on one ethnicity only. I have relied on community archivists and translators to assist me in this synthesis, as it seems that the DP experience must be synthesised: the ‘multidimensional spectrum of perpetrators’ was ultimately categorised as either eligible for DP status or not; those who resettled in Australia arrived under the one immigration scheme.23 While this story is in many ways a narrative of far-right national and ethnic expression(s), a synthesis allows us to notice the commonalities, and convergences, of such expressions. The book thus straddles the fields of migration history and perpetrator studies – both within the overarching context of the Cold War – as well as contributing

Introduction  5

to the recent move in fascist studies towards ‘giving more space’ to social and cultural history.24 The prologue examines what historian Jan Gross has described as a complex history of ‘cooperation, collusion, compliance and complicity’25 with the German-led Holocaust, as well as following recent scholarship in situating Holocaust perpetration alongside the longue duree of ultranationalist atrocities in multi-ethnic borderlands.26 The first chapter then describes the ‘hitty-missy’ character of screening out alleged war criminals from the massive post-war DP population in the west.27 It shows how some perpetrators were able to hide within the displaced mass, refashioning their ‘file-selves’ for resettlement; others emphasised the nationalist and anti-communist aspects of their collaboration in order to escape retribution, and even to be ‘­ forgiven’ and protected.28 In the end, the IRO acted as a massive clearing house between the DPs, who had been in effect offered general absolution, and the countries of resettlement, who would profit from their labour.29 The second chapter takes the story to Australia, describing official migration selection policies and procedures, which included a ‘total lack’ of security officers in the initial phase and a ‘later limitation’ of security officers in numbers and geographical spread.30 In any case, the Australian government was predominantly interested in enabling a mass migration scheme of fit and assimilable workers, as quickly and with as little fuss as possible. However, the fact that this mass migration scheme was importing alleged war criminals was public knowledge from the very beginning. The next chapter examines both Jewish community and leftist anti-fascist protests, as well as the initial investigations into named individuals carried out by the Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism. The fourth chapter focuses on the non-Jewish DP communities themselves. Following the DPs’ migration trajectory to Australia also highlights that fascist ideation could not only survive the war’s end but it could (continue to) be transnational and transcultural.31 Community and inter-­community organisations such as the Anti-Bolshevik Block of Nations and the Captive ­Nations movement, as well as the New South Wales Liberal Party’s Migrant Advisory Council, were to provide safe havens for a problematic politics that was now publicly defined by one of Stanley Payne’s ‘fascist negations’: anti-­communism.32 The two case studies of the post-war Hungarist Movement and Croatian Ustasha are heavily reliant upon Australian security records, and demonstrate also how émigré fascism could merge with a native ­Australian national socialism; fascism ‘was and remains a politics rooted in specific conceptions of colonialism and race.’33 The last chapter then describes what happened decades later when ­Australia  – in common with the United States, Canada and the United ­Kingdom  – instituted judicial processes against the alleged perpetrators of the Holocaust now resident in their countries. This is the first use of the

6 Introduction

recently released archives of the SIU and highlights the many flaws in an investigative and legal process that historians found ‘challenging’ and, ultimately, frustrating.34 It is my hope that this book sets out clearly, and as comprehensively as possible, the various strands of the story of those post-war DPs who were either perpetrators and/or fascist ideologues. This story begins with their actions under German occupation during the Second World War and ends with Australia’s continued reckoning with their legacy. Notes 1 David Bevan, A Case to Answer: The Story of Australia’s First European War Crimes Prosecution (Kent Town, SA: Wakefield Press, 1994), 14. 2 Bevan, A Case to Answer, 16. 3 ‘I’m that man, but I’m no war criminal, says pensioner’, Advertiser (Adelaide), 30 December 1986; Bevan, A Case to Answer, 17. 4 See Jayne Persian, ‘Displaced Persons and the Politics of International Categori­ sation(s)’, Australian Journal of Politics & History 58, no. 4 (2012): 481–496. 5 There were fewer than 500 Jews included in the IRO mass scheme to Australia. This study does not include any alleged Jewish perpetrators. A further 12,000 Jewish DPs arrived in Australia outside the IRO scheme (ie. with sponsored landing permits). Suzanne Rutland, ‘Subtle Exclusions: Postwar Jewish Emigration to Australia and the Impact of the IRO Scheme’, The Journal of Holocaust Education 10, no. 1 (2001): 56. 6 See Jayne Persian, ‘“Chifley liked them Blond”: DP Immigrants for Australia’, History Australia 12, no. 2 (2015): 80–101. For a comprehensive review of this scheme, see Jayne Persian, Beautiful Balts: From Displaced Persons to New Australians (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2017). 7 Polyukovich was never legally married to Maria, as he was already married to a woman he left in Ukraine. Fraser, Daviborshch’s Cart, 98. 8 Following Raul Hilberg, the word ‘perpetrator’ is here used to describe individuals who ‘played a specific role in the formulation or implementation of anti-Jewish measures’ and is used interchangeably with ‘war criminal’. These labels, of course, hardly ever remain uncontested. Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe 1933–45 (New York: Aaron Asher Books, 1992), ix; Alette Smeulers, Barbora Holá and Maartje Weerdesteijn, ‘Introduction’, in Perpetrators of International Crimes: Theories, Methods, and Evidence, eds. Alette Smeulers, Maartje Weerdesteijn and Barbora Holá (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 3. 9 Following Roger Griffin, the word ‘fascist’ is used to broadly describe a ‘genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palengenetic form of populist ultranationalism’. All groups here described as ‘fascist’ self-­ identified with this term, at various times and to varying degrees. Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (London: Pinter, 1991), 38; see Clark and Grady, ‘European Fascist Movements’, 2, 9. 10 My italics. Menzies, AC, Review of Material relating to the Entry of Suspected War Criminals into Australia (Canberra: The Review, 1986), 21, 125. 11 John Dos Passos cited in Atina Grossman, Jews, Germans, and Allies: Close ­Encounters in Occupied Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 26.

Introduction  7

12 For a particularly egregious example, see Mark Wyman, DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945–1951 (New York: Cornell University Press, 1998), 178–185. 13 Notable exceptions include David Cesarani, Justice Delayed: How Britain Became a Refuge for Nazi War Criminals (London: Phoenix Press, 2001 [1992]) and David Nasaw, The Last Million: Europe’s Displaced Persons from World War to Cold War (New York: Penguin Press, 2020). 14 Henry Mayer, ‘Books in Brief: Book Notes’, Politics 3, no. 2 (1968): 262; Annemarie Sammartino, ‘Review: Michael Kellogg, The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Russians and the Making of National Socialism’, H-German (September 2006); see Andrew Moore, ‘Writing about the Extreme Right in Australia’, ­Labour History 89 (2005): 9; Glenda Sluga, ‘Whose History?’ in The Historian’s Conscience: Australian Historians on the Ethics of History, ed. Stuart Macintyre (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2004), 128. 15 In Australia, the primary works on the topic have been those by (Jewish and leftist) journalist Mark Aarons, Sanctuary! Nazi Fugitives in Australia (Melbourne: William Heinemann Australia, 1989) and War Criminals Welcome: Australia a Sanctuary for Fugitive War Criminals Since 1945 (Melbourne: Black Inc, 2001). This book heavily relies on both Aarons’ published works and the archival material he has generously deposited with the State Library of New South Wales. Other important works include Suzanne D Rutland, ‘Suspected Nazi War Criminals in Australia’, Submission to Review of Material Relating to the Entry of Suspected War Criminals into Australia, September 1986, Appendix III in The Road to the Inquiry: Suspected War Criminals in Australia, ed. Leslie Caplan (Darlington, NSW: Australian Jewish Historical Society, 2012), 123–145; and Philip Mendes, ‘Jews, Nazis and Communists Down Under: The Jewish Council’s Controversial Campaign Against German Immigration’, Australian Historical Studies 33, no.  119 (2002): 73–92. The Communist Party of Australia’s official newspaper Tribune published numerous exposés of suspect DPs over the decades. Croatian historiography was particularly partisan during the 1960s and 1970s: see Marjan Jurjevic, Ustasha under the Southern Cross (Melbourne: M Jurjevic, 1973) and Dave Davies, The Ustasha in Australia (Sydney: Communist Party of Australia, 1972) vs Les Shaw, Trial by Slander: A Background into the Independent State of Croatia and an Account of the Anti-Croatian Campaign in Australia (Canberra: Harp Books, 1973). 16 For a recent example of the silence of: academic historians, see Jessica Stroja, Displaced Persons, Resettlement and the Legacies of War: From War Zones to New Homes (London: Routledge, 2022); DP community historians, see Christine Winter, ‘Luda Popenhagen, Australian Lithuanians (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2012)’, Review in Australian Studies 7, no. 4 (2013): 1–2. Exceptions include John Playford, The Truth Behind ‘Captive Nations Week’ and the Extremist Emigres – ABN (Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations) in Australia (Sydney: Outlook, 1968); Sheila Fitzpatrick, White Russians, Red Peril: A Cold War History of Migration to Australia (Melbourne: Black Inc, 2021); Mark Edele, Stalin’s Defectors: How Red Army Soldiers Became Hitler’s Collaborators (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); and Jayne Persian, ‘Vladimír Ležák-Borin: Cold War Warrior’ in Dallas Baker, Donna Lee Brien and Nike Sulway (ed.), Forgotten Lives: Recovering History through Fact and Fiction (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017). For a useful analysis of the legal-historical nexus, focusing on the three war crimes trials, see David Fraser, Davidborshch’s Cart: Narrating the Holocaust in Australian War Crimes Trials (Lincoln/London: University of Nebraska Press, 2010). 17 See Ruth Balint and Zora Simic, ‘Histories of Migrants and Refugees in Australia’, Australian Historical Studies 49, no. 3 (2018): 378–409. 18 Sluga, ‘Whose History?’, 137.

8 Introduction

19 Martin Dean, ‘Where Did All the Collaborators Go?’, Slavic Review 64, no. 4 (2005): 798. 20 Peter Gatrell, ‘Introduction: World Wars and Population Displacement in Europe in the Twentieth Century’, Contemporary European History 16, no. 4 (2007): 426. 21 See Smeulers et al, ‘Introduction’, 1. 22 See Jayne Persian, ‘Cossack Identities: From Russian Emigres and Anti-Soviet Collaborators to Displaced Persons’, Immigrants & Minorities 36, no. 2 (2018): 125–142; Persian, Beautiful Balts, 1–9. 23 George Browder, cited in Dan Stone, Fascism, Nazism and the Holocaust Challenging Histories (London: Routledge, 2020), 97. 24 Roland Clark and Tim Grady, ‘European Fascist Movements: An Introduction’, in European Fascist Movements: A Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 2023), 16. 25 Jan T Gross, ‘Themes for a Social History of War Experience and Collaboration’, in The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath, eds. István Deák, Jan T Gross & Tony Judt (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 31, ftn. 48. 26 Alex J Kay, Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021), 285, 287; Eric C Steinhart, ‘The Chameleon of Trawniki: Jack Reimer, Soviet Volksdeutsche, and the Holocaust’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies 23, no. 2 (2009): 252. 27 John Pumphrey, cited in Cesarani, Justice Delayed, 53. 28 See Sheila Fitzpatrick, Tear off the Masks!: Identity and Imposture in TwentiethCentury Russia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 14–18; Istvan Deák, ‘Introduction’, in The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath, eds. István Deák, Jan T Gross and Tony Judt (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 12. 29 Aleš Bebler, cited in Nasaw, The Last Million, 277. 30 Menzies, AC, Review of Material, 130. 31 For fascism as a transnational phenomenon, see Ángel Alcade, ‘The Transnational Consensus: Fascism and Nazism in Current Research’, Contemporary European History 29, no. 2 (2020): 243-252. Stone, Fascism, Nazism, 11. 32 Stanley G Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914–1945 (Madison: University of ­Wisconsin Press, 1996), 6. 33 Liam Liburd and Paul Jackson, ‘Debate: Decolonising Fascist Studies’, Fascism 10, no. 2 (2021), 1. 34 See Panel Discussion hosted by David Bevan with The Hon. Gregory James AM QC, The Hon Michael David QC, Emeritus Professor Dr Konrad Kwiet, ‘On Trial Series: The Ivan Polyukhovich Trial’, Melbourne Holocaust Museum, 21 October 2021.

PROLOGUE War Criminals, Collaborators, Quislings and Traitors

Over five million Jewish civilians were murdered in Europe during the Second World War.1 This deliberate genocide – of lives, families, homes and cultures – was established and led by the German Nazis. It did, however, rely on the firepower and administrative skills of non-Germans, particularly in the east. This chapter will provide an overview of the vast and multifaceted history of collusion in order to gain a sense of who these Central and Eastern European collaborators were. All perpetrators were complicit in the ­outcome  – the (transnational) Holocaust under German occupation - but there were rather marked differences in motivation and individual agency. These variations must be set out here because they were to be parsed closely and sympathetically by the western Allies in order to organise the mass of people left in Germany and Austria at the end of the war. For non-Germans, ‘complicity and cooperation’ with the German-led ­Holocaust could mean individual or paramilitary group acts – voluntary local pogroms or acts of murder before or beside German occupation – as well as involvement with a progressively institutionalised German genocidal machinery.2 Individuals volunteered or were conscripted from local populations or from Soviet prisoner of war camps into auxiliary police battalions assisting the four Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) sent into Soviet territory, and also into regular army units and Waffen-SS units, including the infamous Trawniki guards used in Einsatz Reinhard (Operation Reinhard: the Extermination of Polish Jews).3 Independent armies, such as the Russian Liberation Army and Cossack units, as well as various para-military and irregular organisations, all colluded with the Germans. After the Einsatzgruppen had moved through, German authorities relied on local and auxiliary policemen to assist in combatting ‘partisans.’4 Complicity could also mean legislative or DOI: 10.4324/9780429276880-2

10 Prologue

administrative cooperation: as a puppet or collaborationist government minister, a propagandist, or a mayor of a town directing ghetto clearances and mass burials. The possibilities for opportunistic blackmail and for looting the property and businesses of victims were also not lost on perpetrators; as Jan Gross has noted, the Holocaust was ‘a phenomenon filled with individual initiatives.’ Precursors to killing also included sadistic ‘acts of physical and psychological cruelty’: verbal humiliations, beatings, torture and rape.5 In various places, mass violence was also an outcome of regional interethnic conflicts and incorporated forms of (non-Jewish) ethnic cleansing.6 In Galicia, for example, historian Omer Bartov describes a ‘civil war between Ukrainian and Polish nationalists’ that operated ‘quite independently of the German occupiers and their interests’; Christoph Mick argues further that ‘the Jews were marginal in Polish and Ukrainian perceptions of the war.’7 Even within the right-wing Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (Orhanizatsiya ukrayins’kykh natsionalistiv, OUN), the Bandera faction OUN-B and the Melnyk faction OUN-M (formed after a leadership split in 1938 and named after their respective leaders) killed each other by the hundreds and handed rival faction members over to the Germans.8 In Yugoslavia, the Germans placed the overtly fascist and antisemitic Croatian Ustasha: Croatian Revolutionary Movement (Ustaše: Hrvatski revolucionarni pokret) – formerly a paramilitary terrorist force supported by Italy’s Benito Mussolini – in charge of a newly declared Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH). The Ustasha were ‘openly genocidal’ against those they saw as ‘less racially pure,’ running their own large network of concentration camps, and were responsible for the murder of 350,000 Serbs as well as the genocide of Jews and Roma.9 Serbian nationalist Chetniks (Četnici), in turn, expelled and murdered Bosnia’s Muslim population, while Bosnian Muslims  – who had fought for Emperor Franz Joseph in the First World War - joined the Waffen-SS Handschar Division.10 A pre-existing genocidal antisemitic ideation was not a prerequisite for non-German cooperation with the Holocaust.11 Instead, acts of genocide occurred amidst a ‘very complex reality.’12 This complex reality occurred in the context of anti-Soviet nationalisms throughout eastern Europe. Some groups were long-time enemies of the Soviet Union and included those who held the Nansen passports that were issued to stateless (White Russian) persons in the interwar period. Their anti-Soviet views were shared by nationalist Soviet Ukrainians, who had experienced the bloody civil war, forced collectivisation, the Holodomor (literally ‘hunger-extermination,’ the Soviet-made famine in 1932–1933) and the 1937–1938 purges. Others had more recent experiences. In 1940 and 1941, 315,000 people were deported by the Soviets from Poland (including ethnic Poles, Jews, Ukrainians and Belorussians).13 In June 1941 mass deportations of men, women and children also took place in the Baltic States; 20,000 were removed from Lithuania alone. Historian

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Saulius Suziedelis notes ‘the surreal context of an experience in which criminal regimes could be perceived as liberators’ – even saviours. To some extent this was realpolitik: only Germany had the motivation and means to protect these nations from the Soviet threat. In Lithuania, where the genocidal stage of the Holocaust began, there was low volunteer enlistment in the SS and a much higher volunteer enlistment in the 1944 local force against the Soviet Union.14 Similarly, Aldis Purs argues that for young Latvian men, the choice between (more safely) working in Germany and volunteering for the military, nearer to home, was ‘difficult’.15 Franz Stahlecker, commander of Einsatzgruppen A, admitted that ‘when assigning Lithuanian and Latvian personnel for the Execution commandos, particular attention was paid to choosing men whose family or relatives had been murdered or carried off by the Russians.’16 This is not to say that fascist and/or genocidal antisemitic ideations were absent; some collaborators were genuinely motivated by a political sympathy towards German Nazism. During the interwar period, each country had indigenous prototypic and antisemitic fascist movements, including the Arrow Cross Party – Hungarist Movement (Nyilaskeresztes Párt – Hungarista Mozgalom) in Hungary, led by Ferenc Szálasi, which won 20% of parliamentary seats in 1939; the Legion of the Archangel Michael (Legiunea Arhanghelul Mihail) in Romania, known as the Iron Guard, which won 15% of the vote in the 1937 elections; and the Slovak People’s Party, with its brutal Hlinka Guard.17 Latvia had been ruled since 1934 by right-wing authoritarian dictator Kārlis Ulmanis, who encouraged nationalism and militarism, particularly through the Mazpulki youth organisation which stressed the organic rebirth of the Latvian nation.18 Similarly, in Lithuania, Suziedelis argues that ‘fascination with corporatism and a disciplined society … all churned in the witches’ brew.’ A renewed nationalism in Lithuania, then, encompassed ‘a distinctive tilt towards Germany’.19 There was also a native antisemitism: the pre-war motto of the Lithuanian fascist organisation Iron Wolf (Geležinis Vilkas) was ‘Jews go back to Palestine.’ A proclamation by the Lithuanian Activist Front (Lietuviu Aktivistu Frontas, LAF), a short-lived anti-Soviet organisation founded in 1940, repeated the pernicious canard: ‘Jews and Bolshevism are one and the same,’ A Vilnius security police report from July 1940 noted widespread resentment against Jews ‘who had become very insolent and dare to brag that they are now in power; consequently, there is talk among Lithuanians and Poles that, if the Germans would come, the Jews would suffer greatly’. 20 Once the German Army invaded, they flooded the occupied regions with antisemitic literature, including posters and cartoons, as well as making antisemitic proclamations.21 Somewhat ironically, even strongly antisemitic far-right groups that had some history of collaboration could find themselves at odds with the Germans. For example, in 1940 in Romania, the Iron Guard – the third largest

12 Prologue

fascist movement in Europe – made up a coalition with General Ion Antonescu and formally joined the Axis. However, a few months later the antisemitic excesses of the Iron Guard set off a three-day civil war. The steady hand of Antonescu, with the support of the Germans, prevailed, and more than 9,000 Iron Guardists were incarcerated, in Buchenwald and other camps. Antonescu then initiated anti-Jewish atrocities in the newly occupied territories of Bukovina and northern Bessarabia, including the mass killing of 60,000 Jews near Odessa; Hitler stated in 1941 that these were ‘much more radical policies in this area than we have so far.’22 When Antonescu fell out of favour in 1944, the incarcerated Iron Guardists were released to form a puppet government in Vienna.23 _____ After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, around 1.6 million men joined the German army and auxiliary police battalions.24 This figure includes prisoners of war; deserters from the Red Army – who were more likely to desert to the opposing side than any other combatants; ranking general officers – who saw their chance to see off the Bolsheviks; and around 20,000 White Russian emigres who had been resident in Europe in the interwar period, who understood the war as an opportunity to ‘unfurl figurative banners that had long since gathered dust.’25 General Mikhail Skorodumov’s proposed independent military force of White Russian emigres became the Russisches Schuzkorps (Russian Protective Corps) predominantly made up of former White Army officer volunteers and augmented by Major General Naumenko’s 1st Cossack Division. Soviet Army General Vlasov, captured by the Germans in 1942, subsequently formed a Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia, and then a Russian Liberation Army (Russkaya osvoboditel’naya armiya, ROA), filled with recruits from prisoner of war camps. Others, including right-wing National Alliance of Russian Solidarists (Narodno-trudovoy soyuz rossiyskikh solidaristov, NTS) operatives, worked for German military intelligence, for the Ministry for Propaganda and Public Enlightenment, and in the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. For the NTS, collaboration was understood as a path to national revolution in Russia.26 In eastern Poland, the antisemitic OUN (both the OUN-B and the O ­ UN-M) participated in initial outbreaks of mob violence (framed as ‘retaliatory actions’) in Volhynia and Galicia against both Poles and Jews (while Poles killed Ukrainians and Jews).27 A leaflet warned Jews in Lwów: ‘You welcomed Stalin with flowers. We will lay your heads at Hitler’s feet’, while another promised ‘a bright national life on your land, where there will be: NEITHER KATSAP (a derogatory term for ‘Russian’) NOR JEW NOR POLE’.28 One of the pogroms – a total of around 12,000 Jews were murdered within the

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first few days – was named Aktion Petliura after the Ukrainian nationalist leader Symon Petliura, who had been assassinated by a Ukrainian Jew (this assassination itself framed as retaliation for earlier pogroms) in 1926. Meanwhile, on a single day in July 1943, around 10,000 Poles were killed. One eyewitness to these early days of German occupation argued that ‘Ukrainian nationalism survived under the cloak of collaboration’: Ukrainian nationalists were opportunistic collaborators, with an eye to a future ‘Ukraine for the Ukrainians.’ Bandera planned to use Ukrainian expeditionary groups to establish a Ukrainian administration in eastern Poland, which would lay the foundations for a Ukrainian state.29 After a short-lived Ukrainian National Revolution which declared an independent Ukrainian state – an announcement that was accompanied by a wave of over 140 pogroms across western Ukraine – OUN leaders were imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.30 However, their Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrayins’ka Povstans’ka Armiia, UPA), made up of Ukrainian policemen who had deserted from ­German units, was active until 1945, killing up to 100,000 Polish civilians and in the final stages of the war, once again receiving German support, engaging with the Red Army.31 As well as co-opting the radical right, the Nazis also recruited ‘ordinary’ Soviet Ukrainians into committing genocidal atrocities. Yuri Radchenko notes ‘a willingness to cooperate with various, often mutually hostile political and military bodies’ and describes one possible career trajectory for a Polish-Ukrainian during the war years: During the first period of Soviet rule, an ethnic Ukrainian from Eastern Galicia could work as a secret agent of the NKVD, arresting Ukrainian nationalists and handing them over to the Bolsheviks; after the Wehrmacht invasion, he could cooperate with the OUN and the German occupying authorities; and then later, after the conflict between the OUN and the Germans began in autumn 1941, he could help the Germans arrest OUN men, handing them over to the Nazis; later still, he could desert his post in the Ukrainian police and join the UPA; and finally, he could approach the NKVD, confess his guilt, and declare his desire to become ‘an honest citizen of the Soviet Union.’32 For ‘ordinary enforcers,’ as well as a widespread antisemitism which conflated Jews and Bolsheviks, motives to collaborate included the fact that police were paid and that such a position prevented their forced removal as workers to Germany, especially after early 1942 when the harsh labour conditions became widely known.33 Further, while it was unlikely that a German would face consequences for refusing to kill Jews, we know of at least one case where a Ukrainian policeman was shot – together with the Jewish victims – after refusing to take part in an Aktion in Kharkiv.34 Another

14 Prologue

Ukrainian was shot, the mayor of Kremenchug, because he had ‘tried to protect the Jews.’ Historian Raul Hilberg notes that these types of cases were rare because ‘the counterpressure was evidently too great.’35 In July 1941, a Ukrainian Auxiliary Police Force (Schutzmannschaft) was formed – made up of Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) and ethnic Ukrainians as well as Russians, Poles, Tatars and others, including many former Red Army prisoners-of-war.36 Other ‘Ukrainian militia’ included the ethnic German Hilfspolizei, and the Ukrainische Wachkompanie of the German security police (Sicherheitspolizei, SiPo) and the intelligence agency (Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS, SD).37 Local policemen were empowered to kill anyone the Germans defined as enemies of the state, including Jews; indeed, the Germans relied on the dramatically increased numbers of local forces to ‘do the dirty work of the Holocaust,’ including the shooting of children.38 According to historian David Alan Rich, it was never a challenge to find ‘young Ukrainian men interested in wearing a uniform and carrying a firearm for Germany.’ In a study of these militias, he noted that ‘the distinction between the Ukrainian “nationalists” and the just “ordinary men” who joined these organisations was relatively immaterial to their willingness to facilitate the mass murder of their Jewish neighbours,’39 In 1943 almost 100,000 men volunteered to join the Waffen-SS Galizien Division.40 Between 1941 and 1944, 1.6 million Jews had been murdered in Ukraine.41 In neighbouring Byelorussia, locals also did ‘much of the Germans’ work for them.’ Local police were integral in identifying Jewish victims, and some were more ‘energetic and active’ than the Germans in the pursuit of genocide.42 With regards to perpetrators who were former Red Army prisoners of war, George Ginsburgs argues that decisions to ‘volunteer’ were not necessarily made ideologically or sadistically but for survival: cannibalism in the prisoner of war camps was rife, and many were ‘driven by hunger to enlist.’43 This was a ‘terrible choice,’ made ‘for a crust of bread.’ Volunteers were also evading the summary mass executions of the infamous ‘Commissar Order,’ which authorised the execution of Communist Party members.44 In any case, as historian Seth Bernstein notes, the line between volunteering and coerced recruitment can be difficult to discern.45 Some enlisted into the German Army as ‘Hiwis’ (Hilfswilliger) and were assigned to non-combat duties, which became an integral part of Operation Reinhard; others were drafted into the eastern units (Osteinheiten) and sent to the western front.46 Former prisoners of war (initially ethnic German Volksdeutsche and then predominantly ethnic Ukrainians), recruited in 1941–1942 with the promise that they would not be sent to the eastern front, were sent to Trawniki, a training camp in Poland.47 Around 1,500 Trawniki then participated in mass killings, liquidating ghettos, and as guards on both delivery trains and at the death camps in Poland, under the command of German officers.48

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As Germany swept through eastern Europe, German Army commanders encouraged local ‘anti-Jewish and anti-Communist’ groups to take the lead in ethnic ‘self-cleansing’ operations: ridding the community of ‘Bolsheviks and the Jews.’49 In June 1941, Reinhard Heydrich, the SS Chief of Security Service and Security Police, advised the Einsatzgruppen: Do not place any obstacles in the way of any self-cleansing actions on the part of anti-Communists or anti-semites in the occupied territories; on the contrary, see that they become more intensified, of course as much as possible without leaving any traces, and turn it in a proper direction …50 Stahlecker reported four months later that these pogroms had been easy to achieve in Lithuania by ‘activating the partisans’ but considerably more difficult to instigate in Latvia, due to the deportation of ‘the entire national leadership’ by the Soviets. There were only a comparatively few Jews in Estonia, and so ‘no opportunity to instigate pogroms.’51 These supposedly ‘spontaneous’ Aktionen, carried out by local far right groups, were used to implicate the native population and also to probe how the various militaries would react to the coming Holocaust; the ad hoc paramilitary units were usually disarmed within weeks, and replaced by local militias under German control and/or local police units.52 Within six months of German occupation, during the second half of 1941, most of the 350,000 Jews resident in the Baltic states – over 200,000 in Lithuania alone – had been killed in massive ‘self-purging efforts.’53 Local far-right organisations served as sources of personnel, particularly for the Einsatzgruppen. Around 165,000 Latvians volunteered for various German military units, including the infamous Sonderkommando Arajs, a unit of the Latvian Auxiliary Police that was responsible for the murder of around 24,000 Jews in late 1941.54 In Lithuania, the Rollkommando Hamann, a small mobile unit under the command of Einsatzgruppen A, was responsible for the death of around 60,000 Jews in mid-1941. In a period of just six months, eighty per cent of all Lithuanian Jews had been murdered.55 Latvians and Lithuanians were so ‘horrifyingly enthusiastic and competent’ that they were then sent to Byelorussia and Poland, where they liquidated ghettos, carried out deportations to death camps and participated in massacres.56 Estonian police battalions were also involved in actions in Byelorussia, ­Poland, and Lithuania, as well as the massacre of a transport from Theresienstadt camp in 1942.57 Although Stahlecker mused that local groups only ‘attempted to nurture a close relationship with the Wehrmacht in order to be included in a future military campaign against the Soviet Army,’ he still used these volunteers to carry out the ‘larger liquidation actions’ and this occurred ‘without any major complaints.’58 Baltic countries were all allowed to form

16 Prologue

self-governments in 1942, and this was in response to what historian Robert G Waite has described as a Baltic ‘readiness for collaboration.’59 In March 1942, Slovakia gained the distinction of being the first Axis partner to consent to the deportation of its Jews. Slovak Gendarmes (paramilitary officers) rounded up Jews for deportation over the German border, ably assisted by personnel from the Slovak military and the right-wing Hlinka Guard.60 In German-allied Bulgaria, police and military units participated in the transfer of 11,343 Jews from the occupied territories of Macedonia, Thrace and Pirot to the death camp of Treblinka.61 After Germany occupied Albania in 1943, the fascist National Front (Balli Kombëtar) set up a puppet government and an Albanian Waffen-SS division became complicit in Jewish and Roma genocide in Kosovo, as well as the murder of ethnic Serbians.62 Romanian authorities organised the deportations of Jews to a network of ghettos and concentration camps in the region of Transistria, where up to a quarter of a million were killed, as well as participating independently in various massacres along the eastern front. Similarly, after the fascist Arrow Cross-led pogroms in Hungary, the Hungarian Gendarmes and police rounded up 400,000 Jews and deported them to Auschwitz.63 Notes 1 Up to half a million Roma were also murdered during the Second World War. For a useful discussion on their categorisation as ‘criminal elements’, see Sławomir Kapralski, ‘Collaboration and the Genocide of Roma in Poland’, in Traitors, Collaborators and Deserters in Contemporary European Politics of Memory: Formulas of Betrayal, eds. Gelinada Grinchencko and Eleonora Narvselius (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 219. 2 Jan T Gross, ‘Themes for a Social History of War Experience and Collaboration’, in The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath, eds. István Deák, Jan T Gross & Tony Judt (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 31, ftn. 48. 3 It has been estimated that up to 10% of the 7.8 million troops wearing German uniforms were not German. It should be noted, however, that the Waffen-SS usually fought as regular troops and, towards the end of the war, were conscripted. George Ginsburgs, ‘The Soviet Union and the Problem of Refugees and Displaced Persons, 1917–1956’, The American Journal of International Law 51, no.  2 (1957): 356; David Cesarani, Justice Delayed: How Britain Became a Refuge for Nazi War Criminals (London: Phoenix Press, 2001 [1992]), 35; Sir Thomas ­Hetherington and William Chalmers, War Crimes: Report of the War Crimes Inquiry (Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1989), 40. 4 ‘Re Fricsons’, transcription of meeting held with Professor Richard Breitman, 24 May 1989, Fricsons, Argods, Attorney General’s Department, Special Investigations Unit, 1987–1992, A9525, PU74 Part 1, NAA. 5 Jan Tomasz Gross with Irena Grudzinska Gross, Golden Harvest: Events at the Periphery of the Holocaust (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 54, 67, 92, 52, 62. 6 Alexander Korb, ‘Understanding Ustaša Violence’, Journal of Genocide Research 12, nos. 1-2 (2010): 14.

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7 Omer Bartov, Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called ­Buczacz (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018), 268; Christoph Mick, ‘Incompatible Experiences: Poles, Ukrainians and Jews in Lviv under Soviet and German Occupation, 1939–1944’, Journal of Contemporary History 46, no. 2 (2011): 362. 8 Yuri Radchenko, ‘“We Emptied our Magazines into Them”: The Ukrainian Auxiliary Police and the Holocaust in Generalbezirk Charkow, 1941-1943’, Yad Vashem Studies 41, no. 1 (2013): 73. 9 Only a year after gaining power, the Ustasha were forced to cease their mass killings because masses of fleeing Serbians were destabilising Axis control of the region. Korb, ‘Understanding Ustaša Violence’, 5; Mate Nikola Tokić, ‘The End of “Historical-Ideological Bedazzlement”: Cold War Politics and Émigré Croatian Separatist Violence, 1950–1980’, Social Science History 36, no. 3 (2012): 425; Alexander Mitchell Lee, ‘“They Seem Like a Good Bunch”: Liberal Party Support for Violent Croatian Nationalism in Australia, 1949-1972’, PhD diss., Australian National University, 2022, 109–110. 10 Korb, ‘Understanding Ustaša Violence’, 6, 11; Mark Mazower, Hitler’s Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe (London: Penguin Books, 2009), 457. 11 Andrew Ezergailis, ‘“Neighbours” Did Not Kill Jews!’ in Collaboration and Resistance During the Holocaust: Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, eds. David Gaunt, Paul A. Levine, and Laura Palosuo (Lausanne: Peter Lang, 2004), 221; see Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: Aaron Asher Books, 1992). 12 Gross, ‘Themes for s Social History of War Experience and Collaboration’, 31. 13 Bartov, Anatomy of a Genocide, 147. 14 Saulius Suziedelis, ‘Foreign Saviors, Native Disciples: Perspectives on Collaboration in Lithuania, 1940–1945’, in Collaboration and Resistance During the ­Holocaust: Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, eds. David Gaunt, Paul A Levine, and Laura Palosuo (Lausanne: Peter Lang, 2004), 341, 329, 342, 354. 15 Aldis Purs, ‘“How those Brothers in Foreign Lands are Dividing the Fatherland”: Latvian National Politics in Displaced Persons Camps after the Second World War,’ in Warlands: Population Resettlement and State Reconstruction in the Soviet-­East European Borderlands, 1945–1950, eds. Peter Gatrell and Nick Baron (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 51. 16 Ezergailis, ‘“Neighbours” Did Not Kill Jews!’, 208. 17 Rudolf Paksa, ‘Hungary’, 181; Roland Clark, ‘Romania’, 268; James Mace Ward, ‘Slovaks’, 288; in European Fascist Movements: A Sourcebook, eds. Roland Clark and Tim Grady (London: Routledge, 2023). 18 Jordan Kuck, ‘Renewed Latvia: A Case Study of the Transnational Fascism Model’, Fascism 2 (2013): 185–190. 19 Suziedelis, ‘Foreign Saviors, Native Disciples’, 333, 346. 20 Interview with Aahron Vitentzchouk, 24 February 1989, BRAZAITIS, Juozas, Attorney General’s Department, Special Investigations Unit, 1987-1992, A9525, PU152, NAA. 21 Mick, ‘Incompatible Experiences’, 350. 22 Wendy Lower, ‘Pogroms, Mob Violence and Genocide in Western Ukraine, Summer 1941: Various Histories, Explanations and Comparisons’, Journal of Genocide Research 13, no. 3 (2011): 230; Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (Eastford, CT: Martino Fine Books, 2019 [1961]), 201. 23 Dan Stone, Fascism, Nazism and the Holocaust: Challenging Histories (London: Routledge, 2020), 143–144. 24 Benjamin Tromly, Cold War Exiles and the CIA: Plotting to Free Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 32.

18 Prologue

25 Tromly, Cold War Exiles and the CIA, 28; Sheila Fitzpatrick, White Russians, Red Peril: A Cold War History of Migration to Australia (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2021) 26; Mark Edele, Stalin’s Defectors: How Red Army Soldiers Became ­Hitler’s Collaborators, 1941–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 128, 132. 26 Tromly, Cold War Exiles and the CIA, 33, 42; Fitzpatrick, Russians, White and Red, 5-6. 27 Radchenko, ‘We Emptied our Magazines into Them’, 64; Anatoly Podolsky, ‘Collaboration in Ukraine during the Holocaust: Aspects of Historiography and Research,’ in Collaboration with the Nazis: Public Discourse after the Holocaust, ed. Roni Stauber (London: Routledge, 2010), 47; Korb, ‘Understanding Ustaša Violence,’ 7, 14; Per A Rudling, ‘Ukrainians’ in European Fascist Movements: A Sourcebook, eds. Roland Clark and Tim Grady (London: Routledge, 2023), 366. 28 Richard Breitman and Norman JW Goda, Hitler’s Shadow: Nazi War Criminals, US Intelligence, and the Cold War (United States: National Archives, 2010), 83; Yuri Radchenko and Mark Tauger, ‘The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (Mel’nyk Faction) and the Holocaust: The Case of Ivan Iuriiv,’ Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 31:2 (2017): 228. 29 Mick, ‘Incompatible Experiences,’ 345, 347–348; Breitman & Goda, Hitler’s Shadow, 83–84. 30 Per Anders Rudling, ‘“Not Quite Klaus Barbie, but in That Category”: Mykola Lebed, the CIA, and the Airbrushing of the Past’, Rethinking Holocaust Justice: Essays Across Disciplines, ed. Norman JW Goda (Brooklyn, NY: Berghahn Books, 2020), 159. 31 Bartov, Anatomy of a Genocide, 267; Rudling, ‘Not Quite Klaus Barbie’, 160; Vesna Drapač and Gareth Pritchard, ‘Beyond Resistance and Collaboration: ­Towards a Social History of Politics in Hitler’s Empire’, Journal of Social History 48, no. 4 (2015): 873. 32 Radchenko, ‘We Emptied our Magazines into Them’, 80, 84–85. 33 Podolsky, ‘Collaboration in Ukraine during the Holocaust’, 46; Radchenko, ‘We Emptied our Magazines into Them,’ 85, 87–88, 90; see Mykola Borovyk, ‘Collaboration and Collaborators in Ukraine During the Second World War: Between Myth and Memory’, in Traitors, Collaborators and Deserters in Contemporary European Politics of Memory, eds. Gelinada Grinchenko and Eleonora Narvselius (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 291. 34 Radchenko, ‘We Emptied our Magazines into Them’, 87. 35 Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 201. 36 Ibid., 70, 77. For a recent study of the Volksdeutsche as perpetrators, see Eric C. Steinhart, The Holocaust and the Germanization of Ukraine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 37 David Alan Rich, ‘Armed Ukrainians in L’viv: Ukrainian Militia, Ukrainian Police, 1941 to 1942’, Canadian-American Slavic Studies 48, no. 3 (2014): 271, 273. 38 Wendy Lower, Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 131, 135; Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 205. 39 Rich, ‘Armed Ukrainians in L’viv’, 280, 284. 40 Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, 459. 41 Alexander Kruglov, ‘Jewish Losses in Ukraine, 1941–1944,’ in The Shoah in Ukraine, eds. Ray Brandon and Wendy Lower (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 283–284. 42 Martin Dean, ‘Microcosm: Collaboration and Resistance during the Holocaust in the Mir Rayon of Belarus, 1941-1944,’ in Collaboration and Resistance During the Holocaust: Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, eds. David Gaunt, Paul A. Levine and Laura Palosuo (Lausanne: Peter Lang, 2004), 234, 242.

Prologue  19

43 Ginsburgs, ‘The Soviet Union and the Problem of Refugees and Displaced Persons’, 356; Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939–1945 (London: Picador, 2006), 141–142; Eric C Steinhart, ‘The Chameleon of Trawniki: Jack Reimer, Soviet Volksdeutsche, and the Holocaust,’ Holocaust and Genocide Studies 23, no. 2 (2009): 243. 44 Between 2.6 million and 3.3 million Soviet prisoners-of-war, of the 5.8 million Soviet soldiers captured by the Germans, did not survive the war. Radchenko, ‘We Emptied our Magazines into Them,’ 86; Rich, ‘Reinhard’s Footsoldiers,’ 690; see Steinhart, ‘The Chameleon of Trawniki’, 245; Seth Bernstein, Return to the Motherland: Displaced Soviets in WWII and the Cold War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2023), 57. 45 Bernstein, Return to the Motherland, 62. 46 Fitzpatrick, White Russians, Red Peril, 8. 47 David Alan Rich, ‘Reinhard’s Footsoldiers: Soviet Trophy Documents and Investigative Records as Sources’, in Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide, eds. John K. Roth, Elisabeth Maxwell, Margot Levy & Wendy Whitworth (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 690; David Alan Rich, ‘The Third Reich Enlists the New Soviet Man: Eastern Auxiliary Guards at AuschwitzBirkenau in Spring 1943’, Russian History, 41 (2014): 269, 271, 272; Browning, Ordinary Men, 51-52. 48 Rich, ‘The Third Reich Enlists the New Soviet Man’, 271, 273; Rich, ‘Reinhard’s Footsoldiers’, 692. 49 Rich, ‘Armed Ukrainians in L’viv’, 274. 50 Telegram from Reinhard Heydrich to the commanders of the Einsatzgruppen, 29 June 1941, cited in Yitzhak Arad, ‘Popular Collaboration in the Baltic States: Between Evasion and Facing a Burdensome Past,’ in Collaboration with the Nazis: Public Discourse after the Holocaust, ed. Roni Stauber (London: Routledge, 2010), 59. 51 There were around 1,000 Jews in Estonia; by the end of 1941, one quarter were killed, and only a dozen survived the war. Cited in Arad, ‘Popular Collaboration in the Baltic States,’ 59–60, 64. 52 Arad, ‘Popular Collaboration in the Baltic States,’ 60; Rich, ‘Armed Ukrainians in L’viv’, 274, 275, 276; Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 203–204. 53 Matthew Kott, ‘The Portrayal of Soviet Atrocities in the Nazi-controlled Latvianlanguage Press and the First Wave of Antisemitic Violence in Riga, July – August 1941,’ in David Gaunt, Paul A Levine, and Laura Palosuo, eds., Collaboration and Resistance During the Holocaust: Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania ­(Lausanne: Peter Lang, 2004), 127; Arad, ‘Popular Collaboration in the Baltic States’, 54; Dov Levin, ‘Disinformation and Antisemitism: Holocaust Denial in the Baltic States, 1945–1999’, in Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide, eds. John K. Roth, Elisabeth Maxwell, Margot Levy and Wendy Whitworth (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 847; Franz Stahlecker report, 15 October 1941, cited in Ezergailis, ‘“Neighbours” Did Not Kill Jews!,’ 201. 54 A Zunda, ‘Collaboration in German-Occupied Latvia: Assessments of the Historical Literature,’ in Collaboration and Resistance During the Holocaust: Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, eds. David Gaunt, Paul A. Levine, and Laura Palosuo (Lausanne: Peter Lang, 2004), 115, 118; Kott, ‘The Portrayal of Soviet Atrocities in the Nazi-controlled Latvian-language Press,’ 128. 55 Suziedelis, ‘Foreign Saviors, Native Disciples,’ 351. 56 Hetherington and Chalmers, War Crimes, 10; Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 246. 57 Arad, ‘Popular Collaboration in the Baltic States,’ 64–65. 58 Ezergailis, ‘“Neighbours” Did Not Kill Jews!,’ 203.

20 Prologue

9 Zunda, ‘Collaboration in German-Occupied Latvia’, 114. 5 60 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, ‘The Holocaust in Slovakia,’ Holocaust Encyclopedia, encyclopedia.ushmm.org. 61 Nadège Ragaru, ‘The Prosecution of Anti-Jewish Crimes in Bulgaria: Fashioning a Master Narrative of the Second World War (1944–1945),’ East European Politics and Societies 33, no. 4 (2019): 942. 62 Agata Domachowska, ‘Albania,’ in East Central European Migrations During the Cold War: A Handbook, ed. Anna Mazurkiewicz (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2019), 14. 63 Gross, Golden Harvest, 48, 49.

1 SCREENING FOR WAR CRIMINALS UNRRA and the IRO

As the Soviet Army began gaining ground, wartime perpetrators, collaborators and fascist ideologues fled west.1 Retribution was immediate. During the fall of Budapest, ‘Vlasovists’ were hunted: anyone who spoke Russian or failed to answer in German while wearing a German uniform was shot. Even earlier, in 1942, the Soviets had founded the Extraordinary State Commission (ESC) of Reporting and Investigating the Atrocities of the German Fascist Occupiers and their Accomplices. Investigative findings were then used by Soviet authorities in the legal proceedings conducted against 300,000 perpetrators.2 Trials, beginning in 1943, were ‘swift and cursory’ but also ‘thorough’ in judging those ‘Hitlerite accomplices,’ ‘traitors, fascist hirelings, and boot lickers’ who had ‘betrayed the Homeland.’ ‘Crimes against ­humanity’ – participation in the killings of those termed ‘peaceful Soviet citizens’ (i.e., predominantly: Jews) – were also prosecuted.3 In post-war Latvia, around 1,000 were convicted of crimes against ‘Soviet civilians,’ including 300 Arājs Kommando men, with perhaps 100 executed.4 In Hungary, over 27,000 were put on trial; the 146 who were executed included four former prime ministers, a deputy prime minister and nine other cabinet ministers.5 In Czechoslovakia, 32,000 alleged collaborators and war criminals were tried between 1945 and 1948, with 723 executed; 95% of these were killed within three hours of sentencing.6 Meanwhile, Croatian and Slovenian collaborationist units were handed over to Jozip Broz (Tito)’s men in Yugoslavia, who executed tens of thousands.7 In principle, the western Allies agreed with this uncompromising stance. In late 1941, amidst increasing reports of genocide, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared that ‘retribution for War Crimes henceforth ­ takes its place amongst the major purposes of the war.’8 A year later, the DOI: 10.4324/9780429276880-3

22  Screening for War Criminals

Allies warned that they would pursue war criminals to the ‘uttermost ends of the earth and will deliver them to their accusers in order that justice may be done.’9 It was agreed that all alleged war criminals should be returned to the scenes of their crimes for judgment in national courts.10 And so, for instance, the western Allies immediately seized those Hungarian leaders who had fled west, including members of Ferenc Szálasi’s cabinet, and handed them over to the Hungarian authorities.11 Military trials were also carried out in the three western Allied occupation zones in Germany and Austria. By 1946, the British had passed 240 death sentences; the French had convicted 5,000 and executed 104; and the United States had tried over 2,000 suspects, passing 348 death sentences.12 However, while the Yalta Conference of February 1945 had promised that the western Allies would facilitate the return of Soviet citizens to their preAugust 1939 homes, the western Allies refused to forcibly return Displaced Persons (DPs) from areas incorporated into the Soviet Union since September 1939.13 This cohort included, of course, Balts and those Ukrainians from pre-war Poland. In the face of attempts at forced repatriations which became of necessity increasingly violent, the Allied military authorities ceased forced repatriations around the end of 1945.14 An increasing distrust of the Soviet Union – largely due to the GermanSoviet joint invasion of Poland in 1939, Red Army atrocities and post-war deportations – came to influence the way in which its former Allies treated non-German collaborators.15 For political as well as pragmatic reasons, ­Germans and Austrians were the main priority; Nazi leaders were charged at Nuremberg both with ‘war crimes’ and ‘crimes against humanity’ – c­ ommitted in occupied territory – and with pursuing a war of aggression.16 For those lower on the hierarchical chain, there was no regular exchange of information or any liaison with the Soviet ESC.17 Extradition was also a controversial issue, with Britain particularly insisting on its right to grant asylum.18 The western Allies collated both the names of wanted suspects and of those held in prisoner of war and DP camps in a Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects (CROWCASS). The complementary United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) – an agency that assisted national governments in prosecuting war criminals, but which the Soviet Union refused to join because the Soviet republics and the annexed Baltic countries were not included – amassed 36,000 names together with supporting evidence.19 In both lists, though, there was very little information pertaining to non-German collaborators. The CROWCASS list, for example, contained 40,000 German names but ‘only 1 Estonian, 6 Latvians, 2 Lithuanians, about 100 Poles, 24 Russians and 5 stateless persons.’20 Holocaust survivor groups such as the Central Committee of the Liberated Jews in Germany and the Jewish Historical Documentation Centre led by Simon Wiesenthal were also busy collating lists of war criminals; these resources were simply ignored by both the Allied military authorities and the United Nations.21

Screening for War Criminals  23

At the end of the war there were around 12 million ‘displaced persons’ in central Europe, categorised as those who were either ‘desirous’ but ‘unable to return to their home … without assistance’ or who were to be returned to ‘enemy or ex-enemy territory;’ a minority were ‘former members of forces under German command.’22 It was the responsibility of the Allied military authorities to demobilise and screen ex-combatants from forced labourers and concentration camp inmates, and to ‘determine which persons are in fact collaborators.’23 All who passed that security screening would then be placed under the care of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), whose main aim was to assist with their repatriation. UNRRA insisted that screening should be done on an individual basis; whole groups of demobilised soldiers were not to be accepted as eligible DPs for housing in UNRRA-run camps.24 A British officer noted the difficulties of identification and classification for Allied military authorities: Was [the ‘displaced person’] a Jugoslav? Then he might be a Serbian ­Chetnik who had fought against Tito, but professed undying love for ­England. Or he might be a Tito Partisan, captured by the Germans but now escaped and trying to make his way back to Jugoslavia. Or again he might be a member of Pavelich’s infamous Ustachi [sic], who would no doubt attempt to conceal his identity. Was he a Russian? Then he could be a runaway Cossack, or an escaped Red Army prisoner, or a Latvian who left Latvia before it became part of the Soviet Union, or a displaced Soviet citizen who just did not want to go back home.25 As John Pumphrey of the British Foreign Office admitted, ‘the screening of collaborators from slave-workers must be a hitty-missy operation.’26 The UNRRA Central Committee argued that the processes used by the military authorities were, indeed, hit and miss: The detection of collaborators in itself is not an easy process. Experience to date shows conclusively that the mere use of a questionnaire is wholly inadequate and that this must be followed up by intense investigations into the individual’s background and extensive interrogations. Meanwhile it must be recognised that the collaborator will conveniently divest himself of any incriminating documents or other evidence.27 In all occupied zones, there was a lack of qualified personnel to undertake such an intensive screening, and so screening duties were usually ‘assigned to inexperienced officers and enlisted men.’28 UNRRA officials were frustrated, repeatedly reminding the military authorities that screening was their responsibility and that UNRRA was ‘dependent upon such authorities for adequate screening and for removal of persons determined to be collaborators.’29 An

24  Screening for War Criminals

exasperated official reported in February 1946: ‘Again major problem foreseen in stimulating Military to do effective screening job.’30 Screening, then, was difficult, but this was not the whole story. From early on there was some sympathy from the Allied military authorities for conscripts. CD Chapman, Director of the British Zone, advanced the argument that ‘if these DPs were conscripted for military purposes, they contributed no more to the war effort than those who were conscripted for labour purposes, who are eligible for UNRRA assistance.’31 Indeed, some groups were actively shielded. As early as August 1945, the British Foreign Office instructed its military commanders to protect the 20,000 Baltic soldiers in their care by not mentioning their existence to Soviet representatives; they were to be kept in prisoner of war status for ‘as long as possible, and as quietly as possible.’32 Non-German Waffen-SS and non-German nationals in German uniform were not to be placed in automatic arrest categories.33 Instead, individuals were issued with certificates declaring that they ‘had not been a collaborator, war criminal, or traitor, was not a volksdeutsche or German Balt, had been compelled against his will to enter the German armed forces, and had been completely discharged from all military connections.’34 Although the British acknowledged that technically the Baltic soldiers had been ‘Nazi collaborators,’ they proved ‘only too willing to believe’ the Balts’ ‘anti-Russian propaganda.’35 The ex-combatants were also the subject of much advocacy from Baltic individuals and organisations. Hugo Vitols, for example, a former law professor at the University of Riga, argued that it would be ‘unfair to treat soldiers of the Latvian Legion, who were only fighting against the oppressor of their country – against the Soviet Union – as enemies of the United States, England, and France, against whom they never fought and never signed up to fight.’36 The former Latvian Minister for Finance, Alfred Valdmanis – who had himself cooperated with the Germans – argued that only a few thousand Latvians had been real ‘volunteers,’ and these had been motivated by a ‘burning desire to avenge’ the fate of Latvians victimised by the Soviets.37 In December 1945, Soviet Marshal Georgi Zhukov demanded that the British either repatriate the Baltic prisoners of war to face justice in their home countries or disband and discharge them.38 The Foreign Office thus advised that the Balts should be ‘disbanded’ and ‘dispersed,’ and the 36,000 remaining non-German Wehrmacht members, including 19,000 Balts, were all discharged.39 A month later, 16,500 of the Baltic ex-combatants in the British zone acquired DP status en masse. Those who were not given DP status were ‘harboured’ in 60 assembly centres over which the British authorities had control.40 Over the following few months, these men began presenting themselves at UNRRA camps for admittance with letters from British Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Morgan, the Director General of UNRRA, that stated their eligibility for aid.41

Screening for War Criminals  25

Similarly, in 1946, around 20,000 Ukrainians and Yugoslavs were screened by a British team, the Special Refugee Commission (known as the Maclean Commission, after its head Brigadier Fitzroy Maclean).42 These DPs were categorised as ‘black:’ to be repatriated, ‘grey,’ or ‘white:’ wholly innocent. One group categorised as ‘grey’ – all of whom ended up, to all intents and purposes, ‘white’ – included ‘six volunteers for the German police and SS units, 1 volunteer for the Russian Free Corps, 27 Ustashi, 1 Croat Domobran, who by his rank of Lieutenant Colonel is not covered by the amnesties, and one Cetnik who is similarly not covered, one civilian judge, who was apparently a member of a drum-head court martial, and one woman, who though originally a member of General Mihailovic’s Cetnik staff, later worked with both the Russian Free Corps and the Serb Volunteer Corp.’43 Whole cohorts were resettled in Britain in this period, including 8,000 Ukrainian members of the Waffen-SS Galizien Division – these men were not individually screened, with the British only questioning a cross-section of 180 individuals.44 American screening was initially more scrupulous. An American report of February 1946 stated that as many as 40% of Baltic prisoners of war had been genuine volunteers and active military collaborators with the Germans.45 Indeed, the Americans judged that most non-Jewish DPs had ‘been proved to be a criminal and fascist group, many of whom left their countries voluntarily to work for Hitler.’46 However, when the Soviet Union requested that all Ukrainian Insurgent Army members in the US zone be handed over, as ‘Soviet citizens who had participated in the war … against the Allied nations on the side of the German fascist Army,’ American Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) officers recommended against it. In the incipient Cold War, forced repatriation could ‘destroy for years the confidence all anti-Bolshevik forces have in the USA.’47 And in March 1946, after the Joint Chiefs issued a directive that ‘all Baltic nationals captured while serving in the Wehrmacht should be released from Prisoner of War status and given the status of Displaced Persons,’ the Americans also released the Balts for individual screening.48 Those who did not want to risk the benevolence of the Allied military authorities turned to false documentation. The DP camps run by UNRRA – characterised by an American reporter as ‘camps for collaborators’ – were turned into ‘manufactories of evidence.’49 The National Alliance of Russian Solidarists (NTS), for example, assisted the Soviets to claim a background in Yugoslavia; they ‘changed names, typed documents, dreamed up biographies, [and] taught orally the everyday life and histories of the countries from which they claim[ed] to come.’50 Similarly, the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad ‘provided thousands of false documents to show that the bearer was an old émigré, born outside the Soviet Union, or had lived outside the Soviet Union prior to 1923, thus thwarting the Soviet Repatriation Commission.’51 ­Vlasovite commander AG Nerianin, for instance, became a Polish farmer named MA Aldan by means of a forged birth certificate.52

26  Screening for War Criminals

The DP camps, which were organised to be nationality-specific, proved perfect hiding places for war criminals; Bavarian Justice Minister Joseph ­Müller described them as ‘oases and asylums, where criminals can flee and hide from their deeds, and can enjoy the extraterritoriality of diplomats.’53 They also acted as important sites of nationalist anti-Soviet agency and resistance, with increasing responsibility taken by ‘venerable nationals,’ including former military and political figures, bureaucrats and religious leaders.54 In a blatant example of this sort of acquiescence to DP elites, NTS leader K ­ onstantin Boldyrev was permitted by American military authorities to establish his own DP camp at Mönchehof. The Americans later advised UNRRA staff not to be ‘too exacting’ about paperwork emanating from this camp.55 All sorts of quasi-political groups and committees abounded and were permitted, so long as they seemed ‘orderly.’56 Historian Anna Holian has noted that these political groupings were dominated by the far right, especially by authoritarian nationalists with a history of antisemitism and collaboration.57 Inter-camp committees were also established, including a Latvian committee which was formed to advocate on behalf of the 15,000 Latvians in the American zone.58 This soon joined with British zone representatives to form the Latvian National Committee, which elected a Latvian Central Council comprising former dignitaries.59 To complement the important work of advocacy, commemorative activities such as the ‘Day of Sorrow,’ commemorating the forced repatriations of ‘Vlasovites’ to the Soviet Union in 1946, were instituted.60 As well as performing nationalism, the DP camps could also be said to have provided a construction of nationalist sentiment in diaspora. The case of the Ukrainians is illustrative, as ‘Ukrainian’ was not originally a nationality categorisation used by UNRRA. Ukrainian nationalism had developed under the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in reaction to the interwar Polish state’s attempts to suppress it. It was only after ethnic Ukrainians from eastern Poland (making up over half of the Ukrainian contingent) protested about being placed in Soviet camps (and thus at risk of ‘repatriation’) that it was agreed to create a separate category for them.61 Soviet Ukrainians remained in the Soviet category; the fact that this was labelled ‘Russian’ is indicative of UNRRA’s ignorance of the ‘nationalities’ question in the Soviet Union specifically and, more broadly, in Eastern Europe. By late 1946, the policy of segregating all Ukrainians was made official. In mid-1948, the American Military Government and the International Refugee Organisation (IRO) finally recognised Ukrainian representation in the form of TsPUE (Tsentalne Predstavnytstvo Ukrainskoi Emigratsii v Nimechchyni, Central Representation of the Ukrainian Emigration in Germany).62 This does not mean that all Ukrainians were united; in fact, even the far-right political groupings suffered from factionalism. The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists – Bandera faction (OUN-B) was supported by

Screening for War Criminals  27

perhaps 80% of western Ukrainian nationalists, with a membership of up to 10,000 in the DP camp system.63 According to CIC observers, Bandera was ‘extremely dangerous’ because he routinely used intimidation and even violence against his rivals. One of OUN-B’s main recruiters in the DP camps was said to be Anton Eichner, a former (Schutzstaffel) SS officer.64 The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists – Melnyk faction (OUN-M) had only around 1,500 members, while a group led by Mykola Lebed – who worked with American intelligence from 1947 – split from OUN-B in 1948 and was the smallest faction. Ivan Bahrianyi, who had been an OUN member throughout the war, then established the Ukrainian Revolutionary Democratic Party (URDP), representing central and eastern Ukrainians, in 1948.65 Factionalism, or ‘internal discord,’ was an inherent problem in DP politics.66 There was also generational conflict, as for instance between the older ‘White Russians’ and the younger Vlasovites.67 This did not just relate to contemporary power relations within the DP camps but with an eye to the future reinstatement of national privileges. So, for example, within the L ­ atvian Central Council, one former politician, born in 1888, warned a younger former politician, born in 1908: ‘If here in exile you try to take advantage of the fact that you are younger, more active, and better than we seniors at speaking one or the other language, and attempt to get a metre or two ahead of us and be the first one in the chair of the president of Latvia, then our ways will part.’68 Some groups were also successfully infiltrated (and/or even established) by Soviet agents, and many DP political activists were accused of holding covert ties to the Soviets.69 The most stable groups were able to gain support from nationalist elites outside the DP system; so, the Polish Union had close ties to the Polish government-in-exile and to Polish organisations in Britain and America, which bolstered a sense of diaspora-in-exile, while Lithuanians were supported by the Lithuanian American Council (LAC).70 These international organisations provided important sources of funding and advocacy – both in whitewashing collaboration, and, later, in advocating for DP migration to (particularly) the United States.71 There were also some attempts made by the anti-Soviet national groups to work together. The most organic and long-lasting of these were those of the Baltic States.72 In October 1945, the First Congress of the Ukrainian Emigration recognised the need to work with ‘the organisations of other nations that are seeking the right of asylum for their political emigrants’ and in Munich in December 1946, Ukrainians and Poles created the International Committee of Political Refugees and Displaced Persons, in an effort to resolve their own disagreements to work together on the ‘common matter’ of anti-Soviet communism.73 Other supranational organisations included the ATsODNR (Antibol’shevitskii Tsentr Osvoboditel’nogo Dvizheniia Narodov Rossii, Anti-Bolshevist Centre for the Liberation Movement of the Peoples

28  Screening for War Criminals

of Russia) and the International Peasant Union (IPU).74 As Holian notes, ‘nationalism and internationalism coexisted in delicate tension.’75 Most nationalist groups were aware that in the context of the Cold War, downplaying their image as wartime collaborators to anti-Soviet activists was useful for them as groups, and as individuals, going forward. Groups such as the Vlasovites began to describe themselves as anti-Bolshevik and anti-Stalinist rather than collaborators; as argued by SBONR (Soyuz’ Bor’bi za Osvobozhdeniye Narodov Rossii, Union for the Struggle of the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia), the ‘temporary and tactical alliance’ with Hitler against Stalin had been ‘the only existent possibility of organising armed warfare against the STALIN clique.’76 OUN-M started to speak in place of the ‘millions of victims who perished at the criminal hands of the red and black totalisms,’ while Ivan Bahrianyi argued that Ukrainians had fought ‘the two last totalitarian antidemocratic systems:’ ‘A characteristic feature of the entire population of Ukraine is a colossal, repressed, but implacable hatred for the Bolshevik totalitarian regime, on the one hand, and for fascism in all its manifestation, even the memory of it, on the other.’77 Instead of collaborators, then, the argument went that these groups should be seen as homegrown resistance movements: as for wartime collaboration, there had been ‘no other choice.’78 In this way, as one American officer noted, ‘anticommunist’ was ‘often used as a cover up for neo-fascistic or reactionary movements.’79 The camps became training grounds for leaders of groups such as the Ukrainian-dominated Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), founded in 1946 by the OUN’s Iaroslav Stets’ko, who in 1941 had declared the formation of the short-lived Ukrainian National Government. The ABN claimed to represent more than 32 nationalities ‘imprisoned’ by the Soviet Union; as well as Ukrainians, these included the Balts, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, Serbs, Byelorussians and Cossacks. They argued for a separatist ‘new order’ based on independent and ethnically homogenous nationstates with the slogan: ‘Freedom for nations! Freedom for individuals!’80 As scholars have convincingly shown, ‘many in Western intelligence came to regard yesterday’s Nazi war criminals and collaborators as today’s potential freedom fighters.’81 DPs were, in the words of one CIC officer, ‘a hell of a good opportunity to recruit some high class informants.’82 By 1946, investigations by the United States into the political activities of ‘anti-authoritarian, anti-bureaucratic, and anti-nationalistic’ DPs were intended to determine their potential usefulness.83 The Americans and British both competitively recruited field agents to use behind the Iron Curtain from DP c­ohorts – ­including from SBONR – and funded the exiles’ political activities.84 John-Paul Himka argues that many nationalists were ‘in a disoriented position, not quite defeated, but certainly not victors. They were cut off from their homeland, although they were not ready to admit it. They took courage

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from what they heard about nationalist [insurgencies] and hoped for  … ­revolution.’85 There were continual rumours, including that high-­ranking Latvian officers such as Colonel Arvīds Kripēns were being directed by the British to form Latvian battle divisions.86 Some of these rumours were true. So, for example, the United States Army temporarily allowed a Czech guard group, led by Major Karel Černy, to serve as military advisers and the nucleus of a potential Czech force in case of an outbreak of war.87 Similarly, Dauvagis Vanagi (Latvian Welfare Fund) provided a source of trained manpower for use in operations across the Iron Curtain, and the Bulgarian National Front (under the leadership of wanted war criminal Ivan Dochev) made a proposal that volunteers be trained on US bases in Greece and Turkey for clandestine crossings into Bulgaria.88 British Intelligence (MI6) also held a short-lived operation assisting Bandera to airdrop his agents into Ukraine, and the CIA began working on a decades-long collaboration with OUN-M to run its own agents into Ukraine.89 Other groups, such as the Ustasha, were running their own illicit operations.90 A Volunteer Freedom Corps, to arm exiles overtly, along conventional lines, was proposed amongst US leadership but never initiated.91 In June 1948, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was granted formal permission to conduct covert operations against the Soviet Union; this included funding, with minimal oversight, to organisations including the NTS, the OUN, the Vlasovites and the Bulgarian National Front (­ Bulgarski natsionalen front, BNF).92 Front organisations included the ­National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE), which founded Radio Free Europe, broadcasting propaganda in various languages into Eastern E ­ urope, and the American Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of the USSR (ACLPR, A ­ MCOMLIB), which founded Radio Liberation, broadcasting propaganda in Russian.93 The purpose of these committees in a dichotomous Cold War world was, in the words of US policymaker George Keenan: ‘to form centres of national hope and revive a sense of purpose among political refugees from the Soviet world; to provide an inspiration for continuing popular resistance within the countries of the Soviet World and to provide a potential nucleus for all-out liberation movements in the event of war.’94 All DP organisations were necessarily underground, as there was no legal mechanism in Germany for DPs to create civic associations or political parties. Demonstrations were also explicitly prohibited, due to the political sensitivity of anti-Soviet activism. In 1949, though, the DPs ‘burst onto the scene’ in German public spaces, as the ABN organised a series of demonstrations. As political demonstrations were banned, the ostensible focus was to protest religious persecution in the Soviet Union, particularly the imprisonment of Hungarian Cardinal Jószef Mindszenty. This proved a popular message. However, anti-Stalinist arguments were also propounded in speeches

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such as that by the OUN-B’s Petro Mirchuk, who argued: ‘the gassing in the Nazi concentration camps was a humane deed compared with the starvation of 30 million people.’95 Soviet Deputy Commissar of Foreign Affairs, Andrei Vyshinsky, complained to the United Nations General Assembly: ‘It is no secret that refugee camps, situated in the western zones of Germany, Austria and certain other countries of Western Europe, are springboards and centres for the formation of military reserves of hirelings, which constitute an organised military force in the hands of this or that foreign power.’96 Indeed, the Soviets labelled all DPs refusing to return home ‘Nazis,’ ‘war criminals,’ ‘fascists’ and ­‘quislings,’ singling out Carinthia in the British zone as a ‘fascist paradise.’97 These ­‘so-called nationalists’ whose crimes were ‘beyond counting’ were ‘hiding to escape the judgment which should be theirs.’98 However, after participating in the 13 trials at Nuremberg involving 177 people – passing 20 life sentences, 25 death sentences and 35 acquittals – the western Allies had lost their appetite for hunting and prosecuting war criminals, particularly those non-German collaborators about whom very little was known.99 The use of CROWCASS ended in 1947, and the British government advised the Anglosphere that it wanted to ‘wind up’ the UNWCC by 1948 at the latest, saying that many of the cases submitted (particularly by the Soviet bloc) ‘were based on political rather than on legal considerations’ and that trials conducted in the eastern bloc were ‘conducted in a very unsatisfactory manner’ and some were a ‘travesty of justice.’100 All prisoners still in custody were to be released, and future requests for the extradition of alleged war criminals would require evidential support of a reasonable prima facie case as to identity and guilt.101 In March 1949, the British decided to accept no further extradition applications; it was now time for a ‘spirit of tolerance and generosity rather than a desire for revenge.’102 Instead of carrying out further prosecutions, the resettlement of wartime collaborators hidden within the remnant of one million DPs seemed the most pragmatic way forward. The International Refugee Organisation

Initially, the chances for resettlement were slight. General Eisenhower famously warned Latvian DPs to return home in October 1945, saying: ‘I do not think that Canada wants immigrants who collaborated with the Germans or who believed Goebbels’ lies about our Allies or were too unpatriotic to rebuild their own country. I do not think that South America wants such people. I am sure that the United States does not.’103 Andrei A Gromyko, the permanent representative of the Soviet Union to the United States, argued that any resettlement opportunities would ‘create conditions which [would] enable war criminals, quislings and other traitors to escape punishment.’104

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The Soviet Union accused DPs who refused repatriation of being ‘enemies and traitors, not only of their own countries, but of all the United Nations,’ and alleged that the situation was ‘poison[ing] the international atmosphere.’105 Meanwhile, UNRRA had no wish to keep caring for (and spending money on) unrepatriable refugees indefinitely and had no authority to initiate resettlement. In North America, emigré groups had been advocating on behalf of the displaced since the end of the war. It was argued by the Polish-American Congress (PAC, an umbrella organisation of Polish-Americans and PolishAmerican organisations formed in the United States in 1944) and others, that the United States, and by extension the United Nations, had a moral responsibility to solve the DP problem, as ‘their plight is attributable to the Yalta agreement to which America was party.’106 As historian Daniel Cohen has shown, these arguments gained ground as the United States began to understand how DP migration trajectories could be re-narrated into a new Cold War paradigm.107 State Department refugee specialist Robert S McCollum argued that: ‘Each refugee from the Soviet orbit represents a failure of the Communist system’ and thereby ‘constitutes a challenge to the fundamental concepts of that system.’108 In tandem with this new political understanding, the manpower shortage in potential countries of resettlement ‘revolutionised the outlook for DPs.’109 In April 1946, a new temporary organisation was formed by the United Nations to replace UNRRA: the IRO’s primary responsibility was to be the resettlement of DPs, rather than repatriation. This mission was vehemently opposed by the Soviet bloc, which refused to support the fledgling organisation and was also opposed by various pro-Soviet groups in potential resettlement countries.110 In spite of this opposition, the category of ‘displaced persons’ was now broadened to include anyone displaced ‘who definitely, in complete freedom and after receiving full knowledge of the facts, including adequate information from the governments of their countries of nationality or residence, are unwilling to return to those countries and are further unwilling to avail themselves of the protection of the governments of those countries.’111 In other words, recalcitrant DPs were declared bona fide refugees as long as they demonstrated a ‘valid’ political objection to repatriation, that is, a vocal anti-communism.112 Louise Holborn, the official historian of the IRO, noted that ‘as the Cold War developed there was a growing appreciation of the fact that many persons might technically have collaborated with the Germans and yet were in refugee status.’113 This worked to further homogenous DPs: under the IRO, they were reduced to a question of their Cold War identities rather than their wartime biographies. DP cohorts, including the politically problematic Balts, thus promoted an image of themselves as staunch anti-communists: ‘strong, handsome, hardworking, God-fearing lovers of democracy.’114

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The IRO Constitution stated that ‘no international assistance should be given to traitors, quislings and war criminals, and nothing should be done to prevent in any way their surrender and punishment.’115 The descriptor ­‘collaborators’ had been quietly removed from UNNRA’s earlier proscription against ‘war criminals, collaborators, quislings and traitors.’116 Of course, many collaborators had already been passed by the Allied military authorities for UNRRA eligibility and were inherited by the IRO for resettlement. IRO officers later argued that these were the small fry: ‘relatively few of the real leaders and persecutors ever applied for IRO assistance, as they know full well that international assistance is not likely to be extended to them, quite apart from the fact that, generally, they have financial independence as the result of their wartime activities.’117 The IRO ‘endeavoured’ not to ‘put up war criminals for selection,’ and if a petitioner naively admitted that he had been accused of war crimes by ‘a government member of the United Nations,’ that particular individual would be deemed ineligible.118 Abraham G Duker, a member of the American mission to the Nuremberg Trials Commission, was a rare voice warning that there were many Nazi collaborators among the DPs, including Balts who had been ‘responsible for the slaughter of tens of thousands of Jews and partisans’ and Ukrainians who had ‘butchered Jews and Poles alike’ so that ‘even the Nazis registered astonishment.’ His advice was to institute an ‘effective screening procedure.’119 However, as with UNRRA, the IRO did not have its own security apparatus and was explicitly not responsible for actively hunting war criminals; it was ‘not equipped to conduct criminal investigation’ and ultimately: ‘security [was] necessarily the primary concern of the receiving country.’120 Further, when immigration missions such as the United States rejected an individual for ‘security reasons,’ they were not under any compulsion to inform the IRO of the reason for such a rejection (including any evidence they held) and so the individual remained eligible for resettlement elsewhere; countries next in line for that potential migrant were not made aware of any ‘cloud cast upon their bonafideness.’121 The question for IRO officials was: ‘how to discover, within this enormous flux of uprooted beings, the authentic refugees and displaced persons?’122 The answer involved a complicated bureaucratic structure including the IRO Constitution, directives from the Director General and a ‘Test of Eligibility’ in which individuals were interviewed using information from government sources, private agencies, cross-examination and witnesses. IRO officers had to decide whether individuals were ‘under their mandate’ – black (no), white (yes) and grey (where there could be some measure of leeway). Three editions of the Manual for Eligibility Officers were produced by the IRO: a short guide in January 1948; an expanded version in January 1949 and a finalised version in May 1950. These provided historical data, commentary and case

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studies to be used as guides rather than precedents. The Manual warned against an overly strict interpretation: The process of discovering whether an applicant is within the mandate is a cooperative venture between him and the Organisation. It is a logistical impossibility to prove a negative, and thus an applicant cannot be expected to prove that he is not a war criminal or that he did not voluntarily assist the enemy forces.123 The screening process thus remained superficial and, in some cases, corrupt. One employee of the United States’ DP Commission who worked closely with IRO staff resigned in disgust, calling the process ‘a complete racket.’ He accused many of the IRO clerks of being former collaborators themselves ‘who coached the applicants in the techniques of successful deception or who simply filled out the papers on behalf of applicants, submitting them for rubber-stamp approval by unsuspecting IRO officials.’124 Lajos Marschalkó, wanted by Hungary for war crimes, later admitted writing articles for the DP press that stated ‘that there were not more Hungarian national socialists left,’ because they had already been repatriated. These articles were written, he said, ‘to mislead the kikes [a pejorative term for Jews] at the IRO’ as ‘we were all facing dark forces and all means were acceptable, including little lies.’125 To aid in such ‘little lies,’ false documents were purchased. And it was clear that various national community committees were ‘clandestinely circulating the right answers to the questionnaires used by the IRO to determine eligibility.’ One IRO official admitted that ‘many know that they only have to destroy their identity papers to force eligibility officers in a position of having to accept their “plausible story” … and they also know what will be accepted as a plausible story.’126 So, during the second half of 1948, three-quarters of applicants claimed that they had no documents.127 As well as blatant corruption and falsifications, the IRO process, while seemingly highly legalistic and bureaucratic, relied on decision-making that was, according to one eligibility officer, ‘basically emotional and impulsive.’128 With the IRO increasingly attempting to evaluate ‘moral intention,’ ‘the question of motivation [was] fraught.’ 129 IRO officers were faced with the ‘unenviable duty’ of judging individuals based on a ‘discoverable history’ of ‘untrue or distorted accounts.’130 One officer complained that there was ‘no operational means of determining accurately or of evaluating the motives that prompted individuals to take certain actions some years ago.’ He argued: It does not appear that there is any essential moral difference between a Hungarian who willingly fought on the eastern front (though under a conscription regime); a Latvian who was forced to assist the German army

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but voluntarily chose the national SS Division rather than civilian labour; a Ukrainian who under the pressure of nationalist propaganda (aided by partial starvation if he was a prisoner of war) joined the Ukrainian Division … in the German Army; a Serb … who either was called up by General Nedic or volunteered to join the Serbian State Guard which was formed originally to keep the peace in Serbia but later became a largely pro-German Quisling Force engaged against the Tito partisans; an elderly Russian émigré in Bulgaria who volunteered to join a corps for the liberation of Holy Russia and who first guarded Russian émigré property and then German line of communication against the partisans; and a Croatian Moslem peasant who joined the German SS Handzar Division partly under religious pressure and partly influenced by the massacre of Moslems by Serbs but who then committed under German Volksdeutsche officers some of the worst atrocities of the war.131 Further, ‘even some persons who were not conscripts have motives not necessarily reprehensible for assisting the German forces,’ including ‘nationalism and patriotism.’ For some, their patriotism put them ‘in a dilemma in view of the historical circumstances’ of their countries. They were perhaps ‘misguided’ in thinking that ‘Nazi policy would further their aims.’ Regardless of this, some of these individuals would technically be within the mandate, and some not. The view of the IRO officer here was that ‘all are refugees, in the ordinary sense of the word’ and should be given assistance for resettlement.132 Any applicant who was excluded from IRO eligibility during screening could appeal against the decision to the Review Board, which began work at the beginning of 1948. The Review Board was also responsible for advising the IRO’s Director General on questions of eligibility, and so its files contain the clearest evidence we have as to how suspicions of war crimes and collaboration were handled.133 The chairman of the Review Board, Marcel de Baer, a lawyer and judge who came straight from preparing cases at the Nuremberg trials, was assisted by three members, four deputy members and various assistants. Although under-resourced, its 32 circuits across most areas of Central Europe meant that most appellants were given the opportunity of testifying in person, which added to the evidence already presented to eligibility officers. Applicants could also appeal more than once if they were providing fresh evidence. However, Review Board decisions were based on the same criteria used by eligibility officers in the field, and the same sorts of evidence. Thus, the Review Board was faced with the same problems of falsification and burden of proof.134 Indeed, lying seemed to be expected, as the Review Board acknowledged that ‘the production of a false document alone need not necessarily result in a person being refused the assistance of the organisation.’135 Previous statements later proved to be false were also disregarded.136

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The ‘Cold War myopia’ of the IRO, whose sole task was to resettle recalcitrant DPs, meant that, as historian Ruth Balint has noted, discussions and documents on policy and procedure were ‘almost completely silent on the Holocaust.’137 One Jewish survivor later recounted bumping into a ­Lithuanian man from his native town, who was well known to have participated in massacres of Jews. They were both at an IRO office, attempting to emigrate. He said: ‘At first I wanted to report him as a murderer, but later I realized there were thousands of such men, so I didn’t do anything.’138 Groups

While decisions were to be made on an individual basis, for practical purposes groups were also included in or excluded from IRO eligibility at various times, and these decisions often changed as more information came to hand or as the IRO became increasingly desperate to offload its refugees. The ‘key question’ with regard to collaboration was whether individuals acted ‘voluntarily’ or ‘under duress.’139 Advocates – from both inside and outside the IRO – thus argued that their particular cohort collaborated under duress. One group – the Latvian (and by extension, all Baltic) legionnaires – had their ‘own man’ – Alfred Valdmanis – to advocate for them from within the IRO; he was the only DP to be given a senior position within the organisation.140 In October 1947, Valdmanis was appointed the operational head of the Division of Planning and Field Services, and his objectives included the IRO bestowing DP status on Latvian veterans in all zones and the cessation of screening.141 This occurred in March 1948 when all Baltic legionnaires, including those who had been early volunteers, were given DP status.142 IRO officer M Lees, after visiting a group of Latvians at the Dedelsdorf DP camp in 1948, was confused. Valdmanis’s Latvian Central Committee had argued that conscription for the Latvian Legion had been in place from early 1943, but to Lees’s knowledge ‘it was the consistent policy of the German High Command to form the national Waffen-SS units from the best material available and from volunteers wherever possible.’ He noted that ‘individual Baltic conscripts could, as in other countries where special national units were formed, opt for labour or for service with a non-special unit.’ The group as a whole made a bad impression on him, with many men carrying tattoo removal marks: From the leader to the last man, none appeared to be speaking the truth, some contradicted their own and many each other’s story. Never in my experience have I felt so convinced that every man was repeating a carefully rehearsed and entirely fallacious account. The percentage claiming service as medical orderlies was ridiculously high, although none of these could show any evidence … and every man admitted to being classed in the highest physical grade.143

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Lees noted that ‘excuses’ for losing documents that may have been acceptable in an individual interview became ‘very suspect when put forward by thirty men with similar stories.’ He concluded that they were ‘straightforward German mercenaries’ and had all apparently adapted ‘their stories’ to fit in with accepted (and changing) IRO criteria.144 Similarly, in 1948, when the IRO deemed Waldemar Vaer ineligible, based on his service as an officer in the Estonian Legion and his initial obfuscation of this fact, his appeal included a letter from the Baltic Advisory Council, advising that a petition had been submitted to the IRO: ‘To declare an amnesty in respect of Wehrmacht Balts who have made incorrect or deficient statements about their participation in war activities during the period when no definite policy with regard to ex-Wehrmacht Balts was laid down.’ The Review Board wondered how the Baltic Advisory Council knew this and noted a ‘strong suspicion’ that the Council ‘were themselves implicated in the drawing up of the false statements concerned.’145 However, by mid-1949, and after some debate, the Board ‘decided to adopt a policy that where former members of SS divisions could produce some evidence to indicate that their claim to conscription was justified’ and, of course, ‘told their story convincingly,’ they would be accepted.146 In December 1949, a decision was made that even Balts who had applied for and received German citizenship during the war years were to ‘be regarded as having acted under duress.’147 An unnamed advocate of the Russian Schutzkorps – probably its leader, Anatoly Rogozin – made a colourful defence of these men in a memorandum to the IRO, noting that they had ‘often found themselves between the devil and the deep blue sea.’ The idea had been that they ‘were to be sent [by Germany] to Russia to take part in the liberation of the country,’ although the advocate acknowledged that this ‘patriotic coating sugared the pill.’ While the average age of members was 54 years, they had very much wanted to ‘actively fight Bolshevism again;’ in the end, though, they were never involved in aggression but only in defending vulnerable points against attack by Tito’s partisans.148 This memorandum, and interviews by the IRO’s VA Temnomeorff with around 150 Schutzkorps members, helped to overturn the initial decision of ‘outside the mandate’ except for individuals who joined only under ‘extreme duress,’ to allowing those who had served in non-combatant positions to be declared automatically eligible. Temnomeorff argued that ‘the word “voluntary” was intended to describe the state of mind of the person who served [ie. voluntarily anti-Bolshevist], but not the service itself [ie. pro-German].’149 Another letter, this time from the DP Branch of the Allied Commission for Austria, argued for their eligibility: ‘they are a group who, by the fortune of fate, have been deprived of any form of assistance and who deserve something better.’150 In October 1949, ‘all borderline and doubtful cases’ were made eligible, ‘which was the easiest way out.’151 Twelve months later, all Schutzkorps members, now described as ‘Russian Nansen

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and former Russian Nansen refugees in Austria,’ were declared eligible for IRO assistance.152 A report prepared for the Review Board providing ‘information material’ with regard to Ukrainians who enlisted in the Waffen-SS Galizien Division similarly advocated for the former enemy soldiers, arguing that the men had taken it ‘absolutely for granted that Germany would be defeated by the Allies’ and that ‘in that certain case the already organised Ukrainian army units would be on the spot and able to defend their country against the Bolsheviks and their imperialistic communism and Russism.’ Perhaps these men could ‘be accused of lack of political instinct,’ but they were not collaborators.153 As a result of this advocacy, these men were deemed eligible for protection under the mandate.154 De Baer, however, strongly protested this directive, accusing the Director-General of the IRO, John Donald Kingsley, of violating the IRO’s Constitution. He argued that the Division was made up of volunteers who swore an oath to Hitler personally and were ‘notorious for their atrocities.’ De Baer insisted on placing his dissent on record.155 Another group, General Draža Mihailović’s Chetniks, was the subject of a report that noted that they were essentially the ‘Army-within-Jugoslavia of the Royal Jugoslav Government-in-exile’ and had been initially supported by the Allies, including – until December 1943 – nightly BBC broadcasts urging Yugoslavs to support Mihailovic’s army. The Allies then abandoned the Chetniks in favour of Tito’s Partisans, who although communist had managed to garner favour by killing more Germans than the Chetniks did.156 The writer argued that even ‘if there was collaboration’ between Mihailovic and the Germans, ‘there were considerable mental reservations.’ In the postwar period, Mihailovic had been captured, tried and shot by the Titoist government; the remnant of the Chetniks withdrew into Italy and surrendered. While they had been initially considered ‘outside the mandate,’ De Baer admitted in August 1949 that he had ‘possibly been slightly too lenient in giving the benefit of the doubt’ to a group of Serbs but argued that since nobody had noticed, ‘I am wondering whether the “quieta non novare” policy would not be indicated.’157 In any event, the Review Board soon decided that ‘the benefit of the doubt should be extended’ to Chetnik members, who were then placed within the mandate.158 Even when whole cohorts were excluded from IRO eligibility, there was usually some leeway with regard to individuals within that cohort. So, while the Waffen-SS Handschar Division, composed predominantly of Bosnian Muslims, was deemed outside the mandate of the IRO, one individual appellant’s story of acting under duress was deemed ‘plausible’ and he was declared eligible for protection under the mandate.159 In contrast, Ilija Tolic’s story of being conscripted into the Ustasha’s Home Guard was judged as a ‘likely one’ that ‘could be accepted without documentary proof had he convinced the Board at interview of his sincerity.’ However, because he ‘lauded

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the anti-Serb and anti-partisan attitude of the Croats’ and said that ‘he was glad to have fought against the partisans in the latter stages of the war and would do so again gladly,’ he was deemed ineligible.160 Estonian Juri Estam also defended his actions to the Review Board upon appeal, with more success. He had presented in 1948 as a Waffen-SS draftee, producing corroborating documentation from the Estonian Central Committee of Wurttemberg. The Board initially noted that he made a ‘fine impression’ and ‘should be given the benefit of the doubt,’ but, after checking the captured Nazi Party files in Berlin, it was found that Estam had ended the war as an active and decorated Oberscharfuhrer. He was therefore found, upon appeal, to have ‘voluntarily assisted the enemy continuously from September 1941 onwards.’161 In a lengthy letter in response to this decision, in December 1950, Estam set out a typical geo-political narrative, that for the Estonians, the Germans were ‘more or less’ ‘regarded as liberators:’ ‘For us Estonians there was no alternative. In order to get rid of the Russians we had to play with the Germans.’ He asked plaintively: ‘what could we have done else being a small country?’ as ‘at the time the feeling was such that also the help of the devil would have been accepted in order to achieve’ the removal of the Soviets from Estonia. Citing a former senior Estonian officer, he argued: The Estonian nation was in the situation of a drowning man. But never does a drowing man ask, before he is dragged out of water, what profession and the political creed of the rescuer is, nor does he jump back into the water if the rescuer does not prove to be blameless knight. The drowning man accepts every hand and every aid even if there is the danger of getting drowned again by the same hand later on.162 In just the same way, Estam stressed, ‘the West had to play with the ­ olshevist.’ He ended his letter by expressing gratitude that he had been B given the opportunity to participate in a battle with the Soviets in mid-1944 that allowed ‘thousands of my country men to find a safe escape to the West.’ These arguments must have been convincing to the Review Board; Estam was subsequently deemed eligible and was resettled in Australia in 1951.163 In another case, Hermann Stockeby, a member of an Estonian police battalion ‘responsible for severe crimes in the persecution of the Jewish ­element of its civil population,’ was initially deemed ineligible for IRO assistance. However, Charles Selter, Liaison Officer of the Estonian Legation in the United States with IRO, advocated on his behalf, strongly objecting that membership of the police battalion implied ‘assistance to the Germans.’ Selter argued that Stockeby was appointed by the Estonian authorities as liaison and that he had used his ‘contact with the Germans in the interests of the Estonian nationals.’ Upon receipt of this letter, the Board decided to class Stockeby as ‘eligible.’164

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In respect of those accused of being part of ‘quisling’ governments, the IRO prevaricated. Ognjan Kumanovic, who was Minister of Public Works in the Serbian Nedić government from 1941 to 1944, was found on appeal to be ‘sincere and truthful’ and ‘primarily moved by humanitarian motives,’ as ‘Nedić honestly wished to end the slaughter.’165 According to a report before them: [Kumanovic] did not hand his State over to the enemy nor did he betray his State whilst in its service. He appears to have acted in a Government whose aim was to safeguard the remnants of Serbia which were then threatened with dismemberment … the Petitioner’s activities in the Government were not against, but in favour of the civil population of enemy occupied territory, nor did he collaborate with the specific purpose of embarrassing the Allies.166 However, in this case, the Board argued that it could not ‘take into account the intentions, but only the actual effects,’ which was ‘actual assistance to the enemy, voluntarily given.’167 Kumanovic was ruled ineligible.168 In another case, Oskar Dankers, Director of the Department of the Interior in Latvia, had been initially deemed ineligible but now should not be ‘regarded as a war criminal because he was acquitted by allied authorities.’169 Similarly, Constantin Untaru, a Romanian who had worked as treasurer in the Iron Guard-led government from September 1944, argued that this appointment had been forced on him by the Germans after the group’s release from Buchenwald. The Review Board considered that his service ‘for three months with the Rumanian Quisling Government, compared with his two years persecution by the Nazis, weighs the balance in his favour.’170 Untaru then resettled in Australia. A prominent case that highlights the variability of case judgements is that of Hungarian General Jëno (Eugen) Bor, who was promoted to LieutenantField Marshal in 1944 and appointed by the Germans Inspector of Hungarian Forces and Chief Commissioner for Supplies. The American Hungarian Relief Organization advocated on his behalf to the IRO, and upon appeal, he was deemed eligible for IRO protection. The author of an unsigned and undated note to Mr deBaer was furious: We really do go round in circles. Here we have a Full Board case with administration, ineligible. [Board Member 1] recommends reversal. [Board Member 2] says he doesn’t really mind as it was the administration who imposed their view on him. Surely [Board Member 2] should say firmly, this is a majority decision, concurred by Full Board, reversal is impossible and pass out for rejection? [Board Member 1] was far too lenient and I recommend drastic action on second appeals. URGENT PLEASE.171

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At other times the Vatican, some of whose clergy were involved in procuring false documentation for Germans and Croatians – the infamous ‘rat line’ to South America – also attempted to influence the IRO’s decision-making process. De Baer met with Austrian bishop Alois Hudal (nicknamed the ‘Brown Bishop’ with reference to the colour of Nazi uniforms) and reported: The Bishop asked me whether I might find it possible to hear a few appeals from people in whom the Vatican was interested, and who had been turned down, quite wrongly, by IRO … I said I would see what I could do … He left me a list of the people in whom he was interested, most of them were staying at the Convent of the Franciscan Brothers in Rome in the Via Sicilia. To make a long story short, I found the list most suspicious. Many, instead of being given their full name, were listed as (e.g.) “Father ­Mazimilien of the H. Order of Jesus” which made it impossible to identify them without further investigation. I later found out that many of them had false identities, had never belonged to any religious order etc. I was even told confidentially by an American member of the IRO office that one of the ‘priests’ was no other than Ante Pavelic, the ex-Ustashi leader of Croatia.172 De Baer did not assist Hudal. However, in another case, Lithuanian Juozas Zubrickas received the support of Father Killion of the Vatican Migration Bureau in Geneva. Initially excluded from the IRO mandate for having been accused by the Jewish Central Committee in Munich of the mass murder of Jews in 1941, including murdering ‘two to three hundred Jews with his own machine gun,’ the Review Board bowed to pressure from Killion, deeming him eligible.173 Winding Up

As time ran out for the IRO, attitudes hardened. In August 1949, a frustrated Area Director, DG Goschen, had complained about ‘too much backlog:’ ‘we are becoming immersed in a mumbo-jumbo of proof and substantiation. No one expects us to be infallible and few of the methods we employ, which so retard the machinery, really promote infallibility.’ Instead of ‘witch hunting and searching for snags and pitfalls,’ Goschen argued that ‘we must liquidate this enormous backlog and we must speed up our rate of determinations’ from 800 to 2,000 determinations per month per officer.174 Individuals whose appeals had been denied two, three or four times were suddenly allowed to register as DPs and emigrate. As Cohen notes: ‘By 1950, refugees deemed “imposters” and “security threats” in the days of UNRRA were now offered the chance to emigrate to Australia or the North American continent.’175

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One such case was that of Arvids Olins, whose fourth appeal in mid1951 was successful when he was ‘given the benefit of the doubt as to the compulsory nature of his service with the Latvian Legion,’ even though he had a scar inside his left arm which he now admitted was caused by the removal of the SS blood group tattoo. His conscription was attested to by ‘the Latvian Leader people in [the] DP camps.’176 The third appeal of Eduards Balodis was also successful, even though he now claimed to have received the SS blood group tattoo while working as a ‘sanitary-man’ in a Latvian Field Hospital and the Review Board noted that the story was ‘doubtful,’177 In ­Rudolfs Bangerskis’ successful third appeal, he argued for the morality of his actions: ‘I only together with all Latvian people have been in a fight against the aggressing communists which presently are the mortal enemy of the whole free world.’178 Acting Chairman of the Review Board Temneroff wrote that a ‘very liberal interpretation’ was now being taken of ‘what constitutes “assistance to the enemy”.’179 By the end of the IRO’s mandate, even those who had kept fighting into the post-war period were being resettled. Kosovar Adam Selimi, for instance, had fought against Tito until November 1945, which was considered ‘as constituting participation in a terrorist organisation.’ He was successful in his second appeal and resettled in Australia in 1952.180 Ignac Lipic, who had been a member of the post-war guerrilla Croatian Križari (Crusaders) against Tito, also resettled in Australia after his second appeal was successful.181 From January 1948 to 31 December 1951, the Board delivered 36,742 decisions and granted 21,906 personal hearings.182 According to de Baer: ‘[The Review Board] had been confronted with numberless adventurers, economic emigrants, deserters, collaborators, war criminals and refugees from justice, most of whom had forged papers, and all of whom claimed the status of political refugees.’183 In a final report, he stated: Many of these decisions had been examined several times, the second and third time by different members of the Board, and in the last resort by the Chairman himself. Appeals had been treated with the maximum possible indulgence. In the first instance the Organization had already rejected less than two per cent of those persons who claimed to be refugees. Of that percentage, one-third of the decisions had later been reversed.184 The overall acceptance rate by the IRO was 82.6%.185 As noted by B ­ alint, many of these decisions in favour of eligibility, and particularly those later decisions in its ‘softening’ phase, when the IRO was winding up, were ‘definitely dubious.’186 Historian Mary Fulbrook has estimated that less than 1% of those involved in killing Jews were ever convicted of their crimes.187 In this context, Simon Wiesenthal wrote to the IRO, asking: ‘Where are all those thousands of ex-enemy Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonian, Russians? Where are

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the thousands of members of Ukrainian SS Division etc?’ He noted that ‘with a very few exceptions’ all these people were now DPs eligible for resettlement by the IRO, where ‘they will be able to cause new troubles.’188 Notes 1 Approximately 160,000 Latvians, 80,000 Estonians and 64,000 Lithuanians fled west. David Nasaw, The Last Million: Europe’s Displaced Persons from World War to Cold War (New York: Penguin Press, 2020), 46. 2 Kiril Feferman, ‘Soviet Legal Proceedings against the Nazi Criminals and Soviet Collaborators as Historical Sources’, Legacy 6 (2014): 38; Martin Dean, ‘Where Did All the Collaborators Go?’, Slavic Review 64, no. 4 (2005): 791. 3 Between 1943 and 1953, 320,000 were arrested in the Soviet Union – including Ukraine and the Baltic States – for collaborating (broadly) with the Germans. Virtually all of those sentenced to gulag for collaboration were released in 1955 under an ‘Amnesty for Soviet Citizens Collaborating with Occupation Forces under the Great Patriotic War’. David Alan Rich, ‘Reinhard’s Footsoldiers: Soviet Trophy Documents and Investigative Records as Sources’, in Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide, eds. John K. Roth, Elisabeth Maxwell, Margot Levy & Wendy Whitworth (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 697, ftn. 4; Kiril Feferman, ‘Soviet Legal Proceedings against the Nazi Criminals and Soviet Collaborators as Historical Sources’, Legacy 6 (2014): 34, 40; Andrew Ezergailis, ‘“Neighbours” Did Not Kill Jews!’ in Collaboration and Resistance During the Holocaust: Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, eds. ­David Gaunt, Paul A. Levine, and Laura Palosuo (Lausanne: Peter Lang, 2004), 219; Anatoly Podolsky, ‘Collaboration in Ukraine during the Holocaust: Aspects of Historiography and Research’, in Collaboration with the Nazis: Public Discourse after the Holocaust, ed. Roni Stauber (London: Routledge, 2010), 48; Tanja Penter, ‘Collaboration on Trial: New Source Material on Soviet Postwar Trials against Collaborators’, Slavic Review 64, no. 4 (2005): 783–784, 787; Dean, ‘Where Did All the Collaborators Go?’, 792. 4 Feferman, ‘Soviet Legal Proceedings’, 40; Ezergailis, ‘“Neighbours” Did Not Kill Jews!’, 219. 5 László Karsai, ‘The People’s Courts and Revolutionary Justice in Hungary’, in The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath, eds. István Deák, Jan T. Gross & Tony Judt (Princeton University Press, 2000), 233. 6 Benjamin Frommer, National Cleansing: Retribution against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslovakia (Cambridge University Press, 2005), 2–3; Claire E Aubin, ‘From Treblinka to Trenton: Holocaust Perpetrators as Immigrants to the Post-War United States’, PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 2022, 43. 7 Mark Mazower, Hitler’s Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe (London: Penguin Books, 2009), 469. 8 Anthony Glees, ‘War Crimes: The Security and Intelligence Dimension’, Intelligence and National Security 7, no. 3 (1992): 244. 9 Declaration on German Atrocities, 30 October 1943, https://www.legal-tools. org/doc/3c6e23/pdf. 10 Francine Hirsch, Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal after World War II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 32. 11 Tamás Stark, ‘Antisemitic Writings of the Arrow Cross Emigration’, Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide, eds. John K Roth,

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Elisabeth Maxwell, Margot Levy and Wendy Whitworth (London: Palgrave, 2001), 897. 12 Glees, ‘War Crimes’, 246. 13 Jayne Persian, ‘Displaced Persons and the Politics of International Categori­ sation(s)’, Australian Journal of Politics and History 58, no. 4 (2012): 485. 14 See Jayne Persian, ‘Cossack Identities: From Russian Emigres and Anti-Soviet Collaborators to Displaced Persons’, Immigrants & Minorities 36, no. 2 (2018): 129–130. 15 Hirsch, Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg, 7, 53. 16 David Cesarani, Justice Delayed: How Britain Became a Refuge for Nazi War Criminals (London: Phoenix Press, 2001 [1992]), 37. 17 Nasaw, The Last Million, 210. 18 Hirsch, Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg, 55. 19 Bob De Graaff, ‘What Happened to the Central Personality Index?’, Intelligence and National Security 7, no. 3 (1992): 318–319; Glees, ‘War Crimes’, 244; Hirsch, Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg, 30. 20 Nasaw, The Last Million, 331; Cesarani, Justice Delayed, 90; ‘Recording of War Crimes: Preparing the Cases’, Times (London), 2 June 1945, Series 1: Mark ­Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, MLMSS 10621, Box 5 [hereafter, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 5], State Library of New South Wales [hereafter, SLNSW]; Glees, ‘War Crimes’, 248. 21 Aubin, ‘From Treblinka to Trenton’, 49; Nasaw, The Last Million, 211. 22 Adm. Memo No. 39 (1 January 1944), SHAEF, Refugees and Displaced Persons in the Mediterranean Theatre: Administration and Movement: Policy and Correspondence, War Office: Allied Forces, Mediterranean Theatre: Military Headquarters Papers, Second World War, War Office (WO) 204/2869; and SHAEF, Planning Directive: Refugees and Displaced Persons (DPs), 3 June 1944, Prisoners of War/Displaced Persons Division: Registered Files (PWDP and other Series), Control Office for Germany and Austria and Foreign Office, Foreign Office (FO) 1052/10, Post-War Europe Series I: Refugees, Exile and Resettlement, ­1945–1950, Gale Digital Collection [hereafter, Post-War Europe, GDC]. 23 ‘Eligibility – Collaborators’, European Regional Order No. 40.G., 11 August 1946, ‘Eligibility of Displaced Persons for UNRRA Assistance – Collaborators’, Executive – Personal Representative of the Director-General (DG), European Regional Office Registry Files, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNNRA) (1943–1949), S-0523-0006-0022-00001, United Nations, Archives and Record Management Section [hereafter, UN]. 24 George Woodbridge, UNRRA, the history of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (New York: Columbia University Press, 1950), 2, 509. 25 Some of those who had fought previously for the German side ended up in the Free Polish Army – Poles, Volksdeutsche, Belarusians, Ukrainians Lithuanians – which was not subject to any screening at all. 1 May 1945–31 May 1945, Cossacks War Diaries 1945 HQ 36 Inf. BDE, WO 170/4461, National Archives, United Kingdom; Dean, ‘Where Did All the Collaborators Go?’, 797; Sir Thomas Hetherington and William Chalmers, War Crimes: Report of the War Crimes Inquiry (Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1989), 31–32. 26 John Pumphrey, cited in Cesarani, Justice Delayed, 53. 27 Nasaw, The Last Million, 208. 28 See Displaced Persons – Reports on Conditions in DP Camps, Chief of M ­ ission – Registry Files, Austria Mission, S-1492-0000-0065-00001 [hereafter, DP Camps], UN.

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29 Cable from Conrad Van Hyning, Welfare and Repatriation Division, London to Washington, 21 February 1946, ‘Policy on Collaborators’, Relief Services – Welfare and Repatriation Division, European Regional Office (ERO) – ­Registry Files, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNNRA) ­(1943-1949), S-1450-0000-0075-00001 [hereafter, Policy on Collaborators], UN. 30 Cable (extract), London to Washington, 14 February 1946, Policy on Collaborators, UN. 31 Memorandum from CD Chapman, Zone Director, Headquarters British Zone to Mission HQ Vienna, 5 March 1946, ‘Displaced Persons – Displaced Persons Entitled to UNRRA Care’, Chief of Mission – Registry Files, Austria Mission, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNNRA) ­(1943–1949), S-1492-0000-0053-00001 [hereafter, DPs Entitled], UN. 32 Gerhard P Bassler, Alfred Valdmanis and the Politics of Survival (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 183; Glees, ‘War Crimes’, 249. 33 Glees, ‘War Crimes’, 249. 34 Woodbridge, UNRRA, 2, 509. 35 ‘DP Baltic Nationals’, Cable from D Ward, Office of General Counsel, Washington to London, 2 February 1946, Policy on Collaborators, UN; Drew Middleton, The New York Times, October 1945, cited in Leonard Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 23; Haim Genizi, America’s Fair Share: The Admission and Resettlement of Displaced Persons, 1945–1952 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993), 22. 36 Juliette Denis, ‘Hitler’s Accomplices or Stalin’s Victims? Displaced Baltic People in Germany from the End of the War to the Cold War’, La Découverte 3, no. 244 (2013): 12. 37 Bassler, Alfred Valdmanis, 187. 38 Ibid., 186. 39 Glees, ‘War Crimes’, 249. 40 Cesarani, Justice Delayed, 53, 59, 65. 41 Laura Hilton, ‘Pawns on a Chessboard?: Polish DPs and Repatriation from the US Zone of Occupation of Germany, 1945–1949’, in Johannes-Dieter Steinert and Inge Weber-Newth, Beyond Camps and Forced Labour: Current International Research on Survivors of Nazi Persecution, Proceedings of the International Conference, London, 29–31 January 2003 (Secolo, 2005), 99, ftn. 18. 42 Louise W Holborn, The International Refugee Organisation: A Specialised Agency of the United Nations: Its History and Work, 1946–1952 (Oxford: ­Oxford University Press, 1956), 208. 43 Special Refugee Commission, c/o HQ, BTA – Report on Screening in Austria, 14 December 1947, Organisation internationale pour les réfugiés, AJ/43, Bureau de Michaël Macking, chef de la Section historique, 457 [hereafter, IRO 457], Archives Nationales de France [hereafter, AN]. 44 As with many members of Waffen-SS divisions, allegations of war crimes usually relate to their activities before joining the division. Glees, ‘War Crimes’, 258; Hetherington and Chalmers, War Crimes, 41. 45 Embassy, Washington, to Foreign Office, 1946, cited in Cesarani, Justice Delayed, 51. 46 Gerard Daniel Cohen, ‘The West and the Displaced, 1945–1951: The Post-War Roots of Political Refugees’, PhD diss., New York University, 2000, 44. 47 Richard Breitman and Norman JW Goda, Hitler’s Shadow: Nazi War Criminals, US Intelligence, and the Cold War (United States: National Archives, 2010), 88. 48 Nasaw, The Last Million, 189. 49 Suzanne D Rutland, ‘Sanctuary for Whom? Jewish Victims and Nazi Perpetrators in Postwar Australian Migrant Camps’, Conference Paper, ‘Beyond Camps

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and Forced Labour’, Second International Multidisciplinary Conference at the Imperial War Museum, London, 11–13 January 2006 (unpublished), 12; Susan Carruthers, cited in Peter J. Verovšek, ‘Screening Migrants in the Early Cold War: The Geopolitics of US Immigration Policy’, Journal of Cold War Studies 20, no. 4 (2018): 169. 50 Interview with Nikolai Kovalenko, Edinenie (2018), cited in Sheila F ­ itzpatrick, White Russians, Red Peril: A Cold War History of Migration to Australia ­(Melbourne: Black Inc., 2021), 16. 51 Michael Alex Protopopov, The Russian Orthodox Presence in Australia: The History of a Church told from recently opened archives and previously unpublished sources, PhD diss., Australian Catholic University, 2005, 397. 52 Benjamin Tromly, ‘Reinventing Collaboration: The Vlasov Movement in the Postwar Russian Emigration’, in Traitors, Collaborators and Deserters in Contemporary European Politics of Memory: Formulas of Betrayal, eds. Gelinada Grinchenko and Eleonora Narvselius (New York: Springer, 2018), 91. 53 Anna Holian, Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism: Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011), 48. 54 Tomas Balkelis, ‘Living in the Displaced Persons Camp: Lithuanian War Refugees in the West, 1944–54’, in Peter Gatrell and Nick Baron, eds., Warlands: Population Resettlement and State Reconstruction in the Soviet-East European Borderlands, 1945–50 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 26, 34, 36. 55 Benjamin Tromly, Cold War Exiles and the CIA: Plotting to Free Russia ­(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 44–45. 56 That is, they were not permitted to form official political associations that might join the German body politic. Holian, Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism, 51, 55. 57 Anna Holian, ‘Anticommunism in the Streets: Refugee Politics in Cold War ­Germany’, Journal of Contemporary History 45 (2010): 149. 58 Bassler, Alfred Valdmanis, 178. 59 Bassler, Alfred Valdmanis, 179. 60 See Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army, ­1939–1945 (London: Picador, 2006), 252–253. 61 John-Paul Himka, ‘First Escape: Dealing with the Totalitarian Legacy in the Early Postwar Migration’, Soviet Totalitarianism in Ukraine: History and Legacy, Conference organised by the Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University and the State Archives Committee of Ukraine, The Krytyka Institute, Kyiv, 2–6 September 2005, web, 1; Holian, Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism, 99, 104. 62 Holian, Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism, 85, 103. 63 Himka, ‘First Escape’, 2. 64 Breitman & Goda, Hitler’s Shadow, 84, 87. 65 Himka, ‘First Escape’, 6; Yuri Radchenko and Mark Tauger, ‘The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (Mel’nyk Faction) and the Holocaust: The Case of Ivan Iuriiv’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies 31, no. 2 (2017): 230. 66 Michael Cude and Ellen Paul, ‘Czechoslovakia’, in East Central European Migrations During the Cold War: A Handbook, ed. Anna Mazurkiewicz (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2019), 127. 67 Tromly, ‘Reinventing Collaboration’, 92. 68 Ādolfs Klīve to Alfred Valdmanis, cited in Bassler, Alfred Valmanis, 179. 69 Tromly, Cold War Exiles and the CIA, 66; Tromly, ‘Reinventing Collaboration’, 96. 70 Holian, Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism, 89, 90; Pauli ­Heikkilä, ‘Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania’, in East Central European

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Migrations During the Cold War: A Handbook, ed. Anna Mazurkiewicz (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2019), 50. 71 Tromly, ‘Reinventing Collaboration’, 98. 72 Bassler, Alfred Valdmanis, 176; Heikkilä, ‘Baltic States’, 61. 73 Holian, Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism, 117. 74 Tromly, ‘Reinventing Collaboration’, 91; Sławomir Łukasiewicz, ‘Poland’, in East Central European Migrations During the Cold War: A Handbook, ed. Anna Mazurkiewicz (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2019), 227. 75 Holian, Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism, 118. 76 This echoed the arguments and wording of Vlasov’s 1944 Prague Manifesto. Catherine Andreyev, Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement: Soviet Reality and Émigré Theories (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), ­216–223. Tromly, Cold War Exiles and the CIA, 81–82. 77 Himka, ‘First Escape’, 2–3. 78 Tromly, Cold War Exiles and the CIA, 82 79 Holian, Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism, 133. 80 Holian, ‘Anticommunism in the Streets’, 146, 147; Holian, Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism, 129. 81 Mark Aarons, Sanctuary! Nazi Fugitives in Australia (Port Melbourne, Vic: William Heinemann Australia, 1989), xxv. 82 Breitman and Goda, Hitler’s Shadow, 87. 83 Holian, From National Socialism to Soviet Communism, 135, 154. 84 The ‘Americans’ in this context include the US Counter-Intelligence Corps, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Gehlen Organisation and the Pond, etc. Tromly, ‘Reinventing Collaboration’, 95, 92; Keith R Allen, Interrogation Nation: Refugees and Spies in Cold War Germany (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2017), xxi; Cesarani, Justice Delayed, 6; Łukasiewicz, ‘Poland’, 230. 85 Himka, ‘First Escape’, 9. 86 Bassler, Alfred Valdmanis, 178. 87 Cude & Paul, ‘Czechoslovakia’, 125. 88 Cesarani, Justice Delayed, 146; Heikkilä, ‘Baltic States’, 56; Detelina Dineva, ‘Bulgaria’, in East Central European Migrations During the Cold War: A Handbook, ed. Anna Mazurkiewicz (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2019), 92. 89 Breitman and Goda, Hitler’s Shadow, 89; Kyle Burke, Revolutionaries for the Right: Anticommunist Internationalism and Paramilitary Warfare in the Cold War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2018), 236, ftn. 64; see Per Anders Rudling, ‘“Not Quite Klaus Barbie, but in That Category”: Mykola Lebed, the CIA, and the Airbrushing of the Past’, in Rethinking Holocaust Justice: Essays Across Disciplines, ed. Norman JW Goda (Brooklyn, NY: Berghahn Books, 2020), 158–187. 90 Mate Nikola Tokić, The End of “Historical-Ideological Bedazzlement”: Cold War Politics and Émigré Croatian Separatist Violence, 1950–1980’, Social Science History 36, no. 3 (2012): 426. 91 Burke, Revolutionaries for the Right, 23. 92 Dineva, ‘Bulgaria’, 96–97. 93 Holian, From National Socialism to Soviet Communism, 136. 94 Katalin Kádár Lynn, ‘At War While at Peace: United States Cold War Policy and the National Committee for a Free Europe, Inc.’, in The Inauguration of Organised Political Warfare: Cold War Organisations Sponsored by the National Committee for a Free Europe/Free Europe Committee, ed. Katalin Kádár Lynn (Helena History Press LLC, 2013), 18. 95 Holian, Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism, 16, 49, 51, 141, 145; Holian, ‘Anticommunism in the Streets’, 155.

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96 Mark R Elliott, ‘The Soviet Repatriation Campaign’, in The Refugee Experience: Ukrainian Displaced Persons after World War II, eds. Wsevolod W Isajiw, Yury Boshyk and Roman Senkus (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta,1992), 344. 97 ‘300,000 Foreign Fascists in Austria: Purge Needed’, Commentary by Mikhail Mikhailov, 1 July 1946, DP Camps, UN; Yury Boshyk, ‘Repatriation and Resistance: Ukrainian Refugees and Displaced Persons in Occupied Germany and Austria, 1945–48’, in, Refugees in the Age of Total War, ed. Anna C. Bramwell (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988), 202. 98 Speech made in the Third Committee of the General Assembly of the United Nations by the Ukrainian delegate, M. Mikola P. Bajan, 1946, DP Camps, UN. 99 Glees, ‘War Crimes’, 247. 100 ‘Termination of United Nations War Crimes Commission’, Memorandum from the Foreign Office, June 1947, Box 5: United Nations War Crimes Commission, and Letter from Addison, Dominions Office, Downing Street, to Prime Minister of Australia, 2 July 1947, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 5, SLNSW; De Graaff, ‘What Happened to the Central Personality Index?’, 318; Glees, ‘War Crimes’, 248. 101 Glees, ‘War Crimes’, 254. 102 Cesarani, Justice Delayed, 50; Gerard Daniel Cohen, In War’s Wake: Europe’s Displaced Persons in the Postwar Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 25; Hetherington and Chalmers, War Crimes, 26. 103 Laura Hilton, ‘Prisoners of Peace: Rebuilding Community, Identity and Nationality in Displaced Persons Camps in Germany, 1945–1952’, PhD diss., Ohio State University, 2001, 430–431. 104 Nasaw, The Last Million, 289. 105 Gerard Daniel Cohen, ‘The Politics of Recognition: Jewish Refugees in Relief Policies and Human Rights Debates, 1945–1950’, Immigrants and Minorities 24, no. 2 (2006): 131; George Ginsburgs, ‘The Soviet Union and the Problem of Refugees and Displaced Persons, 1917–1956’, The American Journal of International Law, 51:2 (1957): 358. 106 Theresa Kurk McGinley, ‘Embattled Polonia: Polish Americans and World War Two’, East European Quarterly 37, no. 3 (2003): 5. 107 Cohen, War’s Wake, 10. 108 Elliott, ‘The Soviet Repatriation Campaign’, 343. 109 Francesca M Wilson, Aftermath: France, Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia, 1945 and 1946 (West Drayton, Mx: Penguin, 1947), 152. 110 Yury Boshyk, ‘Repatriation: Ukrainian DPs and Political Refugees in Germany and Austria, 1945–8’, in The Refugee Experience: Ukrainian Displaced Persons After World War II, eds. Wsevolod W Isajiw, Yury Boshyk and Roman Senkus (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta,1992), 372. 111 Definition of Term ‘Refugee’ and ‘Displaced Person’ (9 April 1946), Foreign Office: Political Departments: General Correspondence from 1906 to 1972, Foreign Office FO 371/57705-0007, Post-War Europe, GDC. 112 Definition of Term ‘Refugee’ and ‘Displaced Person’ (9 April 1946), Foreign Office: Political Departments: General Correspondence from 1906 to 1972, Foreign Office FO 371/57705-0007, Post-War Europe, GDC. 113 Holborn, The International Refugee Organisation, 192. 114 Laura Hilton, ‘Cultural Nationalism in Exile: The Case of Polish and Latvian Displaced Persons’, The Historian 71, no. 2 (2009): 313, 316. 115 International Refugee Organization, and Agreement on Interim Measures to be taken in respect of refugees and displaced persons (UN General Assembly, 1946), https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/667297?ln=en.

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116 Malcolm J Proudfoot, European Refugees: 1936–1952, A Study in Forced Population Movement (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1956), 243. 117 Memorandum undated, Organisation internationale pour les réfugiés, AJ/43, Conseil de Recours, Dossiers individuels, 476 [hereafter, IRO 476], AN. 118 Decision, Jasa Ljotic, 29 January 1949, Organisation internationale pour les réfugiés, AJ/43, Conseil de Recours, Dossiers individuels, 470, AN. 119 Genizi, America’s Fair Share, 83. 120 Holborn, The International Refugee Organisation, 207; Memorandum from F C Blanchard to Mr M L Hacking, Chief, Mandate Branch, 14 March 1949, IRO 457, AN; International Refugee Organisation, Manual for Eligibility Officers, undated, 8. 121 Letter from Ernest C. Grigg, Care and Eligibility Division, to Executive Secretary, IRO Headquarters, Geneva, 8 November 1948, IRO 457, AN. 122 Cohen, In War’s Wake, 37. 123 IRO, Manual for Eligibility Officers, 6. 124 AC Menzies, Review of Material relating to the Entry of Suspected War Criminals into Australia (Canberra: The Review, 1986), 65. 125 Cited in Zoltán Kékesi, Memory in Hungarian Fascism: A Cultural History (London: Routledge, 2023), 113. 126 Cited in Cohen, In War’s Wake, 42. 127 Ruth Balint, Destination Elsewhere: Displaced Persons and Their Quest to Leave Postwar Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021), 36. 128 Kim Salomon, Refugees in the Cold War: Toward a New National Refugee Regime in the Early Postwar Era (Lund: Lund University Press, 1991), 64. 129 Saulius Suziedelis, ‘Foreign Saviors, Native Disciples: Perspectives on Collaboration in Lithuania, 1940–1945’, in Collaboration and Resistance During the Holocaust: Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, eds. David Gaunt, Paul A. Levine, and Laura Palosuo (Lausanne: Peter Lang, 2004), 342. 130 Rogoshin Corps and persons excluded from the Organisation’s concern, Appendix C, 12 October 1949, Tangier, draft reports for the sixth session of Executive Committee, representation in outlying areas, IRO 457, AN. 131 Ibid. 132 Ibid. 133 Holborn, The International Refugee Organisation, 208. 134 Balint, Destination Elsewhere, 37, 39; Holborn, The International Refugee Organisation, 208–209. 135 Decision, Iwan Daniltschenko, 13 October 1948, Organisation internationale pour les réfugiés, AJ/43, Conseil de Recours, Dossiers individuels, 467 [hereafter, IRO 467], AN. 136 Holborn, The International Refugee Organisation, 206. 137 Ruth Balint, ‘The Use and Abuse of History: Displaced Persons in the ITS Archive’, in Freilegungen Spiegelungen der NS-Verfolgung und ihrer Konsequenzen, eds. Rebecca Boehling, Susanne Urban, Suzanne Brown-Fleming and Elizabeth Anthony (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2015), 9. 138 An Open Letter from L Osvangas to Dr Gaidamavicius, editor of Teviskes Ziburiai, 2 September 1982, PABRESHA (TABRESHA) ARNALDAS, 1987–1992, Attorney General’s Department, Special Investigations Unit, A9525, PU6, NAA. 139 Memorandum undated, IRO 467, AN. 140 Bassler, Alfred Valdmanis, 209, 179. 141 Ibid.; see IRO 457, AN. 142 Ibid.; Salomon, Refugees in the Cold War, 69. 143 M. Lees, ‘Dedelsdorf Camp – Latvians’, Review Board Jurisprudence Decisions 1948, Organisation internationale pour les réfugiés, AJ/43, Conseil de Recours,

Screening for War Criminals  49

Décisions faisant jurisprudence, 1, 1948, 478, AN; see ‘Latvian Legion’, Organisation internationale pour les réfugiés, AJ/43, Conseil de Recours, Décisions faisant jurisprudence, 2, 1948–1949, 479 [hereafter, IRO 479], AN. 144 Ibid. 145 Decision, Waldemar Vaer, 21 October 1948, Organisation internationale pour les réfugiés, AJ/43, Conseil de Recours, Dossiers individuals, 475 [hereafter, IRO 475], AN. 146 Decision, Lubomyr Ontynskyj, 30 July 1949, IRO 479, AN. 147 Memorandum, December 1949, IRO 457, AN. 148 Excerpt of a letter enclosing a memorandum ‘The Russian Schutzcorps’, from An. Rogoshin, Kellerberg, 25 October 1949, IRO 476, AN. 149 ‘Rogozhin Group’, Memorandum from V. A. Temnomeorff, Deputy Member, to Mr de Baer, Chairman, Review Board, 28 July 1950, IRO 476, AN. 150 ‘White Russian Group of Refugees’, Memorandum from DP Branch, International Affairs Division, Allied Commission for Austria, to IRO, Geneva, undated, IRO 476, AN. 151 Rogoshin Corps and persons excluded from the Organisation’s concern, Appendix C, 12 October 1949, Tangier, draft reports for the sixth session of Executive Committee, representation in outlying areas, IRO 457, AN. 152 ‘The Eligibility Problem in the First Instance’, Memorandum, 31 July 1951, IRO 476, AN. 153 ‘Information Material concerning the Ukrainian Division ‘Halychyna, organised by the Germans in 1943 in Galicia’, Review Board Circuit – US Zone Germany, Annex XII, IRO 476, AN. 154 Heikkilä, ‘Baltic States’, 49; Balint, Destination Elsewhere, 45. 155 Balint, Destination Elsewhere, 45–46 156 ‘Chetniks: History’ and ‘Eligibility in the First Instance’ excerpt, undated, IRO 476, AN. 157 Memorandum from M de Baer, Chairman, to Thomas, Welfare Division, and Hacking, Division of Mandate and Reparations, 17 August 1949, IRO 457, AN. 158 ‘Eligibility in the First Instance’ excerpt, undated, IRO 476, AN. 159 Memorandum undated, Organisation internationale pour les réfugiés, AJ/43, Groupes de réfugiés (suite), 477 [hereafter, IRO 477], AN. 160 A man with the same name resettled in Australia in 1958 and became heavily involved in the HRB, travelling from Australia to Yugoslavia, where he was arrested in 1963 for terrorist activity. Decision, Ilija Tolic, 29 January 1949, IRO 479, AN; various NAA files. 161 Decision, 22 January 1949, Organisation internationale pour les réfugiés, AJ/43, Conseil de Recours, Dossiers individuels, 468 [hereafter, IRO 468], AN. 162 Letter from Jueri Estam, 28 December 1950, IRO 468, AN. 163 ESTAM Jueri, 1951–1976, Department of Immigration, Central Office, A6980, S200580, NAA. 164 Decision, Hermann Stockeby, Organisation internationale pour les réfugiés, AJ/43, Conseil de Recours, Dossiers individuals, 473, AN. 165 Decision, 15 November 1948, Organisation internationale pour les réfugiés, AJ/43, Conseil de Recours, Dossiers individuels, 469 [hereafter, IRO 469], AN. 166 ‘Nedic Cabinet’, IRO 469, AN. 167 Ibid. 168 Decision, Ognjan Kuzmanovic, 15 November 1948, IRO 469, AN. 169 IRO 467, AN. 170 Decision of the Review Board, 21 January 1950, IRO 457, AN. 171 Organisation internationale pour les réfugiés, AJ/43, Dossiers individuels, 472 [hereafter, IRO 472], AN.

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172 Cited in Balint, Destination Elsewhere, 46; see Eric Lichtblau, The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler’s Men (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), 8. 173 Decision, Juozas Zubrickas, 1 August 1950, IRO 475, AN; Balint, Destination Elsewhere, 61. 174 IRO 457, AN. 175 Cohen, In War’s Wake, 49. 176 IRO 472, AN. 177 Ibid. 178 Ibid.; see Ruth Balint, ‘The Use and Abuse of History: Displaced Persons in the ITS Archive’, in Freilegungen Spiegelungen der NS-Verfolgung und ihrer Konsequenzen, eds. Rebecca Boehling, Susanne Urban, Suzanne Brown-Fleming and Elizabeth Anthony (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2015), 11. 179 Cited in Balint, ‘The Use and Abuse of History’, 12. 180 IRO 477, AN. 181 Ibid. 182 Holborn, The International Refugee Organisation, 209. 183 In 1951, de Baer was offered the position with UNRRA of Chief of Mission in Rome but turned it down, as apparently the Vatican would not accept him. Cited in Balint, Destination Elsewhere, 29, 46. 184 Balint, Destination Elsewhere, 12. 185 Cohen, ‘The West and the Displaced’, 127. 186 Balint, Destination Elsewhere, 12. 187 Mary Fulbrook, ‘The Making and Un-Making of Perpetrators: Patterns of Involvement in Nazi Persecution’, in The Routledge International Handbook of Perpetrator Studies, ed. Susanne C Knittel and Zachary J Goldberg, (London: Routledge, 2020), 31. 188 Letter from Simon Wiesenthal, Chairman, Committee of former Jewish Concentration Camp Inmates, Linz, to Dr Bedo, Chief Eligibility Officer, IRO, Salzburg, 20 October 1948, IRO 457, AN.

2 AUSTRALIAN MIGRATION SELECTION POLICIES AND PROCESSES

Scholarly estimates of war criminals and collaborators entering Australia in the post-war period range from 500 to 5,000.1 These breaches were due to the break-neck speed at which the displaced persons scheme was carried out and a perception that, once the International Refugee Organisation (IRO) had vetted the displaced persons for wartime crimes, Australia was not really responsible for any further security checks. There have been allegations that the Australian government willingly resettled Displaced Persons (DPs) they knew were right-wing undesirables, including those who served the postwar British and American intelligence agencies through intelligence ratlines.2 While this certainly occurred in Britain, the United States and Canada, there is very little evidence of such practices in Australia.3 This chapter will describe the conditions in which Australia entered the IRO’s market in search of young, fit bodies who would be assimilable in what was White Australia – an immigration regime instituted in 1901 that aimed to keep Australia’s population white – in the context of an urgent need for labour to assist in an ambitious post-war reconstruction program. Political and bureaucratic pragmatism prevailed. Australia’s main concern was that any immigrants would fit into White Australia, and so the inaugural post-war Minister for Immigration (1945–1949), Arthur Calwell, made sure that the displaced persons would be recruited using Australia’s own selection criteria.4 Rather than focusing on security, the Australian government was more concerned with solving its population and workforce deficit, and so with the age and physical health of any potential migrants. Once Calwell realised that displaced persons were cheap and that he could stipulate almost any selection criteria – this would be the country’s first mass intake of non-British migrants – he signed an agreement with the DOI: 10.4324/9780429276880-4

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IRO on 21 July 1947. In all, 170,700 DPs arrived in Australia between 1947 and 1952 through the auspices of the IRO. The main national groups were Polish (63,393), ‘Baltic’ (34,656), Yugoslav (23,543), Ukrainian (14,464), Hungarian (11,919), Czechoslovak (9142) and Russian (officially, 3256).5 Australian Selection Processes: Race

The new Immigration Department sent its own officers and medical staff to the DP camps to work with IRO officers in selecting DPs for migration to Australia. DPs were actively recruited by the Australian teams, with A ­ ustralia being sold as a welcoming, exciting destination, with migrant workers ­‘invited to share our life in the best country in the world.’6 Australian officers were competing with other settlement countries including, by 1948, the United States, and wanting to skim the ‘cream:’ the most important selection category for Australia was race.7 Specifically, the issue was upholding White Australian immigration policies in order to prevent domestic ‘political repercussions.’8 However, White Australia was becoming an anachronism in the context of a new international discourse of racial equality and universal human rights promoted by the United Nations. The Australian government had to tread a thin line between (populist) national and (liberal) international condemnation and attempted to do this by only allowing what were deemed ‘assimilable’ ‘racial’ and cultural types into Australia. In other words, if ­Australia could not attract enough British migrants, then ‘white’ migrants who could potentially assimilate would be an option taken by the government to fulfil its economic and population aims, as well as neatly fitting into an ostensibly humanitarian international program. The agreement signed by Calwell included the IRO proviso that the DPs would be selected ‘without discrimination as to race and religion.’9 Calwell publicly declared: ‘Our policy has no race prejudice. All we ask of DPs is that they be of good faith, good character and willing to work.’10 However, in the hierarchy of race and class, all recruiting countries saw middle-class Balts as the ‘elite of the refugee problem.’11 Australia’s first shipments were made up exclusively of the so-called ‘Beautiful Balts’ – blond, blue-eyed migrants who would slip into a White Australian demographic. The DPs were racially and politically acceptable: white European anti-communists who valued freedom. Helen Ferber, an Australian who worked as a public information officer for the Displaced Persons Headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in Paris from March 1947, recorded that Calwell had told her in a conversation in July of that year that Australia wanted ‘Latvians:’ ‘It came out … that he had seen some nice blond L ­ atvians at Bremen, and well, they were blond and Chifley liked them blond.’12 Calwell stated publicly that ‘the Baltic people will have preference over other

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nationals,’ and he assured Australians that ‘while in Europe, I was impressed by the bearing, the physique and the general industry of the Balts.’13 This continued to be the sort of ad hoc racial policy initially pursued by the Australians. In May 1947, the Australian Legation at the Hague forwarded a message that the Commander of the British Zone of Occupation in Germany had advised Australia to take ‘those from the Baltic States.’14 A memorandum from the head of the Australian Military Mission in Germany in June 1947 to selection teams encapsulates the advice regarding the ‘very good types’ available in the DP camps at that time: ‘Balts’ were the ‘best material;’ Poles would need to be carefully selected to obtain ‘assimilable types;’ while ‘Yugoslavs’ would ‘no doubt be worth some consideration.’15 Three months later, while admitting the possibility that some ‘Balts’ may have served in the German armed forces, Calwell advised the Mission that, regardless, he preferred them over nationalities.16 As a result, early selections were made only from young, single Baltic ‘Ubermenschen,’ and then from Ukrainians, Yugoslavs and Czechs, ‘based on personal appearance and favourable impressions.’17 This rigorous first selection acted as the scheme’s ‘Trojan horse,’ as strict racial criteria were soon relaxed in the race to populate Australia cheaply. Individual national groups were progressively permitted: Slovenes, Ukrainians, Yugoslavs, Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, White Russians, Albanians, Romanians, Bulgarians and then in May 1949, ostensibly all IRO-categorised DPs.18 Approximately 5,000 ­German and Austrian-born DP wives were also allowed to migrate to Australia, as according to German law they had assumed the nationality of their husbands upon marriage.19 Only one group was left out. The government had no intention of accepting large numbers of Jewish DPs, due to their perceived ‘non-assimilability.’ Australian representatives argued that Australia had some trouble with Jews, while Calwell told the IRO: ‘We are not anti-Semitic but we will have to handle this matter carefully.’20 Official feeling was succinctly expressed by one Australian immigration official: ‘We have never wanted these people and we still don’t want them.’21 Policy on the matter was made clear in an instruction to the Mission in June 1949: ‘The term [Jewish] refers to race and not to religion and the fact that some DPs who are Jewish by race have become Christian by religion is not relevant.’ One member of the Australian selection team noted: ‘Hitler could not have done better.’22 Australian Selection Processes: Security

In Australia, as in other settlement countries, the issue of race tied in neatly with politics. As historian Suzanne Rutland has noted, the preferred Baltic racial type also happened to be the preferred anti-communist political type.23 This led to a laxity in political screening as war criminals, collaborators and

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fascist sympathisers migrated to Australia under the same conditions of Cold War myopia operating in other western countries.24 Bestselling author Frank Clune, commissioned by the Department of Immigration to tour the European DP camps and then to sell the DPs to the Australian public, described these anti-communist potential migrants as being of a ‘heroic type:’ ‘Despite Bolshevik blandishments, they refused to return and submit to Russian regimentation, with its crazy one-sided ideas of forced labour, Stalin-idolatry, bogus “trials,” low standards of living and cruel Asiatic brutalities.’ In fact, he explicitly pointed to their anti-­communism as pointing to their assimilability in the West: ‘Every adult DP has made the choice between Communism and Freedom. That is why they are the DPs. They have preferred freedom, even at the cost of permanent exile from the lands of their birth.’25 The Australian selection teams were inexperienced in European languages and geopolitics, as indeed was the Australian government. After meeting with Calwell’s party in July 1947, UNRRA worker Helen Ferber wrote: ­‘Nobody knew anything about the DPs and nobody had planned for them to meet anyone that knew anything about DPs. They just goggled when I started to explain to them some of the problems and pitfalls. Talk about innocents abroad!’26 A member of the Australian selection team in Germany similarly wrote to a friend: The Australian mission is a complete shambles run by incompetent idiots. There is no rhyme or reason in the way a selection officer gets his job. The majority of them haven’t got an inkling of the political background of Europe … They have no prior briefing as to their duties and … many are the wrong types to be in a job like this.27 During this time, there were only three hurdles for an errant war criminal or collaborator to jump: (1) IRO screening for eligibility; (2) interview by Australian selection officers; (3) check by the Combined Travel Board – comprising representatives of the British, American and French security and intelligence services – before issue of a travel permit.28 In practice, Australian officials simply assumed that the IRO had screened all displaced persons effectively, and throughout the IRO scheme relied on officials from the United States and Britain for intelligence information. While selection officers were provided with quite explicit criteria listing the nationalities acceptable to Australia and the restrictions on Jews, there was no formal policy for the exclusion of Nazi collaborators from Eastern Europe and no information provided about the various institutions of collaboration.29 It was not until June 1950 that Calwell released a first statement of criteria for the security checking of potential migrants from Europe – ­including Germans outside of the displaced persons scheme – which included

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the ineligibility of ‘persons holding extreme political views, for example, … members of the Nazi Party not cleared by a Denazification Tribunal.’30 Australian selection officers did not even have access to the IRO’s Manual for Eligibility Officers, which provided histories and discussions around the various problematic nationality backgrounds. In November 1949 – a full two years into the scheme – selection officer, HJ Grant, was forced to specifically request access to this document; the Acting Chief Migration Officer had also never seen the Manual: According to Mr Grant this manual gives a rather comprehensive survey of the background of nationals affected by the Hitler regime and besides giving Selection Officers availability of detail without recourse to the International Refugee Organisation, would also help to broaden the knowledge and understanding of different nationals presented daily for selection [and] would expedite selection and strengthen security.31 To add to this wilful ignorance of IRO policy and procedure, there was no ‘systematic exchange of information between Australian migration offices in Europe.’32 The selection teams were also hampered by the ‘cursory’ or flawed intelligence from the IRO and foreign intelligence sources; one selection officer later described their ‘naïve trust’ in the IRO while they were busy operating what was, in effect, a resettlement ‘assembly line.’33 The usually monolingual Australians were dependent upon interpreters, with Kiddle later recalling that sometimes they worked with a ‘double interpreter – one for that into German, one into English.’34 Regarding the authenticity of proffered identity documents, he offered this rather credulous description of the selection officers’ process: ‘Whether they were all genuine or not, I don’t know, but they all looked pretty crumpled and so on, as if they’d been keeping those very carefully.’ Kiddle later described performing around 138 interviews one morning: ‘so it was pretty perfunctory, wasn’t it.’35 Polish DP George Klim later described the process as ‘just a rudimentary sort of few questions and looking at the documentation and that was it. There was no political assessment; nobody was asked about their political affiliations in any way, nobody.’36 Another Australian selection officer, responding to official queries some 40 years later, admitted the ‘very considerable pressure’ to ‘get migrants on ships.’ Because ‘interviewing lists were submitted by the IRO resettlement officer,’ he ‘assumed’ that the applicant ‘was anti-Nazi to a degree.’37 For the first ship, the General Heintzelmann, Kiddle remembered: that ‘there were no [security] rejections to us in the American zone. Although I think one or two came a bit later when the Heintzelmann was en route to Australia. We were too busy in Germany, [with] other things to worry about …’38

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In at least one case, a Romanian Iron Guardist, who had been deemed eligible by the IRO but feared that ‘idle gossip’ against him may harm his resettlement chances, approached the Australian Mission directly, attempting to circumvent any security appraisal. Dr Constantin Untaru carried a letter from the Chief DP Officer, Land DPs Department, to Mr Lederer, Chief of the Australian Mission in Münster: ‘I personally know little of Dr Untaru but from what I have seen of him must state that he has impressed me as being a good type of person.’ Untaru had been ‘assured’ that Lederer was the ‘sole judge as to whether or not he is acceptable for resettlement in Australia.’39 Security Officers: Captains KG Turbayne and HW Miller

Although an officer of the Australian Military Mission had convinced C ­ alwell that the appointment of an Australian Military Officer to carry out political security checks was ‘absolutely essential,’ the first officer loaned by the Department of the Army for security work was instead engaged in selection duties.40 It was not until April 1949 that two Australian Military Intelligence Officers, clutching ‘elementary German phrasebooks,’ arrived in Europe.41 Captain KG Turbayne was sent to work in the US zone and Captain HW Miller to the British zone; they had a shared, rarely visited office in Cologne. There was never a security officer in Italy.42 The two Australian security officers worked with selection officers who remained responsible for the acceptance or rejection of candidates.43 Their instructions were delivered by the Director of Military Intelligence at Army Headquarters, Charles Spry, who worked closely with the Secretary of the Department of Immigration, Tasman Heyes.44 These instructions with regard to ‘security matters’ were vague and weighted heavily towards potential ­Soviet espionage: You will evolve suitable counter-measures to minimise the risk of espionage in Australia by opposing the entry to Australia of persons: a Who are, or could possess attributes of, intelligence workers; b Who could foster subversion; c Whose background suggests unsuitability for assimilation into the Australian community.45 After touring various camps, the two security officers drafted an operational directive, which was accepted by both Major-General FG Galleghan and GV Greenhalgh, the Chief Migration Officer in Cologne. This directive was, again, suitably vague as to what the security officers were actually looking for, beyond ‘security matters.’46 In practice, it seems that selection teams – ranging in quality from ‘very good to very bad’ – notified the two security officers of ‘doubtful cases’ for

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further investigation.47 Turbayne and Miller established contacts with the British Zone Intelligence Division and the US Counter-Intelligence Corps, but this information was variable. Quite early on, in October 1949, Miller reported that the British had advised him that their ‘framers of the overall intelligence policy’ were ‘of the opinion that the matter of checking of DPs does not merit a high priority.’ From early November, Miller’s lists of suspect DPs would only be checked against the British Black List, holding around 2,000 names which were ‘current cases of a fairly high-grade.’ Miller was told that if a DP happened to fail this check, he or she should re-apply ‘after a lapse of time sufficient to have allowed their names to be removed from the list as non-current cases.’ In contrast, the United States authorities checked all names against the complete Intelligence Division records. Miller considered that the British held ‘a selfish and, from a British Commonwealth viewpoint, very short-sighted security appreciation.’48 After receiving complaints from both Australia and Canada, Britain advised that they would not check a total of more than 2,000 applicants per week; this was taken to mean the routine checks provided by the Combined Travel Board and not the 60 or so cases per week of requested individual security checks.49 The security officers also carried out their own checks at the Berlin Documents Centre, which housed archived Nazi Party records, and with ­Canadian and American rejection lists. If deemed necessary, checks were also made with secondary agencies such as the Belgian and (the initially inefficient and uncooperative) French security services, and the Swiss Police, as well as ground and neighbourhood checks ‘where possible’ and individual ‘interrogations.’50 Turbayne and Miller reported that, unfortunately, in many instances, information was ‘not transmitted to higher levels or to kindred organisations until consolidation reveals a definite case.’ Further, ‘security officers of any organisation are chary of committing to paper information of political significance which, however, they would pass verbally to a personally known security officer.’51 Indeed, the Americans refused to even use the telephone to pass information.52 Personal contacts were key, and the security officers relied mostly on contacts within the Allied militaries and other resettlement missions, especially the Canadians, who had 12 officers working in Germany.53 With regard to the personal interviews necessary, Turbayne and Miller noted that the standard of available interpreters was ‘not always high enough for detailed interrogation.’ Interpreters were also potential migrants themselves, living in or around the displaced persons camps and mixing freely with the applicants, and the security officers alleged that ‘cases of collaboration and bribery have occurred’ and that ‘there is often a definite bias arising from national sympathies.’54 Even towards the very end of the scheme, in December 1951, it was still necessary for advice to be sent advising the selection teams that ‘it is highly undesirable for any person who has been either

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selected or rejected for migration to Australia to be engaged in any work connected with selection, including the work of interpreting.’ The Australian Military Mission in Berlin itself had to be directed to replace Irmgard G, who had worked in Gestapo headquarters between 1941 and 1945.55 As well as the difficulty of accessing tightly held information, the two security officers were hampered by the complexity of the task over large areas, as they had been charged with working separately, one in each zone, ‘but in close liaison, holding regular conferences and exchanging information.’56 This was particularly hard as selection teams often spent only a few weeks at one DP camp before moving on to the next, and the selection officers had ­‘incessant trouble over [access to reliable] cars.’57 The whole process could take up to six months, which was not possible when Australian selection teams were ordered to ‘maintain a steady quota.’58 In fact, Turbayne later reported ‘considerable’ and ‘constant pressure’ from the Australian Military Mission in Berlin, the Chief Migration Officer in Cologne, and the IRO, to ‘fill the ships which always seemed to be waiting.’ It was suggested at one point that Australia dispense with security checks prior to embarkation and that if a security objection was raised post-embarkation, the IRO was to bring the individual concerned straight back to Europe. The security officers, to their credit, refused to consider this option, which would have led to ‘chaos and confusion.’ It was finally agreed by all parties that migrants were not to move without security clearance.59 However, in the circumstances, the best the security officers could promise was ‘a reasonably efficient overall check.’60 The Reject Index collated by the two security officers was, unfortunately, subsequently destroyed.61 Turbayne reported that in the first half of 1951, out of 3,650 screened, 200 were rejected on security grounds.62 It is impossible now to know what these security grounds were, or the proportion of rejected applicants that comprised right-wing displaced persons attempting to join the mass scheme as compared to Jews requesting a landing permit who were suspected of communist affiliation.63 Turbayne, in particular, seemed to focus his attention almost exclusively on ‘Jews’ he described as sitting on a scale ‘from deep pink to a bright red.’64 Soviet Defectors

Following an unofficial and ad hoc practice, in June 1950 Britain officially asked Australia to accept under the IRO scheme a number of Soviet and Soviet-bloc defectors of whom they wished to ‘dispose.’65 These would unfortunately ‘not conform with the normal immigration requirements’ but would be ‘specially sponsored by the intelligence authorities.’ Prime Minister Robert Menzies replied that there would be no blanket approvals, even on this basis: applications would be considered individually, and only after full particulars and a background history had been provided. It seems that while

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some high-level defectors and ex-agents were sent from the United ­Kingdom as full fare-paying passengers, a larger group of lower-level defectors may have been individually admitted under the IRO scheme. In March 1951, Miller working in the British zone reported that 13 (heads of families, rather than individuals) of these lower-level defectors sponsored by an intelligence agency had sailed to Australia as IRO migrants; four were being investigated; and 16 had been rejected by Miller or had been withdrawn. A year or so later, Miller was summoned to London to meet with representatives of both MI5 and MI6, who complained that he had been ‘hindering their efforts to resettled expended defectors.’ He argued that ‘no arrangements were ever entered into to accept for immigration to Australia … Nazi war criminals or anyone of that ilk, whatever their background,’ and stated that he was not ‘aware of any underhand attempts to foist such persons upon us as a matter of official policy.’66 Meanwhile, the Americans had begun issuing requests for the ­Australian security officer in the US zone to facilitate the migration of six to eight Soviet defectors per week. Turbayne suggested that these requests should be ‘treated very warily’ as the Americans were not as trustworthy as the British in this regard. Charles Spry, now the head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), advised the Americans that if they wanted to institute such an arrangement, this should be done at an intergovernmental level. He advised Turbayne that no further US-sponsored defectors should be approved. Spry continued to refuse similar requests by the United States into the mid-1950s.67 By January 1953, ASIO knew of 43 heads of families who had migrated to Australia in this way, although it is not known how many of these came under the IRO scheme and how many by way of full fare-paying passengers. Of course, the real number – of persons pointed towards Australia’s IRO scheme and perhaps unknowingly passed by the security officers – was probably larger.68 One of these unknowns was later discovered to be Byelorussian Nikolai Alferchik, travelling under the false name of Pavlov bestowed upon him by US counterintelligence, as well as a false Polish nationality. Alferchik was an NTS member and had been a political officer under German occupation and subsequently a member of the Vlasov Army.69 Naturalisations and Other Requests

Until 1955, when the process was stopped by the government, Spry also used security officers in Europe to check applicants for naturalisation, as he had ‘no confidence in the security screening methods in operation before the end of 1949 or early 1950.’ Between 1953 and 1957, only 91 individuals from non-English-speaking European countries were refused naturalisation on security grounds, but it is not apparent whether any of these were for

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right-wing security concerns rather than a taint of communism.70 In any case, these checks were not infallible, and if they did show a problematic rightwing past, there was little appetite – from either ASIO or the government – for blocking naturalisation on this basis. The key test – the only thing that ASIO was interested in with regard to naturalisation checks – was whether those accused of war crimes during the war were likely to be a current threat to Australia. The answer was, almost always, ‘no.’ These sorts of checks were also requested on behalf of ASIO with regard to migrant informants and agents recruited in Australia. So, for instance, in March 1953 Pavlov/Alferchik started passing on information about a man he had met who worked in the Soviet Embassy; within a month, he had been recruited as an agent and then ten months later, ASIO requested an overseas check. When they were advised that Pavlov had been head of the political section of the regional security administration in German-occupied Byelorussia – which ‘corresponded to the German Gestapo’ – this advice was filed but not acted upon. Also in March 1953, Argods Fricsons volunteered his services to ASIO; when an overseas check was carried out, it was found that he had been head of the Political Department of the Latvian Security Police and that he was wanted by the British War Crimes Group. Fricsons, though, offered to pass on information from the Latvian Information Service with regard to Russian troop concentrations and industry in Latvia, so his problematic wartime past was also ignored.71 Deportations72

The work of the security officers ended up including investigating a fair proportion of cases who had already travelled to Australia; after some of these investigations they recommended ‘surveillance and, if necessary, deport[ation].’73 The question of deportation, though, was fraught. In ­Calwell’s initial discussions with the IRO, it had been agreed that ‘no difficulties would be raised to the return to [British zone of] Germany of migrants who had proved unsuitable in Australia,’ although they could only be returned within an 18-month period.74 Unfortunately for Calwell, and his successor, Harold Holt ­(1949–1956), this agreement had not been committed to writing and the IRO as well as the countries of departure – Germany, Austria and Italy – placed obstacles in the way with regard to its practice.75 By March 1952, Department of Immigration officials complained that ‘this whole question is at the moment in a very confused state.’ They were ‘urgently trying to find trace of the agreement’ and ‘could only conclude that such an agreement never existed.’76 The main issue for Britain – and, therefore, the Anglosphere – was that deportations were regarded as ‘disguised extradition(s),’ and it was considered that an accused should have access to the courts before extradition.77

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For Australia, though, the more practical problem with regard to deporting displaced persons was that they were by definition displaced, stateless, or at least, unrepatriable.78 The IRO was winding up operations in Western Europe, and the countries of departure certainly did not want them.79 It would be politically and morally unconscionable for Australia to return them to their home countries in the Eastern Bloc – migrants argued that deportations to Yugoslavia, for example, would be ‘a death sentence.’80 However, deportations did apparently occur in a ‘very few cases where an Iron Curtain country agreed to accept’ deportees; one man committed suicide en route.81 While it was recommended that these types of deportations only be for ‘capital/­ security offences,’ one prepared list of deportees ‘for “Iron Curtain” Countries,’ circa July 1951, included 13 to be deported for employment reasons and four for criminality.82 There are unfortunately no reliable numbers for displaced persons who were deported from Australia in this period. In an answer to a parliamentary question in June 1950, Holt said that 40 of the 128,000 DPs who had arrived had been deported.83 It does seem that most deportations of DPs for ‘character,’ health or security reasons occurred before 1954, when Australia ratified the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951), which prevented Australia from deporting refugees unless they threatened national security or public order.84 Of the more than 40 displaced persons who were deported, contemporary publicity highlighted a ‘refusal to work’ within their two-year indentured labour contracts.85 So, deportation was used as a threat to keep the DPs in line: they would accept ‘approved work’ or, as threatened by Calwell, ‘they, too, will be deported as soon as that can be arranged,’ and deportations were to be publicised ‘through migrant publications as an example.’86 Other reasons for initiating deportation in this period included serious physical ailments and/or mental instability, histories of homosexuality, suicide attempts and serious criminal activity, ranging from habitual theft, knife crimes, indecent exposure and domestic violence, to rape and murder.87 One Hungarian DP, Lojos S, went on a manic crime spree in 1951 in which he took pot-shots at neighbours and the police, disarmed a police constable and gave him a ‘nightmare motorcycle ride’ over 11 miles with a loaded pistol at his back.88 He was sentenced to seven years in jail. Heyes immediately wrote to the Acting Chief of the IRO Mission for Australia and New Zealand: [Lojos]’s case received considerable publicity in the press and as his ­conduct was such as to bring the DP Migration Project into disrepute and to tend to create a prejudice against new Australians in the mind of the Australian community, it would be appreciated if your Organisation could please make the necessary arrangements for returning him to Europe.89

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In this case, while the IRO was willing, Austria refused a re-entry visa. Lojos, an alleged former member of the Arrow Cross, went on to commit further violent crimes in Australia and was later investigated with regard to his wartime activities by the Special Investigations Unit in 1989.90 Although apparently theoretically agreeing to the return of unsuitable migrants, in practice the IRO was nonplussed by requests to return displaced persons, particularly those who were to be returned on the grounds of political unsuitability. In April 1949 it warned the Australian government that because of the ‘administrative difficulties occasioned by deportation action … with little or no notice,’ displaced persons would have to be held ‘in gaol during the course of negotiations with the military government of the occupying power concerned.’ The cable emphasised ‘gaol, repeat gaol.’91 A few months later, they complained that ‘too little information on the case is usually provided by the Authorities in Australia.’ The Australian reasons for deportation were, though, broadly: ‘in the first place health; in the second place security; and in the third place bad behaviour.’92 This is noteworthy because by this reckoning, more of the 40-plus deportations must have been on security grounds than the Australian government was publicly admitting. In 1951, Harold Holt stated that there had only been one displaced person sent back to Europe ‘for political reasons; he was a communist organiser.’ That was probably former Soviet officer and suspected communist, Gregor L, who admitted upon arrival in Australia in 1949 that he was travelling under a false name and was promptly deported.93 In his 1986 governmental review, Andrew Menzies reported that there were ‘at least four cases where DPs were removed from Australia on security grounds after their arrival;’ he acknowledged that there ‘may have been additional instances.’94 As well as Gregor L, who was deported for ‘security reasons,’ a Czech, Bohumil H, was suspected of ‘communist sympathies’ and a Hungarian, Józef K, was ‘a known security risk,’ although his politics were not specified. A family – husband, wife and two children – were also subject to deportation orders on ‘security grounds.’95 There is evidence that the question of the deportation of Estonian Verner P – who arrived in Australia on a landing permit rather than through the IRO scheme – was considered, causing ‘some confusion within the department.’96 In late 1949, Turbayne had received information from ‘an usually reliable source’ that Verner had commanded a Russian submarine during the Soviet occupation and was an alleged NKVD (Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) agent, as well as subsequently acting as the Chief of the Naval Intelligence Division (Seekriegsleitung) for the German Baltic Fleet under German occupation.97 Australian authorities were pragmatic in noting the ‘opportunists and turncoats’ among the Balts during the occupation years, making sure to tell Verner, who had offered his intelligence services, that: ‘he is just an ordinary alien to whom asylum in

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Australia has been granted as a privilege; and that this privilege will cease if he engaged in any of his old political antics or tries to act as anybody’s agent.’98 He was, in any event, cleared for naturalisation in 1955.99 One Latvian displaced person, Jānis Balodis – a nom de plume frequently used by displaced persons in the same way as ‘Bill Smith’ in English-speaking countries – approached officials at Bonegilla in 1951 to confess that his real name was Erich K and that he was an Austrian who had served in the ­German Air Force and ground units.100 This admission occurred because Erich wanted to be able to apply for a landing permit for his wife, in her name (Mrs K). Holt directed that he be deported because of ‘gross misrepresentation by an Austrian national who has entered Australia illegally,’ in order to set ‘an example to others who may make similar attempts.’101 Similarly, Latvian DP Georg A was accused of ‘gross misrepresentation’ after admitting that he was actually Hans D, an Austrian. He had served in the German Army and had bought papers from a Latvian student, substituting his photograph on the documents ‘at the last minute.’ Of Herman W, a German veteran who also entered as a Latvian and was discovered upon arrival because ‘he could not speak Latvian,’ it was merely noted that he had ‘entered illegally and there is little that can be said in his favour.’ 102 Whether he was deported is unclear. These are notable examples because we know that many DPs entered Australia under false names and were not deported – in fact, they were able to become naturalised – even after they had applied to change their names, admitting misrepresentation on their migration documents.103 Extradition Requests

Australia received at least eight extradition requests between 1950 and the mid-1960s, from Yugoslavia, Estonia and Latvia; these were all refused, as extradition requests were also refused in the United Kingdom and the United States, with the justification that the Soviet judicial system could not be trusted.104 The first extradition request occurred in March 1950 when ­Yugoslavia requested the extradition of Branislav I ‘for his work on behalf of the Nazis during the war.’ The charges were comprehensive: ‘spying for the enemy, denouncing citizens to the enemy for which they suffered punishment, arrests and executions, maltreatment, dismissals from service, plunder and ransoming of citizens, political and military service for the enemy occupation forces, as well as treachery.’105 Branislav had been Assistant Minister of Transport in the puppet government of German-occupied Serbia and a close associate, as well as the son-in-law, of quisling Prime Minister General Milan Nedić. He had fled Serbia in October 1944; ASIO later noted that he had probably been picked up and then released in the immediate post-war period by the British.106 Prior to the extradition request, Branislav had already been investigated by Australian authorities because he was reported to

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exhibit a ‘tendency to fascism’ in his role as block supervisor at the Bonegilla migrant camp. His wartime past had also been comprehensively laid out by a fellow Serbian DP to ASIO, in 1949.107 Officials immediately checked the legalities, finding that the current extradition treaty between Australia and Yugoslavia did ‘not appear to cover the crimes which the person in question is alleged to have committed, nor can any trace be found of any international Agreements to which Australia is a party under which we would be obliged to hand this person over if the allegations are well founded.’108 They also asked the British for advice on how to deal with the situation.109 Christopher Mayhew of the Office of Foreign Affairs in the House of Commons replied that although initially cooperative with the Yugoslav government in such matters, the British now felt ‘that a new stage had been reached:’ ‘It has been more than three years since the end of the war, and it is clearly not possible for us to continue the process of search and surrender for an indefinite period.’ Apart from 19 names still on a blacklist – these would be surrendered upon request, if found – the B ­ ritish government would not be accepting ‘any fresh requests for surrender’ as they felt ‘it is time for this matter to be brought to an end.’ They had advised the Yugoslav Government of this change in policy.110 After checking that Branislav was not one of the 19 black-listed names, the Australian government took its lead from the British and subsequently replied to the Yugoslav government that it had ‘not been possible to identify this person.’111 There are some indications that Branislav was taken up on his offer to provide intelligence against pro-communist migrants in Australia.112 In 1955 he was naturalised, with no objection from ASIO.113 In 1951, Yugoslavia – again – requested the extradition of two alleged war criminals, Serbian Milorad Lukić, who allegedly worked for the Gestapo denouncing pro-nationalist Yugoslavs in a prisoner of war camp in Nuremberg, and Montenegrin Mihailo Rajković, an ex-judge who was similarly charged with working with the Gestapo to denounce Yugoslavs at a prisoner of war camp in Albania.114 In Australia, both Lukić and Rajković were well known to ASIO as informants who infiltrated pro-communist Yugoslav groups and were, according to Spry, valuable because of their being ‘unceasing in their campaign against communism.’115 Turbayne was asked to conduct an investigation into Lukić, which found that he had worked as a double agent for the Abwehr before the war and for American counterintelligence after the war.116 However, a memorandum of advice directed that ‘even if the investigation discloses that there is some truth in the … allegations,’ Australia would continue to follow the British line that ‘it is time to bring to an end the punishment of minor war criminals.’ As neither name appeared on the British blacklist, the legal and consular advice was not to acquiesce to the extradition request.117 Publicly, the government continued to advise that it would not extradite any former displaced

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person on charges of war crimes to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) or Soviet-backed countries, saying it did not trust their legal systems. When the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic requested the extradition of Ervin Viks, a member of the Estonian security police who had allegedly ordered the execution of 243 ‘Gypsies,’ the Australian Embassy in Moscow advised that ‘the Soviet authorities are likely to have amassed a great deal of convincing and probably accurate reports of what actually occurred since they are painstaking and efficient in this respect.’ The Department of Immigration, though, advised its minister that this extradition request ‘is merely the latest in a long line of such requests by the Soviets, most of which have had very little read substance.’118 The Australian government refused to countenance the Viks extradition, and Viks was tried in absentia in Estonia and sentenced to death.119 The Attorney General, Sir Garfield Barwick, summed up the attitude of the Australian government with regard to these requests: Two deep-seated human interests … here come into conflict. On the one hand, there is the utter abhorrence felt by Australians for those offences against humanity to which we give the generic name of war crimes. On the other hand, there is the right of this nation, by receiving people into this country, to enable men to turn their backs on past bitternesses and to make a new life for themselves and for their families in a happier community. This has formed a precious part of the heritage of the West, in which Australia has an honourable share. He said that the ‘time ha[d] come to close the chapter on war crimes.’120 In reality, the chapter had never been open. Notes 1 Suzanne Rutland, ‘Subtle Exclusions: Postwar Jewish Emigration to Australia and the Impact of the IRO Scheme’,  The Journal of Holocaust Education  10, no. 1 (2001): 56; Konrad Kwiet, ‘A Historian’s View: The War Crimes Debate Down Under’, Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust 24, no. 1 (2010), 324. 2 See Mark Aarons, Sanctuary! Nazi Fugitives in Australia (Melbourne: William Heinemann Australia, 1989), xix. 3 See David Cesarani, Justice Delayed: How Britain Became a Refuge for Nazi War Criminals (London: Phoenix Press, 2001 [1992]); Howard Margolian, Unauthorized Entry: The Truth about Nazi War Criminals in Canada, 1946–1956 (University of Toronto Press, 2000), 205. 4 The Australian Labor Party (ALP) was in power nationally 1941–1949. 5 Jayne Persian, Beautiful Balts: From Displaced Persons to New Australians ­(Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2017), 74; see Egon Kunz, Displaced Persons: Calwell’s New Australians (Sydney: Australian National University Press, 1988), 43; Mark Edele, ‘The Second World War as a History of Displacement: The ­Soviet Case’, History Australia 12, no. 2 (2015): 20.

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6 House of Representatives Hansard, 3 October 1947, AA Calwell, 483. 7 International Refugee Organisation, ‘The Facts About Refugees’, 15 September 1948, IRO – International Refugee Organization, 1947–1977, A446, Department of Immigration, Central Office, 1962/67355, National Archives of Australia [hereafter, NAA]. 8 Noel Lamidey, Chief Migration Officer, Australia House, cited in Suzanne ­Rutland, ‘The History of Australian Jewry, 1945–1960’, PhD diss., University of Sydney, 1990. 9 (PC)IRO Agreement with Australia, 21 July 1947, Immigration – Displaced ­Persons – General, 1949, Department of Information, Central Office, CP815/1, Department of Information, Central Office, 021.134, NAA. 10 Cited in Andrew Markus, ‘Labour and Immigration 1946–1949: The Displaced Persons Program’, Labour History 47 (1984): 80. 11 AWH Wilkinson, Foreign Office Refugee Department, cited in Cesarani, Justice Delayed, 74. 12 Helen Ferber, Letter, 21 July 1947, Letters from Paris and Geneva March 1947– November 1947, Papers of Helen Ferber, MS 9740, National Library of Australia [hereafter, NLA]. 13 AA Calwell, Press Release, 18 July 1947, Cabled from Berlin, Australian News and Information Bureau, Displaced Persons – Policy General [Including Accommodation at Chermside Military Camp], 1947–1954, J25, Department of Immigration, Queensland, 1949/1493, NAA; IRO Press Release, 23 July 1947 and Australian Department of Information Press Release, 13 October 1947, ­Immigration – Displaced Persons – General, 1949, CP815/1, Department of Information, 021.134, NAA. 14 Letter from Lt. Col. GB Vaughan-Hughes to Chief, PW & DP Division (Berlin) to PW & DP Division, Lemgo BAOR, 30 May 1947, Employment of Displaced Persons (DPs) in Australia, 1947, FO 1052/417, National Archives, United ­Kingdom [hereafter, NA (UK)]. 15 Immigrants for Australia, Berlin Dispatch No. 46/47, 26 June 1947, from Australian Military Mission, Berlin to Department of Defence and Department of External Affairs, Despatches from Australian Military Mission, Berlin – (New Series) – Number 32/1947 (10 April 1947) to Number 48/1947 (30 September 1947), 1947, A816, Department of Defence, 37301/337 Attachment 17, NAA. 16 Cablegram from Minister, Department of Immigration, to Australian Military Mission Berlin, 25 September 1947, Anti-Communist Activities in Australia, Series 1: Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, MLMSS 10621 [hereafter, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes], State Library of New South Wales [hereafter, SLNSW]. 17 Peter Biskup, ‘Displacement: The Reflections of an Old New Australian’, 6, Papers of Peter Biskup, 1959-2015, MS10252, NLA; Rutland, ‘Subtle Exclusions’, 57; George Kiddle, ‘The First Party of Displaced Persons – November 1947’, Post Migration, no. 100 (August 1995): 16. 18 Kunz, Displaced Persons, 45; Louise W Holborn, The International Refugee Organisation: A Specialised Agency of the United Nations: Its History and Work, 1946–1952 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956), 395. 19 Suzanne D Rutland, Edge of the Diaspora: Two Centuries of Jewish Settlement in Australia (New York: Holmes and Meier, 2001), 407. 20 Memorandum, Department of the Interior, 11 May 1939, Admission of Jews Policy Part 3, A445, Department of Immigration, Correspondence Files, 235/5/4, NAA; Conference on Displaced Persons, 18 July 1947, with British Control Commission Officials in Berlin, Minister’s visit to Europe – Report on, 1947, A438, Department of Immigration, 1949/7/1067 [hereafter, Minister’s visit to Europe], NAA.

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21 Suzanne D Rutland, ‘Sanctuary for Whom? Jewish Victims and Nazi Perpetrators in Postwar Australian Migrant Camps’, Conference Paper, ‘Beyond Camps and Forced Labour’, Second International Multidisciplinary Conference at the Imperial War Museum, London, 11–13 January 2006 (unpublished), 28. 22 Rutland, ‘Subtle Exclusions’, 58. 23 Rutland, ‘Sanctuary for Whom?’, 19. 24 Gerard Daniel Cohen, ‘The West and the Displaced, 1945–1951: The Post-War Roots of Political Refugees’, PhD diss., New York University, 2000, 2. 25 Frank Clune, All Roads Lead to Rome: A Pilgrimage to an Eternal City, and a Look Around War-torn Europe (Sydney, NSW: Angus & Robertson, 1950), 40. 26 Helen Ferber, Letter, 21 July 1947, Letters from Paris and Geneva March 1947– November 1947, Papers of Helen Ferber, MS 9740, NLA. 27 Rutland, ‘The History of Australian Jewry’, 7. 28 AC Menzies, Review of Material relating to the Entry of Suspected War Criminals into Australia (Canberra: The Review, 1986), 66, 71. 29 Minutes of Conference held at Cologne, 17–18 December 1948, Papers of George Vincent Greenhalgh, 1903-, 1947–1956, MS 8863, NLA. 30 Menzies, Review of Material, 50. 31 ‘IRO Eligibility Manuals’, Letter from Taylor, Acting Chief Migration Officer to Head, Australian Military Mission, 4 November 1949, [Australian Military Mission Berlin] Migration – Security – General, 1949–1953, A9306, ­Australian Military Mission to Allied Control Council for Germany and Austria/Allied High Commission/Federal Republic of Germany [West Berlin], 355/1 [hereafter, AMM Berlin Security], NAA. 32 Letter from GV Greenhalgh to Acting Head, Australian Military Mission, 27 May 1950, AMM Berlin Security, NAA. 33 Carol Mather, Aftermath of War: Everyone Must Go Home (London: Brassey’s (UK), 1992), 191; Menzies, Review of Material, 68. 34 Rutland, ‘Sanctuary for Whom?’, 24–25. 35 George Kiddle interviewed by Ann-Mari Jordens, 2008, Chief Migration Officers’ Oral History Project, Oral TRC 5930/5, NLA. 36 Dr George Klim interviewed by Barry York, 1996, Polish Australians Oral History Project, TRC 3498, NLA. 37 Menzies, Review of Material, 104. 38 George Kiddle interviewed by Ann-Mari Jordens, 2008, Chief Migration Officers’ Oral History Project, Oral TRC 5930/5, NLA. 39 Letter from Chief DP Officer, Land DPs Department, to Mr Lederer, Chief of the Australian Mission, Münster, 30 March 1950, Untaru, Constantin (Dr), 1987–1992, A9525, Attorney General’s Department, Special Investigations Unit [hereafter, SIU], PU42, NAA. 40 Menzies, Review of Material, 37. 41 Report written by Keith Turbayne, 27 February 1964, ‘European Migration to Australia 1949–1951’, Security, A6122, ASIO, 2921 [hereafter, Report written by Keith Turbayne, 27 February 1964, ‘European Migration to Australia ­1949–1951’], NAA. 42 ‘Selection Teams’ Administrative Instruction No. 29 – Confidential: Security Checks’, Australian Military Mission, Berlin – Proposed Change in Status and Consequent Reorganisation for Immigration Purposes, 1949-1950, A438, Department of Immigration, 1949/7/706 [hereafter, AMM Berlin Proposed], NAA; Menzies, Review of Material, 80, 90; see also AMM Berlin Security, NAA; Report written by Keith Turbayne 27 February 1964, ‘European Migrants to ­Australia 1949–1951’. 43 ‘Selection Teams’ Administrative Instruction No. 29 – Confidential: Security Checks, AMM Berlin Proposed, NAA.

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44 David Horner, The Spy Catchers: The Official History of ASIO 1949–1963 (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen and Unwin, 2014), 250, 252–3. 45 Report written by Keith Turbayne, 27 February 1964, ‘European Migration to Australia 1949-1951’, NAA. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid.; Turbayne & Miller, ‘Appreciation of the Situation’, Berlin, 24 May 1949, AMM Berlin Security, NAA. 48 Letter from Miller to Chief Migration Officer, 13 October 1949, ‘Routine Checking of Lists of Names of DPs for Immigration to Australia’, AMM Berlin Security, NAA; see also Article in Washington Post – 10 August 1949 – Australia puts United States Displaced Persons Mission to Shame, 1949–1950, A434, Department of Immigration, 1949/3/8754, NAA. 49 Letter from Gray, Refugee and DP Branch, Office of the Deputy UK High Commissioner to FJR Penhalluriack, Australian Military Mission Berlin, 1 December 1949; and letter from Greenhalgh to Acting Head, Australian Military Mission Berlin, 19 January 1950, AMM Berlin Security, NAA. 50 Report written by Keith Turbayne, 27 February 1964, ‘European Migration to Australia 1949–1951’; Letter from Turbayne to CMO, 12 July 1951, AMM ­Berlin Security, NAA. 51 Turbayne & Miller, ‘Appreciation of the Situation’, Berlin, 24 May 1949, AMM Berlin Security, NAA. 52 Letter from Turbayne to Galleghan, 17 June 1949, [Australian Military Mission Berlin] Security Officer’s Reports, 1949–1952, A9306, Australian Military Mission to Allied Control Council for Germany and Austria/Allied High Commission/Federal Republic of Germany [West Berlin], 355/3 [hereafter, AMM Berlin Reports], NAA. 53 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 254. 54 Turbayne & Miller, ‘Appreciation of the Situation’, Berlin, 24 May 1949, AMM Berlin Security, NAA. 55 Letter from Greenhalgh to Acting Head, Australian Military Mission Berlin, 14 December 1951, AMM Berlin Security, NAA. 56 Turbayne & Miller, ‘Appreciation of the Situation’, Berlin, 24 May 1949, AMM Berlin Security, NAA. 57 Report written by Keith Turbayne, 27 February 1964, ‘European Migration to Australia 1949-1951’; Notes for Brigadier FG Galleghan from MR Booker, undated, Sir Frederick Gallagher Galleghan Papers, 1917–1972, MLMSS 2474, SLNSW; Letter from KG Turbayne to FG Galleghan, 17 June 1949, AMM Berlin Reports, NAA. 58 Letter from KG Turbayne to Chief Migration Officer, 12 July 1951, AMM Berlin Security, NAA. 59 Report written by Keith Turbayne, 27 February 1964, ‘European Migration to Australia 1949–1951’, NAA. 60 Turbayne & Miller, ‘Appreciation of the Situation’, Berlin, 24 May 1949, AMM Berlin Security, NAA. 61 Letter from Deschamps to CMO, 7 September 1950, AMM Berlin Security, NAA; see Menzies, Review of Material. 62 Appendix, Letter from Turbayne to CMO, 12 July 1951, AMM Berlin Security, NAA. 63 Ruth Balint, ‘A Jewish Refugee Racket’, in Smuggled: An Illegal History of Journeys to Australia, eds. Ruth Balint and Julie Kalman (Sydney: NewSouth, 2021); see Jayne Persian, ‘The Dirty Vat: European Migration to Australia from Shanghai, 1946–1947’, Australian Historical Studies 50, no. 1 (2019), 21–40. 64 Letter from Turbayne to Galleghan, 17 June 1949, AMM Berlin Reports, NAA; see Balint, ‘A Jewish Refugee Racket’.

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65 See Emil Busina and Others, 1949–1950, A9306, Australian Military Mission to Allied Control Council for Germany and Austria/Allied High Commission/ Federal Republic of Germany [West Berlin], 354/88, NAA. 66 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 264–66. 67 Ibid., 265, 267. 68 Memorandum from CCF Spry, Director-General of Security, to THE Heyes, Secretary, Department of Immigration, 28 October 1952, ‘Soviet Nationals in Australia’, Assimilation of Soviet Nationals in Australia, 1952, A6980, Department of Immigration, S250323, NAA; Horner, The Spy Catchers, 266. 69 Sheila Fitzpatrick, White Russians, Red Peril: A Cold War History of Migration to Australia (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2021), 42. 70 As a later example of the percentages involved, in 1970, the Minister for Immigration, Phillip Lynch, reported that 155 communists and 14 right-wing extremists had had their applications for naturalisation refused during the preceding 4.5 years. Horner, The Spy Catchers, 271; Jean I Martin, Community and Identity: Refugee Groups in Adelaide, Immigrants in Australia 1, The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1972), 20 ftn. 18. 71 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 278, 277. 72 See Jayne Persian, ‘Far Right Security Risks? Deportations and Extradition Requests of Displaced Persons, 1947–1952’, in When Migrants Fail to Stay, eds. Joy Damousi, Sheila Fitzpatrick and Ruth Balint (London: Bloomsbury, 2023). 73 Letter from GV Greenhalgh to Acting Head, Australian Military Mission, 27  May 1950, AMM Berlin, NAA; Letter from Captain HW Miller to Chief Migration Officer, 20 March 1950, AMM Berlin Reports, NAA. 74 Deportations from Australia – Deportations of Displaced Persons, 1951–1973, A1838, Department of External Affairs, 1477/2/45 Part 1 [hereafter, Deportations from Australia], NAA; Minister’s visit to Europe, NAA. 75 The Liberal Party–Country Party Coalition was in power nationally from 1949 to 1972. 76 Deportation of Displaced Persons – Policy, 1949–1955, A6980, Department of Immigration, S250240 [hereafter, Deportation of Displaced Persons], NAA. 77 Sir Thomas Hetherington and William Chalmers, War Crimes: Report of the War Crimes Inquiry (Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1989), 31. 78 See Jayne Persian, ‘Displaced Persons and the Politics of International Categor­ isation(s)’, Australian Journal of Politics & History, 58:4 (2012), 481–496. 79 See Deportation of Displaced Persons, NAA. 80 ‘Deportation “Is Death Sentence”’, The Advertiser (Adelaide), 27 November 1953. 81 Note, 24 October 1951, Deportation of Displaced Persons, NAA; Glenn Nicholls, Deported!: A History of Forced Departures from Australia (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2007), 100. 82 Deportation of Displaced Persons, NAA. 83 ‘Only 40 DPs Deported’, The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 15 June 1950. 84 Klaus Neumann, Refuge Australia: Australia’s Humanitarian Record (UNSW Press, 2004), 101. 85 ‘Thousand Migrants have Broken Work Contracts’, Sydney Morning Herald, 7 March 1951. 86 Telegram from Dempsey, Canberra to Chief Migration Officer, Melbourne, 4 July 1950, Deportation of Displaced Persons, NAA. 87 See Deportation of Displaced Persons, NAA; Displaced Persons – Notification of Deportations, 1949–1951, MP1722/1, Department of Labour and National Service, 49/23/13355 [hereafter, Notification of Deportations], NAA.

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88 ‘Seven years’ gaol for Hungarian’, Herald (Melbourne), 6 July 1951; ‘Ran amok with gun – and how!’, Sun (Melbourne), 6 July 1951. 89 Letter from Heyes to WK Leadbeatter, Acting Chief of the IRO Mission for Australia and New Zealand, 29 August 1951, Lojos S, 1987–1992, A9525, SIU, PU52 Part 1, NAA. 90 See Lojos S, 1987–1992, A9525, SIU, PU52 Part 1, NAA. 91 ‘Resettlement in Australia 1947–1950’, Organisation internationale pour les réfugiés, AJ/43, Bureau de Blanchard, directeur du Planning, 401, Archives ­ ­Nationales de France [hereafter, AN]. 92 Letter from ML Hacking to Dr V Gross, Protection (Coordination and Liaison Division), 14 July 1949, Organisation internationale pour les réfugiés, AJ/43, Bureau de Michaël Macking, chef de la Section historique, 457, AN. 93 ‘False Reports of Nazis Here’, Sunday Telegraph, 1 April 1951; Sheila ­Fitzpatrick, White Russians, Red Peril, 233; Ruth Balint, Destination Elsewhere: Displaced Persons and Their Quest to Leave Postwar Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021), 122–126. 94 Menzies, Review of Material, 85. 95 See Deportation of Displaced Persons, NAA. 96 Memorandum from Liaison Officer, Department of Immigration to Headquarters Section Sydney and Officer in Charge Qld, 13 April 1951, P, Hans Verner  – N ­ ationality: Estonian – arrived Melbourne on Derna 5 November 1948, 1 ­ 948–1956, Department of Immigration, Queensland, BP25/1, P H V ­ESTONIAN [hereafter, Hans Verner], NAA. 97 Letter from KG Turbayne, Australian Military Mission (Migration Office) to Senior Security Officer, Australian Embassy, The Hague, 8 January 1952, Hans Verner, NAA. 98 Note, July 1952, Hans Verner, NAA. 99 Memorandum from Regional Director, Qld to Headquarters, ASIO, 8 June 1955, Hans Verner, NAA. 100 ‘Canberra Court: Behaviour in Bus’, The Canberra Times, 16 August 1950. 101 ‘Erich K (alias Janis Balodis)’, Letter from THE Heyes, Secretary, Department of Immigration to WK Leadbeatter, Acting Chief of the UNIRO in Australia and New Zealand, June 1951, Notification of Deportations, NAA. 102 Letters from THE Heyes, Secretary, Department of Immigration to WK Leadbeatter, Acting Chief of the UNIRO in Australia and New Zealand, 5 and 13 July 1951, Notification of Deportations, NAA. 103 See, for an example of how common this practice was: PAVLOV, Nikolai ­[Russian born 1923]; wife Anna – born 1927 [nee Kiseleva]; children George [born 1952], Vladimir [born 1956] and Alexe [born 1957], 1952–1974, Department of Immigration, Queensland, J25, 1968/18023, NAA; and PAVLOV, Nikolaj [aka ALFERTSCHIK, Nicolai], 1951–1959, Department of Immigration, Victoria, MT874/1, V1956/32393, NAA. These are two different Nikolai Pavlovs who are requesting changes of name and/or particulars. 104 Branislav I (1950), Milorad Lukic (1951), Mihailo Rajkovic (1951), Mica M (1954), Bogoliub R (1955), Jozef K (1958), Anton B (1958), Erwin Viks (1961). 105 Note from Yugoslav Government, 24 March 1950, Branislav I, 1950–1957, A6126, ASIO, 1126 [hereafter, Branislav], NAA. 106 Elliott, Report, 19 July 1954, and ASIO Minute Paper, August 1955, Branislav, NAA. 107 This informant was later denounced as a communist by members of a ‘Jugo Slav Fascist group’, which resulted in his application for an academic appointment at the University of Tasmania being rejected; see M, Kajica, 1949–1964, A6119, ASIO, 1854, NAA; and M, Kajica Dr, 1948–1954, A434, Department of the Interior, 1950/3/24604, NAA.

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108 Memorandum for the Secretary, External Affairs, 19 April 1950, War Crimes – I Branislav Brana – War Criminal, 1950, A1838, Department of External Affairs, 1550/18 [hereafter War Crimes – Branislav], NAA. 109 Memorandum from Secretary, Department of External Affairs, to Director, ‘D’ Branch, Attorney-General’s Department, 12 May 1950, Branislav, NAA. 110 Statement by Mr Christopher Mayhew, Foreign Affairs, House of Commons, 26 July 1948, War Crimes – Branislav, NAA. 111 Memorandum from Acting External Affairs Officer to Secretary, Department of External Affairs, 15 May 1950 & Letter to the Yugoslav Government, 24 August 1950, War Crimes – Branislav, NAA. 112 Elliott, Report, 19 July 1954, Branislav, NAA. 113 See War Crimes – Branislav, NAA. 114 Letter from Consulate General of the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, Sydney to Minister, Department of External Affairs, 8 May 1951, War Crimes – Alleged Yugoslav War Criminals – Lukic and Rajkovic, 1951–1952, Department of External Affairs, A1838, 1550/20 [hereafter, Lukic and Rajkovic], NAA. 115 Letter from Director-General of Security, Attorney-General’s Department to Secretary, Department of External Affairs, 11 July 1951, Lukic and Rajkovic, NAA. 116 Aarons, Sanctuary!, 142. 117 ‘Yugoslav “War Criminals” in Australia’, from Legal & Consular to Secretary, Department of External Affairs, 4 June 1951, Lukic and Rajkovic, NAA. 118 The Viks Case, 53, 11(12), Joint Baltic Committee Records, 1952–2000, MLMSS 7629, SLNSW. 119 Aarons, Sanctuary!, 193. 120 House of Representatives Hansard, 22 March 1961.

3 ANTI-FASCIST PROTESTS

The fact that some displaced persons arriving in Australia had served under the Germans became public knowledge quickly. One of the first reports appeared in December 1947, when an IRO official visiting New Zealand alleged that Baltic Displaced Persons (DPs) were ‘not ultra-vocal in whitewashing their Nazi affiliations.’1 That same month, Estonian Ernst Kesar was interviewed at Bonegilla by the local newspaper. He stated that ‘most of the young men’ from his country had joined the SS (Schutzstaffel), but that this was under threat of ‘death’; since the end of the war, they ‘were unable to go back to their own country because of what the Russians would do to them.’2 The problematic politics inherent within the DP cohort was thus well known, both to the Australian government and the wider public, from the very beginning of the scheme. Unfavourable press reports continued throughout the life of the scheme. The Canberra Times reported that Dutch and English migrants had made allegations about their fellow passengers on the Volendam, saying that ‘a fight started between the Balts and men by whom they had been mistreated in German concentration camps.’ ‘SS Guards’ on the ship could be ‘recognised by a small tattoo mark on the inside of the upper arm,’ and at least one had been overheard admitting ‘that he was a Colonel in the SS Guard.’3 These reports led to the President of the Broken Hill Sub-Branch of the RSL sending a letter to the government strongly protesting the ‘admission of Fascists into Australia as migrants’; typically, the Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell, replied that these ‘allegations were without foundation.’4 In March 1949 an IRO official on the Mozaffari, docked at Fremantle, was forced to admit that some of the Baltic migrants on board had fought with the German Army during the war, though he was quick to assure The Sunday DOI: 10.4324/9780429276880-5

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Times’ journalist that ‘it was on the Russian front and not against the British or Americans.’5 Four months later, similar allegations regarding Hungarian and Yugoslav DPs on board the General Harry Taylor were dismissed by Calwell as ‘gross and wicked falsehoods.’ Calwell had been the Minister for Information during the Second World War, and he felt no compunction in subsequently banning reporters from the Sun and Daily Telegraph from the vicinity of all IRO ship arrivals.6 Calwell didn’t ban all press, though, and in September 1949 the West Australian reported that they had interviewed General Endre Littay, who had passed through Fremantle on the way to the eastern states, and described L ­ ittay as serving for ‘38 years in the Hungarian Army and for two years was Vice-Minister for Defence.’7 In January 1950, an article was published in the Age alleging from information received that a Russian Orthodox priest and former interpreter at Albert Park Army Barracks, Igor Susemihl, had been an emissary of the Nazis in the prisoner-of-war camps.8 A year later, the News (Adelaide) reported that officials at Bonegilla had seized ‘a statue of Hitler’ – with a ‘flexible arm which can be raised to give a Nazi salute’ – as well as ‘leather cat o’ nine tails, German Army bayonets, knives, decorations and swastikas.’9 As the DPs settled into Australia, the press also reported on various court appearances. In September 1949, Latvian Janis Betags was arrested for disorderly conduct, and the Sydney press reported that Betags had declared: ‘What you Australians need is a little bit of Nazism in this country.’10 A year later, an Adelaide News report of a new police interpreter at Port Adelaide included the information that he had ‘served with the Latvian Legion in Hungary in its fight against the Reds.’11 A (Roman Catholic) Polish DP, Adam Poznanski, wrote an angry letter to the editor: ‘As far as I know, in World War Two there was a Latvian Legion fighting side by side with the German Army, in German uniforms, and armed with German weapons. The Latvian Legion became very well known in Poland due to its treatment of Jews and of Poles.’ He asked pointedly: 1 Was there another Latvian Legion than the one to which I have referred? 2 What kind of uniform did Mr Gelsen wear as a member of the Latvian Legion? 3 Under whose command did the Latvian Legion fought? The News editor replied: ‘We understand that there was only one Latvian Legion in World War II and that it was engaged on the German side. Mr Gelsen suggests that reader Pozmanski (sic) should get in touch with him personally if he wants full answers to the three questions.’12 A month later a Polish migrant, Bikolsy Brejanske, was convicted at St  Kilda Court on charges of offensive behaviour, insulting words and assaulting the police. According to the Melbourne Truth, Brejanske ‘used filthy

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anti-Semitic expressions.’13 Another Pole, Stanislaw Rzedzieki, had earlier been convicted at Footscray Court for assault five times within a month. According to the Police Prosecutor, Rzedzieki ‘had boasted that he was a Storm Trooper’ and in the opinion of the Police Prosecutor, ‘was a menace to the community.’14 The President of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), Ben Green, requested the Department of Immigration to investigate this matter and was assured that the case was under consideration and that if Rzedzieki was ‘not a suitable person to be allowed to remain in this country,’ he would be deported.15 In Sydney, the Daily Telegraph reported on the divorce proceedings of Arsenius and Hanna Slussaruk: Hanna alleged that her estranged husband, a Ukrainian, ‘had collaborated with the German administration’ in bringing about the ‘death of many Jewish people and was proud of it. He was anti-Semitic.’ The reporter claimed that Arsenius had ‘vented his fury’ on his wife ‘in the Aryan fashion with a leather belt.’16 Accounts in the mainstream press were plentiful, but it was the leftist press that went on the attack. As noted by Jon Piccini and Evan Smith, the Communist Party of Australia carried out a ‘prolonged and bitter campaign’ against their natural enemy, the so-called ‘Balt fascist.’17 The Workers’ Star, the official newspaper of the West Australian State Committee of the Australian Communist Party, alleged that ‘Balts’ who had arrived on the Wooster Victory bore SS tattoos and ‘openly boasted of the number of anti-fascists they had killed.’18 Further allegations encompassed migrant camps and work sites in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales. In Whyalla, for example, Balts had boasted of ‘Jews and Russians they killed while fighting for Hitler. Some spoke approvingly of gas chambers and other Hitler mass extermination methods.’ The article, titled ‘Balts Arrive in Semi-Secrecy, Bear SS Brands,’ argued that these types of migrants should be immediately deported but that, instead, authorities were ‘obsessed’ with hounding communists and trade unionists.19 Two months later, the Maritime Worker, the official newspaper of the Waterside Workers Federation of Australia, published a ditty which began: There’s a home for cast-off Fascists. Far out across the foam. Where anti-coloured-race laws Will make us feel at home. We’re really truly Aryan, Of purest Nordic stock: The S.S. gladly made Us members of their flock.20 Perhaps of more concern to the government, officials themselves were submitting adverse reports. In 1948, the Commonwealth Investigation

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Service (CIS), headed by Eric Longfield Lloyd, reported that several migrants had arrived bearing scars indicating that an SS tattoo had been removed, and advised that prospective migrants with these scars should be rejected. Calwell dismissed this report as a ‘farrago of nonsense’ and Secretary of the Department of Immigration, Tasman Heyes, warned Longfield Lloyd that ‘hasty conclusions as to the security risk of certain classes of migrants … do much harm not only to worthy people, but to our immigration plans.’21 It was noted by officials that DPs in migrant camps would only socialise ‘among their own friends who are almost always within their own racial’ groups.22 Although mainly focused on preventing communist activity, the CIS was also aware of reports of antisemitism in the migrant camps. Latvian Felix M, for example, was brought to the CIS’s attention for his outspoken antisemitism at Bathurst Camp while working as a clerk in the customs inspection section. The CIS subsequently received information that he had been a captain in the German Navy, and it kept tabs on him, at least to the name and address of his first Australian employer, General Motors Holden in Pagewood, NSW.23 In December 1949, Mr J Gray, who had taught English at Bonegilla and various work camps for two years, alleged that a DP he knew as ‘Popoff’ had been a junior minister in the ‘Yugoslav quisling government’ and had been spreading ‘fascist propaganda.’24 ‘Popoff’ was quickly identified as Serbian Branislav I, a block supervisor at Bonegilla, and interviewed; he claimed ‘to have worked in collaboration with London during the war’ and also to have worked with both the British and American intelligence services in the postwar period. Ivanovic insisted that instead of heading the Australian branch of ‘Dušan Silni,’ a post-war Serbian nationalist organisation with headquarters in the United States, he had actually advised fellow Serbians against setting up any form of ‘minority movement.’25 Branislav was, of course, the target of the first extradition request received by the Australian government from Yugoslavia in March 1950.26 A officer sent to check on Branislav after this extradition request reported that he was regarded as being a good Supervisor, and that there was ‘no indication that he is a security risk.’ Although the camp authorities were ‘aware that he takes part in the usual intrigues between Nationals in the Camp and other workshops in the neighbourhood,’ their considered judgement was that ‘these intrigues appear to be natural to all those coming from the countries of south-eastern Europe.’ The officer did, however, note that ‘his activities subsequent to his release from contract or selection for employment away from Bonegilla may well warrant attention from this Service, in view of his alleged past.’27 Australian Jewry, meanwhile, was well aware of the problem. Reports from Jewish migrant arrivals to community leaders had begun with the ship’s voyage out. Jewish DPs reported that the majority of Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian DPs had served in the German armed forces.28 There were also

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reports of antisemitism: on the Anna Salen, a Ukrainian kitchen hand had refused to serve a second helping to one man, saying: ‘You are a dirty Jew. I will not give you any more.’29 On another ship, the American captain reportedly temporarily imprisoned ‘a few of the DPs involved in the worst anti-Semitic incidents.’30 ECAJ followed Australian press accounts closely. When Henrik Gelsen, a police interpreter of Adelaide, identified himself publicly as a member of the Latvian Legion, Walter Lippmann of ECAJ wrote to the South Australian Jewish Board of Deputies that ‘we do not expect him to be so stupid as to associate himself in the near future with any anti-Jewish activities.’ However, the knowledge of his presence in Australia ‘would be a powerful weapon for use in our representations to the Minister of Immigration.’31 Upon the arrival of Hungarian General Endre Littay, it was noted that ‘since the Hungarian government collaborated closely with the Nazi regime in Germany, it would appear that Littay’s associations should disqualify him as an Australian migrant.’32 In either late 1947 or early 1948, the Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism (JCCF&A) became involved as the official public relations representative of the Victorian Jewish Board of Deputies (VJBD) and of ECAJ in Victoria.33 A member, Sam Goldbloom, went to Bonegilla to investigate these reports for themselves – under the guise of a plumber’s mate, he snuck into the shower rooms and took photographs of left armpit scarring due to the removal of SS tattoos.34 He also obtained admissions from two Lithuanians that they had served in the German military forces, one as a member of the SS; another Lithuanian said that he had been a ‘member of a Lithuanian division raised by a Lithuanian general for the purpose of fighting the Russian army.’ Goldbloom thought it ‘quite clear’ that the ‘majority’ held a ‘marked sympathy’ for Nazi Germany, with some ‘infected with the Nazi doctrines which they seem to be eager to spread in their newly adopted country.’ An Albury local apparently told him that typical statements made by the Balts included: ‘Communists and Jews are a danger to every country’ and ‘this country should be careful of Communists and Jews.’35 In responding to Goldbloom’s report, ECAJ noted that these DPs had been selected by the Australian government because of their anti-communism and that ‘Fascism, though a problem, is not regarded by the government with the seriousness we think it deserves.’ ECAJ was particularly concerned that fascist DPs may make contact with ‘native Fascists’ and the ‘large contingent of German prisoners-of-war’ still in the country.36 Subsequently, then, ECAJ began to conduct and publicise investigations implicating, from personal knowledge, displaced persons who were either recognised as former Nazis or members of pro-Nazi organisations in Eastern Europe, or who had voiced Nazi sentiments while in Australia.

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In July 1949, the Australian Jewish News published an article titled ‘Fascist Atmosphere in New DP Camp: Named Jew-Baiters Boast of Nazi Past.’ The report focused on the new camp at Rooty Hill, in western Sydney. Jewish DPs at Rooty Hill had been subject to discrimination on the ship to Australia, according to Anna Salen: ‘Some fellow passengers refused to share cabins with Jews, others pinned hostile slogans on their backs.’37 Now at Rooty Hill, ‘the position deteriorated much further still’ due to abuse from ‘ex-Nazis from Hungary,’ some of whom outed themselves as boasted that they were former members of the Arrow Cross who had themselves killed Jews. The report named the principal offenders as a Mr AK, who had been sent to Queensland, and a Dr  Andrew László: ‘an energetic and vituperative “intellectual” Jew-hater who is busily spreading vicious Nazi propaganda.’ In response to these allegations, the manager of the hostel asked a Hungarian and a Latvian to make enquiries. Perhaps not surprisingly, they returned with no information to report. However, AK and László were ‘regarded as quite a decent type of migrant’; László was also, apparently, threatening to sue the Australian Jewish News for defamation.38 Statutory declarations were then collected from complainants at the camp, indicting Hungarians: Charles K, who admitted that he had participated in the round-up and murder of 3,000 ‘Yugoslavs and Jews’ in January 1949; Ferenc S, who admitted that he was a wanted man; and Leslie A, who admitted that he had been ‘a member of the SS’ and that ‘his identification marks had been removed by an American Army doctor’ in Austria, ‘the doctor performing a skin graft under his left armpit.’ Dr Andrew László had threatened a declarant – ‘a bloody Jew’ – in order to make him move rooms at the camp.39 Latvians Leonid A, Jans B and Pole Wasil P were all accused of belonging to the SS, and a letter from a Jewish survivor in Riga alleged that Aleksandrs D had been employed by the Gestapo as an informer and was ‘responsible for the deaths of many Jewish and Latvian citizens.’40 A young Czech was also described as the Rooty Hill camp leader ‘of the Czech SS’ and ‘violently anti-semitic.’41 One Jewish man at Rooty Hill complained that ‘there is so much antiSemitism and Nazi talk that at times it seems like being under Hitler again.’ He reported that he did not recognise any of the men in the camp as SS ‘but I recognise the SS mentality in many of them.’ Another wrote: ‘I went through the terrible war, and I find myself again, in a camp with fascists. They still seek our extermination. Their animal instincts follow me like black clouds.’ He characterised the non-Jewish DPs as ‘Jew-haters with a black past’ and asked plaintively: ‘How am I better than my father and brother and the whole family who were murdered through Hitler, and who knows through which of my present camp inmates they were killed.’ He noted that he was ‘surprised at the Australians who are indifferent to the fascist elements among

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the New Arrivals who are already interested as to how many Jews there are in Sydney.’42 At Albert Park camp in Melbourne, it was alleged that Stanislaw M admitted that he had ‘worked for the German Army in Poland’ and declared that ‘Hitler killed too few Jews but that in Australia, the Jews would be finally exterminated; and that if at any time an organisation for the extermination of Jews should be formed, he would be the first to join such an organisation.’43 At Wacol migrant camp, in Brisbane, reports reached Judah Waten of the JCCF&A that a number of ‘anti-Nazis’ were ‘being mistreated.’44 Antisemitic slogans were scrawled on the walls at Fairbairn and Eastlake migrant camps in New South Wales; one Jewish man was told by a Lithuanian: ‘Don’t forget how it was in Europe; it will be the same here.’45 At Bradfield migrant camp, one displaced woman was known as ‘Frau Hitler’ because she made disparaging remarks about Jews.46 A prominent coloratura soprano alleged that a Nazi sympathiser, Bulgarian baritone Harold T, who had sung before Hitler, was at Bathurst migrant camp.47 This camp was also subject to allegations that Balts physically attacked Jews, and that Ukrainians forcibly removed Jewish skull camps and threatened: ‘If you want to eat with us, you can’t wear a skull cap.’48 At Walgrove camp, Hungarian Charles K (who had also been the subject of allegations at Rooty Hill) was reported to have ‘advocated the extermination of all Jews.’49 Also at Walgrove, a statutory declaration alleged that Joseph F had admitted that he was a member of the Arrow Cross, that he had worked at the Arrow Cross headquarters in Budapest, and that he had ‘participated in the extermination of Jews, including children in Budapest.’50 ECAJ noted that those Jews exterminated at the time were rounded up, taken to the Danube, shot and thrown into the river.51 One Jewish DP, Ernest, described the horror of living in a remote work camp with ‘Nazis, Ukrainians and anti-Semites’ who tried to incite the locals against him: ‘They tell everybody that they are here because of the Jews, because the Jews are the Communist leaders everywhere in Europe, and that their relatives were annihilated by the Jewish Bolsheviks.’ A drunk Ukrainian had threatened that he would ‘kill all the Jews, because the Jews are Communists.’ Writing to a friend, Ernest confided: ‘How I suffer, I cry when nobody looks.’52 Another Jewish DP reported being assaulted by a group led by a Ukrainian, Wasil H, who had publicly asserted that ‘Jews should be excluded from the commandment “Thou shalt not kill.”’ A further assault against a Jewish DP was carried out by a former member of the Hungarian Army at the Commonwealth Clothing Factory in Melbourne. This Hungarian was also said to be ‘active in spreading anti-Semitic propaganda there.’53 By mid-1950, the Australian Jewish Herald could speak of ‘continuous reports’ coming in of ‘physical attacks on Jewish migrants,’ particularly in isolated camps in rural areas. At a camp near Portland, Victoria, for example,

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the sole Jewish DP ‘was set up at night by three migrants and brutally beaten up before being literally rescued by some Australian workers.’ The article noted the ‘disturbing’ ‘frankness with which many DPs boast of their former membership of Nazi battalions’ and the ‘bold confidence with which they issue their poisonous anti-Semitic threats.’ As far as the Herald was concerned, the apathy of the authorities meant that the ‘Fascists’ had been given a ‘carte blanche’ for their ‘hate campaign.’54 Outspoken antisemitism was also occurring outside the migrant and work camps. One statutory declaration alleged that a man had been a customer in the declarant’s barber shop. Making conversation, he disclosed that he had ‘been a member of the SS troops,’ that the Germans had only killed ‘Jews,’ and that he would be glad if the Germans ‘had killed all the Jews.’ The barber ‘resented this statement bitterly as I had lost my wife and relatives, who had been killed by the Germans.’ He kicked the man out of his shop and called the police; a policeman took down the man’s name, which turned out to be false, and the declarant then reported the matter to ECAJ.55 Also in a shop, a Jewish saleswoman, Lily, was accosted by a new migrant who, after a misunderstanding around the sale of cigarettes, said: ‘Yes, you Hungarian Jews certainly understand how to go after good business in this country. Whilst were fighting the war, you Jews made good money here in safety.’ Lily responded: ‘You forget that we were fighting on opposite sides and as far as I am concerned, I tried to do my share, I was working in a munitions factory.’ The man replied: ‘Those of you Jews who escaped death in Europe and came out here will be exterminated here, and that is what we came here for.’ Another Jewish woman, Helen, said that a Lithuanian, Vija S, had shown her photographs of her father, also a DP in Australia, in military uniform. When asked which uniform he was wearing, Vija said that ‘there is no trouble, nobody would recognise him because he has grown a beard.’ The declarant thought this was suspicious: ‘when a DP grows a beard to cover his identity he must have a reason for doing so.’56 All of this evidence – including signed and dated statutory declarations – was sent directly to the Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell, and then to his successor, Harold Holt.57 Portions were also sent to various newspapers, including the Melbourne tabloid Truth.58 Described by an ASIO officer as a ‘fanatic,’ a Jewish woman in Sydney with contacts in Hungary was quickly identified as the source of ‘a great deal of publicity regarding the entering into this country of former Nazis and Fascists.’ In December 1949 an article in the Sunday Herald, for example, titled ‘Migrants Tell Startling Stories to Police of Ex-Nazis Here: Admissions Alleged in Statements,’ sources alleged that Dr Andrew László was to have been imprisoned in Hungary for three years ‘for his Nazi activities’ but that ‘because of post-war chaos, he escaped.’ ‘The ubiquitous Dr Laszlo’ was again the subject of allegations in March 1950, when the Sunday Sun and

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the Sydney Jewish News carried identical information concerning the ‘alleged anti-semitic and anti-British activities’ of a group of Hungarian ex-officers in Sydney, with membership barred to Jews.59 The Sunday Herald noted that a ‘Hungarian Jewish woman who has helped to bring evidence to the police has received anonymous telephone warnings to abandon her anti-Nazi activities.’ Indeed, ‘she had two such telephone calls in one day.’60 It was probably also this woman who alleged a few months later that her home had been ‘broken into in an effort to obtain’ written evidence she held of ‘Nazism in Australia.’61 This woman – ‘a Jewess’ with a ‘violent hatred for any person even remotely suspected of being connected with Nazism’ – was interviewed by the CIS in September 1950. She admitted that she was the originator of much of the publicised material to do with Hungarians, as well as an active campaigner against the government’s decision to bring Germans into Australia as immigrants. She advised that she would cooperate with the authorities and provided information on both right-wing Hungarians and those who had worked under the ‘Communist Government in Hungary.’ The interviewer noted that ‘she is an extremely clever woman who could be of great value to this organisation if she is handled with care.’62 From September 1950, ECAJ and various allies, including Labour Ministers (now in opposition), held public meetings and published pamphlets in an ultimately unsuccessful protest against a proposed mass German migration scheme – 100,000 German migrants over four years. The Jewish community here used the perceived failure of the DP scheme as an example of the dangers of allowing German migration.63 As historian Philip Mendes points out, this was the first time that Australian Jewry had initiated such a large-scale public protest of national policy.64 At one public meeting in Melbourne in November 1950 – attracting up to 5,000 attendees – a speaker, Mr Robertson, claimed that he had spoken to an Australian Selection Officer in Germany in 1947, who told him that the Australians were told ‘to ask the intending migrant what he had done to help the Nazi Authorities and if he said nothing – no further screening was undertaken.’65 At this same meeting, Sam Goldbloom asserted that ‘many of the displaced persons who had come to Australia held fascist or Nazi outlook and would, in future years, be quite capable of following an Australian Hitler, if one were to arise’. Indeed, ‘a great many bad people in Europe today were of the opinion that as long as they obtained a set of false papers and learned to speak a few words of broken English, they would be allowed to come to Australia.’66 The Age reported that ‘speakers said many migrants already in Australian migration camps bore arm scars due to efforts to remove the Gestapo SS mark.’67 As the editor of the Argus noted, ‘complaints, substantiated or otherwise, of the presence in Australia of former Nazis, SS men, and Hitlerite Germans generally have been brushed off with rather airy assurances which left us little wiser than before.’68

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The JCCF&A produced a pamphlet titled ‘German and Volksdeutsche Migration Will Flood Australia with Nazis.’ It featured an anonymous letter that had been previously published in the Argus: A New Australian myself, I sometimes wonder what principles, if any, govern the selection of my fellow migrant. Last Monday, to my pained surprise, I heard a band of New Australians lustily howling the Nazi Horst-Wessel song, followed by Deutschland Uber Alles. These singers did not seem to be German nationals but, as far as I could make out from their accents, Poles or Czechs, or Volksdeutsche from those parts. I sometimes wonder how many of the sadly famous, or infamous, Waffen SS and allied types are now gathering in this country to perpetuate that evil spirit from which Australia has been free until now.69 In the same pamphlet, an account from a recent arrival, a displaced person interviewed by the Sydney Morning Herald was re-published: ‘The only document I produced was the monthly tram pass from Prague. The security officer asked me a few questions – my father’s name, where I lived, my age and why I left Prague. I tell him, but he did not check – how can he?’ Another recent arrival told the reporter: ‘Few of these people have identity papers, and those they have are often worthless.’70 Worryingly, a Polish displaced person, interviewed by the Advertiser (Adelaide), had pointed to the future impact on domestic politics, as in South Africa, where recent German settlers had given the pro-Nazi Malan party a majority.71 At another meeting, in Perth in January 1951 – attracting 1,800 a­ ttendees – Rabbi Rubin-Zacks noted that it was ‘common knowledge that for the price of the equivalent of a few pounds, any person in Europe today may purchase forged documents that will pass the closest scrutiny of any ‘screening’ procedures.’72 It was reported by the West Australian that ‘New Australians were prominent in the crowd in the street and several times a number of them clashed with police.’73 At another meeting, held in Sydney a few weeks later – and attended by 6,000 people – a fight broke out after dissenting attendees had ‘refused to stand up while the national anthem was being played’ and ‘one said: “We prefer the Germans to the British.”’ The West Australian reported that two ‘old’ Australians were fined for offensive behaviour after throwing punches ‘in the upstairs gallery.’74 In 1951, a letter writer to the Sydney Jewish News alleged that ‘fascist journals’ were being ‘freely circulated in Australia’ and that ‘reputable New Australians’ were being ‘threatened and systematically denounced by organised neo-fascist groups.’75 That same year, the Australian Jewish Herald reported that a ‘Balt’ woman, Zona K, – apparently ‘described jokingly by a Court attendant as a “typical Aryan”’– had been charged with assault. Zona had kicked her Jewish landlord, Betty R, in the groin, saying: ‘We killed

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many Jews in Germany and we will kill you too.’ Betty told the Herald that her tenants ‘have a large circle of Balts as friends and they hold wild drinking parties at home. [They] delight in calling us ‘dirty Jews’ and uttering all sorts of threats to exterminate us because we are Jews.’ Officers of the Sydney Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism said that ‘the dispute was not a “backyard tiff” but arose from an intense dislike of Jews by the Balt couple.’ The case was settled after Zona undertook to vacate the premises as soon as possible.76 The JCCF&A was also in contact with the Consulate General of the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia. When Yugoslavia requested the extradition of Serbian Milorad Lukic and Montenegrin Mihailo Rajkovic in 1951, the Consul General advised the JCCF&A that ‘there are numerous other Yugoslav collaborators of the Nazis and fascists now in Australia’ and that Yugoslavia would ‘no doubt’ ‘seek the extradition of other collaborators.’77 Publicly, the government strenuously denied all such claims: In November 1950, for example, the Minister for Immigration Harold Holt assured the Australian public that ‘in almost every case where allegations of active Nazism had been made, they had been proved false’; indeed, ‘migrants sometimes quarrelled, and one of the easiest ways to try to damage the reputation of a fellow migrant was to lay some general charge of this kind.’78 A departmental officer reported that ‘[Judah] Waten is a well-known communist and the Jewish Council is considered to be under communist domination’; this ‘may have some bearing’ on allegations against anti-communist migrants.79 In April 1951, Holt claimed that migrants (read, Jews) were falsely reporting the presence of Nazis in Australia.80 In a letter to Holt in January 1951, the President of ECAJ, Ben Green, argued that Australia’s ‘complete lack of confidence in the efficacy of screening, no matter how conscientiously attempted’ was evidenced by ‘our knowledge of the number of Nazis and Nazi collaborators who, in the guise of displaced persons, have already entered Australia through the security screen.’81 Holt responded that this was a ‘serious allegation’ and, in Green’s words, ‘challenged’ ECAJ to ‘produce some evidence.’82 In March 1951 Green furnished that list and promised another.83 The annotated list contained 40 names collated from allegations in Australia and some from overseas, provided by famed ‘Nazi hunter’ Simon Wiesenthal and others.84 Unfortunately, the new names of some of the suspects alleged to have entered Australia (provided by Wiesenthal) were unable to be located in Australia, and of course the domestic allegations relied heavily on hearsay.85 ECAJ had attempted to substantiate allegations with overseas agencies, including the Jewish Historical Documentation Centre run by Wiesenthal, the World Jewish Congress, and the Wiener Library in London, but with little success. Alfred Wiener wrote that unfortunately ECAJ’s list contained only ‘small fry,’ who would be ‘known only among a very limited number of persons.’86 At the same time

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Rabbi Louis Rubin-Zacks of Perth met with his local member Paul Hasluck, acknowledging that while ‘it was virtually impossible to provide “legal evidence” on these matters, acceptable to a court of law, “prima facie” evidence was overwhelming.’87 A week or so after receiving the list, Holt replied to Green saying that his accusations were ‘of a sketchy and hearsay nature.’ The allegation against Dr Andrew László, for example, was one of ECAJ’s strongest as he had been convicted in Hungary for his collaborationist activities but released on appeal. According to Holt, though, he had been investigated by the Australian authorities and found to be a ‘sincere Christian worker’; there was ‘no subversive sentiment’ discernible in the activities of the Hungarian Officers’ Club in Sydney and, importantly, ‘no evidence of un- or anti-Australian attitude[s].’ This reply relied upon a CIS investigation of the allegations concerning the activities of the ex-Hungarian officers in Sydney, which had led to a question in the House of Representatives in March 1950.88 The CIS reported that ‘no evidence of Hungarian group activity detrimental to Australia has come to notice’ and advised that matter was ‘complicated,’ with ‘many personal and sectional jealousies and hatreds involved,’ including a ‘mutual dislike’ between ‘Hungarians of the Nazi-type and the Jews’; the resulting accusations were not all ‘entirely true.’89 When the Director-General of the Attorney-General’s Department sent this report to the Department of Immigration, he considered that ‘in fact’ one accused – Hungarian Father István Ritli – was ‘definitely “Anti-Bolshevistic” and appears to be a sincere Christian worker.’90 Holt also informed Green that ‘the man Stanislaw Rzedzieki,’ alleged to be ‘an SS man,’ was being deported; not due to this ‘loose statement’ but ‘because of his general unsuitability and the doubt which exists regarding his successful assimilation into the Australian community.’ Further, reports of a ‘statue of Hitler’ and ‘whips’ found at migrant centres turned out to be a souvenired ‘cheap plaster figure’ and ‘cat-o-nine tails’ whips brought to Australia for use as ‘carpet beaters.’ Holt patronisingly feared that Green was ‘perhaps over-impressed with, and give undue importance to, the statements, many wholly groundless, which have been made to you’; these statements were ‘usually found to stem from national or religious rivalries’ or a ‘desire to curry favour with officialdom.’91 It is evident that allegations against individuals were investigated, but these investigations were superficial and subjective. In this respect, as with the matter of deportations, the authorities were somewhat hamstrung. ASIO did not have any set rules or procedures for dealing with Nazi allegations.92 The only thing that the security services were interested in – because this they could control, to some extent – was whether those accused of war crimes during the war were likely to be a current threat or problem in Australia. The answer was, almost always, no: that the ‘subject has not come to notice

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in Australia.’93 Individuals, then, were not comprehensively investigated. As we shall see in the next chapter, ASIO did keep a watchful, if inadequate, eye on groups. Notes 1 ‘Baltic Immigration Policy Attacked,’ Barrier Miner (Broken Hill), 31 December 1947. 2 Border Morning Mail, 9 December 1947, cited in Report to Executive on Position of Balt Immigrants, undated, attached to letter February 1948, Australia, 1940–1962, 1658/10/5/1 [hereafter, Australia], Wiener Library. 3 ‘S.S. Guards Pose as Balts on Migrant Ship’, Canberra Times, 25 January 1949. 4 Telegrams from Allan Palmer, President, Broken Hill RSL to the Prime Minister and the Minister for Immigration, 25 January 1949, Personal Papers of Prime Minister Chifley [etc.], 1948–1949, M1458, Prime Minister’s Department, 18, National Archives of Australia [hereafter, NAA]. 5 ‘Came from Behind the Iron Curtain,’, The Sunday Times, 29 March 1949. 6 Mark Aarons, Sanctuary! Nazi Fugitives in Australia (Melbourne: William Heinemann Australia, 1989), 101. 7 ‘Migrant General,’ West Australian, 10 September 1949. 8 Susemihl was exposed as a Soviet KGB agent in 2001. Age, 9 January 1950, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 22, SLNSW; Sheila Fitzpatrick, White Russians, Red Peril: A Cold War History of Migration to Australia (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2021), 244. 9 ‘Hitler statue taken from migrant,’ News (Adelaide), 17 January 1951. 10 Sunday Telegraph (Sydney), 4 September 1949, cited in List, undated but attached to letter from Ben Green, ECAJ, to Harold Holt, Minister for Immigration, 19 March 1951, Correspondence ECAJ, 3000/9/1/422 [hereafter, Correspondence ECAJ], Wiener Holocaust Library, United Kingdom [hereafter, Wiener Library]. 11 ‘New Police Interpreter,’, News (Adelaide), 17 October 1950. 12 ‘Latvian Legion’, Letters to the Editor, News (Adelaide), 2 November 1950. 13 Truth (Melbourne), 4 November 1950, cited in List, undated but attached to letter from Ben Green, ECAJ, to Harold Holt, Minister for Immigration, 19 March 1951, Correspondence ECAJ, Wiener Library. 14 List, undated but attached to letter from Ben Green, ECAJ, to Harold Holt, Minister for Immigration, 19 March 1951, Correspondence ECAJ, Wiener Library. 15 Ben Green was also a prominent Liberal Party member. Letter from AL Nutt, Acting Secretary, Department of Immigration to WM Lippmann, Honorary Secretary, ECAJ, 20 September 1950, Series 1: Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, MLMSS 10621 [hereafter, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes], Box 8, State Library of New South Wales [hereafter, SLNSW]; Philip Mendes, ‘Jews, Nazis and Communists Down Under: The Jewish Council’s Controversial Campaign Against Jewish Immigration,’ Australian Historical Studies 33, no. 119 (2002): 82. 16 ‘“I make you a cripple”, he shouted as he beat his wife,’ Daily Telegraph, 4 October 1953. 17 Jon Piccini and Evan Smith, ‘The “White Australia” Policy Must Go: The Communist Party of Australia and Immigration Restriction,’ in The Far Left in Australia Since 1945, eds. Jon Piccini, Evan Smith & Matthew Worley (Routledge Studies in Radical History and Politics, 2019), 87. 18 This problem was not unique to Australia. In Britain, the National Coal Board recommended that Waffen-SS veterans with blood-type tattoos be kept out of any job where they may have to remove their shirts. David Nasaw, The Last Million:

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Europe’s Displaced Persons from World War to Cold War (New York: Penguin Press, 2020), 346. 19 ‘Balts Arrive In Semi-Secrecy, Bear SS Brands,’ Workers Star, 24 September 1948. 20 ‘Balts To You,’ The Maritime Worker, 18 December 1948. 21 David Horner, The Spy Catchers: The Official History of ASIO 1949–1963 (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen and Unwin, 2014), 252. 22 ‘Recreation in Migrant Workers’ Hostels,’ 21 October 1949, Immigration displaced persons policy and procedures, hostels and press reports, 1948-1951, AP262/1, Department of Labour and National Service, 3000/1/8, NAA. 23 See ‘Nuo Baltijos Iki Australijos Iš Dipl. Jūru Kapitono F. Marcinkaus Prisiminimu,’ Musu Pastoge, 26 January 1955. Letter from AA Wilks, Detective Inspector, to Deputy Director, Sydney, CIS, 9 January 1950, Suggestion that displaced persons of undesirable character have been admitted in Australia, 1950–1951, SP1714/1, Commonwealth Investigation Service, New South Wales, N47738, NAA; Statement of Michael E, undated, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 8, SLNSW. 24 Letter from RC Mills, Director, Office of Education to Secretary, Department of Immigration, 8 December 1949, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 1, SLNSW. 25 ‘Neo Fascist Organisations among European Migrants,’ letter from HSD Hay, Acting Deputy Director to Commonwealth Migration Officer, Department of ­Immigration, Hobart, 13 January 1950, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 1, SLNSW. 26 See chapter 3. 27 ‘PF 3799 Branimir I,’ Memorandum from Director, Melbourne to Director-­ General, Sydney, 7 June 1950, Branislav I, 1950–1957, A6126, ASIO, 1126 [hereafter, Branislav], NAA. 28 Report to Executive on Position of Balt Immigrants, undated, attached to letter February 1948, Australia, 1940–1962, 1658/10/5/1 [hereafter, Australia], Wiener Library. 29 Statement of Michael E, undated, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 8, SLNSW. 30 Suzanne D Rutland, ‘Suspected Nazi War Criminals in Australia’, Submission to Review of Material Relating to the Entry of Suspected War Criminals into ­Australia, September 1986, in The Road to the Inquiry: Suspected War Criminals in Australia, ed. Leslie Caplan (Darlington, NSW: Australian Jewish Historical Society, 2012), 20. 31 Letter to WM Lippmann, ECAJ, to M Adelson, Honorary Secretary, SA Jewish Board of Deputies, Adelaide, 13 February 1951, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 8, SLNSW. 32 Annotated handwritten list, undated, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 8, SLNSW. 33 In July 1948 the Jewish Unity Association changed its name to the Sydney Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism. Mendes, ‘Jews, Nazis and Communists Down Under,’ 76; Suzanne D Rutland and Sophie Caplan, With One Voice: A History of the Jewish Board of Deputies (Sydney: Australian Jewish Historical Society, 1998), 52. 34 Interview with Mr Sam Goldbloom, 1977, Series 5: Mark Aarons – Interview & Translation Tapes, MLOH 626/1-60, SLNSW. 35 Report to Executive on Position of Balt Immigrants, undated, attached to letter February 1948, Australia, Wiener Library. 36 Letter from Executive and Press Officer, Executive Council of Australian Jewry, to Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism, 20 April 1948, Australia, Wiener Library.

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37 There were similar allegations with regard to a voyage of the Skaugum, naming the perpetrators as Dr Kolce T., Frank U., and Alfred M. Diane Armstrong’s fictionalised memoir, The Voyage of Their Life: The Story of the SS Derna and its Passengers (Harper Collins Publishers, 2001) contains similar allegations. Report of NP Craig, Investigation Officer to Special Investigation Section, Customs House, Sydney, 19 September 1950, Mark Aaarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 5, SLNSW. 38 ‘Alleged Fascist Atmosphere in Camps,’ Memo from R Williams, Deputy Director, to Commonwealth Migration Officer, Sydney, 13 October 1949, Commonwealth Police Force, Correspondence File: ‘Alleged Nazi War Collaborators amongst New Australians,’ 1949, SP1714/1, Commonwealth Investigation Service, New South Wales, N53384 [hereafter, ‘Alleged Nazi War Collaborators amongst New Australians,’] NAA. 39 Copies of statutory declarations, 1 September, 3 September and 3 April 1949, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 1, SLNSW. 40 List, undated but attached to letter from Ben Green, ECAJ, to Harold Holt, Minister for Immigration, 19 March 1951, Correspondence ECAJ, Wiener Library; Letter to the Secretary, Department of Immigration, 12 January 1950, D, Alexandra, A9525, SIU, PU64, NAA. 41 List, undated but attached to letter from Ben Green, ECAJ, to Harold Holt, Minister for Immigration, 19 March 1951, Correspondence ECAJ, Wiener Library. 42 Statement of Michael E, undated, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 8, SLNSW. 43 List, undated but attached to letter from Ben Green, ECAJ, to Harold Holt, Minister for Immigration, 19 March 1951, Correspondence ECAJ, Wiener Library. 44 Letter from JL Waten, JCCF&A, to S Cohen, Chairman, Victorian Jewish Board of Deputies, 27 November 1950, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 8, SLNSW. 45 Aarons, Sanctuary, 96. 46 Report of NP Craig, Investigation Officer, to Special Investigation Section, Customs House, Sydney, 19 September 1950, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 5, SLNSW. 47 ‘“King St” Tip Makes Front Page of “Sunday Sun”: Immigration Department to Enquire,’ The Sydney Jewish News, 24 March 1950. 48 Aarons, Sanctuary!, 96. 49 List, undated but attached to letter from Ben Green, ECAJ, to Harold Holt, Minister for Immigration, 19 March 1951, Correspondence ECAJ, Wiener Library. 50 Copy of statutory declaration, 3 September 1949, Mark Aarons – General ­Australian War Crimes, Box 1, SLNSW. 51 List, undated but attached to letter from Ben Green, ECAJ, to Harold Holt, Minister for Immigration, 19 March 1951, Correspondence ECAJ, Wiener Library. 52 Translated letter from Ernest to Trebic, Bourke, 2 September 1949, Mark A ­ arons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 8, SLNSW. 53 List, undated but attached to letter from Ben Green, ECAJ, to Harold Holt, Minister for Immigration, 19 March 1951, Correspondence ECAJ, Wiener Library. 54 ‘DPs Preach Anti-Semitism, Assault Jews’, Australian Jewish Herald, 18 August 1950. 55 Copy of statutory declaration, 4 July 1950, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 1, SLNSW. 56 Copies of statutory declarations, undated and 1949, Mark Aarons – General ­Australian War Crimes, Box 1, SLNSW. 57 See Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 9, SLNSW.

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58 Memorandum from the Attorney-General Deputy Director to the Director, Commonwealth Investigation Service, Canberra, 23 December 1949, ‘Alleged Nazi War Collaborators amongst New Australians’, NAA. 59 Extract from Sydney Jewish News, 10 March 1950; Sun (Sydney), 19 March 1951, cited in List, undated but attached to letter from Ben Green, ECAJ, to Harold Holt, Minister for Immigration, 19 March 1951, Correspondence ECAJ, Wiener Library. 60 ‘Migrants Tell Startling Stories to Police of Ex-Nazis Here: Admissions Alleged in Statements’, Sunday Herald, 18 December 1949. 61 ‘“King St” Tip Makes Front Page of “Sunday Sun”: Immigration Department to Enquire’, The Sydney Jewish News, 24 March 1950. 62 ‘Suspected Nazis and Former Nazi Collaborators in Sydney,’ Report, 20 September 1950, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 5, SLNSW. 63 These included Arthur Calwell, Dr Herbert Evatt and Leslie Haylen. Rutland and Caplan, With One Voice, 55. 64 Mendes, ‘Jews, Nazis and Communists Down Under,’ 73. 65 ‘Victorian Council Against Nazi Immigration’, Report by H. Beilby to the Chief Migration Officer, Melbourne, 9 November 1950, German Migration – Protests regarding – Part 1 – General File, 1950–1951, A434, Department of Immigration, 1950/3/45637 [hereafter, German Migration – Protests regarding], NAA. 66 ‘German Migration – Jewish Meeting’, Report by H. Beilby, Officer-in-Charge, Restricted Section, to the Commonwealth Migration Officer, Melbourne, 21 November 1950, German Migration – Protests regarding, NAA. 67 ‘Opposition to Germans as Migrants’, Age, 22 November 1950. 68 ‘German Migration,’ Editorial, Argus, 23 November 1950. 69 German Migration – Protests regarding, NAA. 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid. 72 ‘Mass German Migration: Record Public Meeting Registers Protest,’ The Westralian Judean (Perth), 1 February 1951. 73 ‘Rowdy Meeting on German Migration’, West Australian, 27 February 1951. 74 ‘“Sectional” Opposition to German Migrants,’ West Australian, 28 February 1951. 75 Suzanne D Rutland, ‘Sanctuary for Whom? Jewish Victims and Nazi Perpetrators in Postwar Australian Migrant Camps,’ Conference Paper, ‘Beyond Camps and Forced Labour,’ Second International Multidisciplinary Conference at the Imperial War Museum, London, 11–13 January 2006 (unpublished), 26. 76 ‘Jew-Hatred Case Before Sydney Court: Balt Woman Charged With Assault’, ­Australian Jewish Herald, 20 July 1951; ‘Jewess Drops Assault Case Against Balt Migrant’, Sydney Jewish News, 20 July 1951. 77 Letter from V Cvrlje, Consul General, Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, Sydney to Dr WS Matsdorf, JCCF&A, 12 September 1951, Mark Aarons – ­General Australian War Crimes, Box 8, SLNSW. 78 ‘Few Nazis Get In As Immigrants’, The Sun, 23 November 1950; ‘Nazis Here As Migrants, Say Jews,’ The Herald, 22 November 1950. 79 Letter to the Secretary, Department of Immigration, 12 January 1950, D, Alexandra, A9525, SIU, PU64, NAA. 80 ‘False Reports of Nazis Here’, Sunday Telegraph, 1 April 1951. 81 Letter from Green to Holt, 5 January 1951, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 8, SLNSW. 82 Letter from Holt to Green, 18 January 1951; and letter from WM Lippmann, ECAJ, to K Baum, Information Department, World Jewish Congress, London, 7 February 1951, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 8, SLNSW.

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83 Letter from Ben Green, ECAJ, to Harold Holt, Minister for Immigration, 19 March 1951, Correspondence ECAJ, Wiener Library. 84 ‘Jewry Sends Dossiers of Nazis to Holt’, Daily News (Sydney), 1 March 1951; ‘Interview with Mr Paul Hasluck, MHR’, Letter from L. Rubin-Zacks, Hebrew Congregation to Ben Green, President, Executive Council of Australian Jewry, 28 March 1951, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 9, SLNSW. 85 List, undated but attached to letter from Ben Green, ECAJ, to Harold Holt, Minister for Immigration, 19 March 1951, Correspondence ECAJ, Wiener Library. 86 Letter from Alfred Wiener, Wiener Library, to W. M. Lippmann, ECAJ, 16/4/51, Correspondence ECAJ, Wiener Library. 87 ‘Interview with Mr Paul Hasluck, MHR,’ Letter from L. Rubin-Zacks, Perth Hebrew Congregation to Ben Green, President, Executive Council of Australian Jewry, 28 March 1951, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 9, SLNSW. 88 Letter from Harold Holt, Minister for Immigration to Ben Green, President, Executive Council of Jewry, 28 March 1951, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 9, SLNSW. 89 ‘Hungarian Activities in Sydney’, 18 December 1950, Suspected Nazi Party Activities Amongst Migrants in Australia, 1949–1954, A6122, ASIO, 163, NAA. 90 ‘Hungarian Activities in Sydney’, Letter from Director-General to Secretary, Department of Immigration, 10 January 1951, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 5, SLNSW. 91 Letter from Harold Holt, Minister for Immigration to Ben Green, President, Executive Council of Jewry, 28 March 1951, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 9, SLNSW. 92 AC Menzies, Review of Material relating to the Entry of Suspected War Criminals into Australia (Canberra: The Review, 1986), 117. 93 See, for example, ASIO Assessment Form, Branislav, NAA.

4 THE ‘WHOLE EXILES’ SET-UP IN AUSTRALIA1

As in post-war Europe, displaced persons who resettled in Australia drew lines on ethnic nationalist grounds at the first opportunity, and so we see a continuation of right-wing nationalist organisations and veterans’ associations in Australia. Local branches of the umbrella organisations of the AntiBolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) and the Captive Nations Council (CNC) were also established, and these created links with Australian right-wing individuals and parties. After broadly outlining this general inter-­organisational activity, this chapter will focus on two case studies: Hungarian and Croatian fascists and the ties they established with the Australian National Socialist Party (ANSP). As well as continuing the many right-wing organisations, right-wing Displaced Persons (DPs) also moved quickly to gain control of moderate nationalist bodies, and many of these individuals went on to lead umbrella organisations. Iron Guardist Constantin Untaru, for example, became President of the Association of Romanians in Australia in 1954 and engineered a split resulting in supporters of the previous President, Nicholas Forescu, leaving the Association.2 These supporters of Forescu described Untaru as ‘a fascist, who was educated in Nazi-Germany, under the guidance of Dr Goebbels.’3 In contrast, the Director-General of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) saw Untaru as he presented himself: a ‘leading light in anti-communist Rumanian organisations in Australia.’4 Similarly, László Megay, of the Hungarian Arrow Cross, wrested control of the Hungarian Society of New South Wales (NSW) from moderate members in the early 1950s and was elected President of the Federal Council of Hungarian Associations in Australia in 1953.5

DOI: 10.4324/9780429276880-6

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Ljenko Urbančič, war-time journalist and co-editor of the Slovensko Domobranstvo (Slovene Home Guard, 1944–1945), also led a ‘small faction’ to split from the Slovene Association, forming the Slovene Revolution Committee, with the ambitious aim to ‘overthrow the Tito government.’6 A year later, with Vladimir Menart, who had been a national committee member of the collaborationist Rupnik government, he established the Yugoslav Freedom Fighters Movement.7 Urbančič also subsequently established the Agency for Free Slovenia, with a mission to ‘counter Communist-controlled organisations such as the Slovenian Organisation.’8 United Council of Migrants from Communist-Dominated Europe

The United Council of Migrants from Communist-Dominated Europe (UCEM) was the earliest attempt to create a ‘blanket’ organisation for DPs in Australia. Established in Estonian House in Sydney in 1953, it was a moderate anti-Soviet organisation representing Bulgarians, Byelorussians, Czechs, Estonians, Hungarians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Poles and ­ Ukrainians.9 Its founding president was George De Barcza (Barcza De Nagyalasony), a former officer of the Austro-Hungary and Hungarian Diplomatic Service and Hungarian Minister to the Court of St James between 1938 and 1941. Founding Vice-Presidents included ‘Poland’s last envoy to China, Count Poninski.’10 This moderate respectability allowed right-wing individuals and national groups an entrée into Australian centre-right politics. Australian elites were invited to join UCEM’s Advisory Committee, and these included the Liberal Party Ministers of Parliament Bill Wentworth and Douglas Darby, and Eileen Furley, the chair of the NSW Liberal Party Migrant Advisory Council (est. 1956).11 This early work in identifying and recruiting key influential sympathisers was pivotal. Both Wentworth and Darby remained vocal supporters of anti-communist migrants, with Darby even writing and performing poems mourning the national struggles of the Croatians, Hungarians and Ukrainians. One poem, recited at the Hungarian Freedom Fighters’ Commemoration in Sydney in 1962, celebrated Magyar victories over ‘the Turkish flood tide’ over 1,000 years earlier and included the (somewhat execrable) verse: In the West there is a whisper ‘It is stupid to remain Hungarian out here.’ Reject it.12 UCEM also established links with domestic organisations including the New Settlers League of NSW and the Committee for Cultural Freedom.13 It was the NSW Liberal Party – the major Australian conservative party,

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which was in power nationally from 1949 to 1972 – and its Migrant Advisory Council, though, that was to become an important new home for many DPs, including those on the far right, and which provided continuing access to potential collaborations with Liberal Party politicians in anti-communist endeavours.14 László Megay, for example, became a member of the Liberal Party (Mosman branch); in 1958, the Liberal Party of NSW mailed an open letter from Megay to every eligible Hungarian-born voter urging a vote for the Liberal Party. His death a year later, at the age of 57, was marked by an obituary in the Australian Liberal, which noted that he was ‘bitterly and energetically opposed to Communism.’15 Fabian Lovoković was alleged to have been a former bodyguard of Croatian Ustasha founder Anton Pavelić. He was a member of the Liberal Party and a founding member of the NSW Liberal Party Migrant Advisory Council and the subsequent NSW Liberal Party Ethnic Council.16 Lovoković was also a member of the NSW delegation of the Good Neighbour Council, which attended the 1959 and 1961 Citizenship Conventions in Australia.17 Indeed, the NSW Liberal Party lauded him as ‘an outstanding example of a publicspirited and ambitious New Australian.’18 Lovoković later boasted of his good relations with security services, saying that he and his compatriots had ‘reported hundreds of communists in the past couple of years.’19 Similarly, Lyenko Urbančič became a leading member of the Australian Action Co-ordinating Centre, known as the ‘50 Club.’ The patron of the ‘50 Club’ was noted fascist Sir Raphael Cilento, and membership incorporated members of the Liberal Party and the Democratic Labor Party (DLP), as well as representatives of many rightist organisations, including CNC and Eric Butler’s far-right and antisemitic Australian League of Rights.20 The ‘50 Club’ was also described, by an ASIO agent, as an ‘anti-Semitic and extreme right-wing’ association; its magazine The New Conservative: A Journal for Balanced Opinion (1968–1969) was regarded as a successor to the ­Australian International News Review and included articles by Eric Butler.21 As a member of the ‘50 Club,’ Urbančič closely associated with Arthur Smith, leader of the ANSP (1962–1968).22 He later became President of the newly formed Liberal Ethnic Council of NSW (LEC, 1977-), which guaranteed him a seat on the state executive. Third Division: The Voice of the Liberal Ethnic Council NSW, advertised right-wing émigré newspapers including that of the Croatian Ustasha.23 Urbančič was also elected President of the Kings Cross branch of the Liberal Party and went on to form an important right-wing faction of the NSW Liberal Party: ‘the Uglies.’24 In fact, by 1966, one critic characterised the ‘ultra-right’ in Sydney in 1966 as made up of: ‘DLP [Democratic Labor Party, a stridently anti-communist party that had split from the Australian Labor Party in 1955], Nazis, Defend Australia League, Friends of Freedom, Captive Nations Association, anti-communist migrant groups generally, and Young Liberals.’25 In a Cold

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War atmosphere of vehement anti-communism and in the context of increasing domestic fascist activity, these groups co-mingled and pursued joint endeavours.26 The Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations

An early attempt to establish a local branch of the ABN – the ABN Friends Society in Australia – was later described by ASIO as ‘stillborn,’ with an ‘absolute lack of activity among the members.’27 ASIO considered the ‘only tangible demonstration’ of their activity a series of protests against Czech Lutheran leader, Dr Josef Hromádka, who visited Australia in 1954. These protests had been partly organised by Vladimír Ležák Borin, a prominent Czech journalist who had been interned in Britain between 1940 and 1942 after being accused of collaboration by the Czech National Committee in London. They were also supported by UCEM and the International Council of Christian Churches.28 The ABN in Australia was soon to ramp up its visibility when in 1957 the President of the ABN (1946–1986) Iaroslav Stets’ko – who had been the head of the provisional independent government established by Bandera in 1941 and one of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalist’s main ideologues  – ­arrived to establish the Australian Central Delegacy of ABN.29 By this time, the United States was beginning to withdraw its funding support and the ABN was looking to shore up its support from non-American sources.30 Stets’ko was feted by Liberal Senator John Gorton, whom he had previously met at a meeting of the Asian People’s Anti-Communist League (APACL, founded in 1954).31 Stets’ko and Gorton both spoke at an ABN rally in Melbourne, and Gorton then hosted a dinner in his honour at Parliament House in Canberra.32 This ramping up of visibility was not all positive. Stephen Dattner of the Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism – and formerly a ­British commander of the 310 Field Security Service (Denazification) – wrote to Gorton and then to The Australian Jewish News, advising that Stets’ko had been the Prime Minister of a quisling government in Ukraine in 1941, with the following functions: a To crush the partisan movement, b to organise the shipment of Ukrainian labourers for the German factories did not go unnoticed and c the destruction of the Jewish population of Ukraine. Dattner noted that ‘the Jewish population of the Ukraine was virtually annihilated’ and asked: ‘Would anyone in their righteous mind consider the right of Hitler or Goering or Himmler, were they still alive, to be received by leaders of the community simply because they were the supreme anti-communists?’33

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Gorton’s public replies charged Dattner with ‘McCarthy-like irresponsibility’ in ‘untruly raising dissension between Ukrainians and Jews in this country’ by ‘unjustly smearing the activities of an anti-communist leader,’ thus ­‘doing the Communists’ work for them.’34 Using similar language, the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations indignantly protested against a ­‘McCarthy-style Nazi witch hunt at the ABC’ after an ABC program had accused Stets’ko of being a ‘Nazi war criminal.’35 However, Eileen Furley was so concerned by the problematic politics on show at a Sydney ABN rally at which Stets’ko spoke that she advised the Department of Immigration that ‘such gatherings were intended to provide the springboard from which an all-out attack against Russia would be sought.’ She warned the Department of the ‘staggering aggressiveness’ shown by some ‘New Australians’ in the wake of Stets’ko’s tour.36 By 1964, the ABN in Australia claimed around 1,800 members.37 As well as providing reports on Australian activities to the international journal ABN Correspondence, they established a domestic journal, the News Digest-International which was ‘robustly anti-Semitic;’ it included articles by Eric Butler, who had also spoken at the Sydney ABN rally.38 Eric Butler and his infamous associate, PR Stephenson – both ‘transnational fascists’ were, in fact, very active in collaborating with right-wing emigres, including joint publishing endeavours with Vladimir Lezák Borin, who would go on to share an office with the editor of Homeland, the publication of the neo-Nazi Australian Nationalist Workers Party (ANWP, 1959–1962).39 Another associate, Henri Fischer, published the right-wing Australian International News Review (1965–1967), described by prominent Catholic anti-communist BA Santamaria as ‘racialist and anti-Semitic.’40 It carried advertisements for ­émigré right-wing newspapers including Spremnost (Croat Monthly), Sloga (Serbian Weekly), Ausztráliai Magyarság (Hungarian Monthly) and ABN’s News Digest International.41 Offering the ABN’s assistance to the Minister for External Affairs, ­Richard Casey, in 1957, Megay advised that ABN members had ‘more than plenty of first-hand experience with Communism and its ever-changing methods.’42 ABN leadership included Constantin Untaru, László Megay, Fabijan Lovoković and Mikhas Zuy, a former member of the Belorussian quisling government.43 Its membership was a veritable cornucopia of right-wing migrant groups, including the Hungarian Liberation Movement, the Independent Hungarian Freedom Fighters, the Croatian Association and the Daugavas Vanagi (Latvian Relief Society, a veterans’ organisation).44 Some of these groups were also attempting individual infiltrations into Australian organisations. Arnolds Bagun-Bērzinš – of the 26th Latvian Police Battalion, who was later accused of taking ‘part in many acts of terror’ – in his capacity as Information Officer of Daugavas Vanagi launched ‘Operation Bluebird’ in the early 1960s. This involved a round of lectures presented all over Australia,

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including in Returned and Services League of Australia (RSL) Clubs, by Elga Rodze-Kīsele.45 Baguns-Bērzinš also worked together with the RSL, distributing anti-communist literature for the RSL in return for the distribution of Daugavas Vanagi literature to RSL members. Another push, ‘Operation East,’ showed propaganda films to members of the RSL and of the DLP.46 During the mid-1960s, Baguns-Bērzinš gathered right-wing emigres from the ABN and others to ‘discussion evenings’ at which Elton Wilson of the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade was the regular keynote speaker.47 As far as ASIO was concerned, it was sufficient for its agents to maintain a ‘watching brief’ over the ‘extreme right-wing’ ABN and similar organisations – including the Ukrainian Delegation of ABN in Australia and New Zealand, which changed name in 1965 to the Ukrainian Anti-Bolshevist League in Australia and New Zealand and in 1969 to the United Anti-Communist League for Australia, NZ and Oceania: ‘Headquarters [were to] be advised should any indication be received that it or any association organisations are engaging in activity of an extreme right-wing nature.’48 ASIO was, though, primarily concerned with the threat that Soviet agents could penetrate the ABN.49 Latvian Gutars Ritenbergs, for example, was being used by Jānis Plaitkais of the Soviet Embassy to inform on the ABN; Ritenbergs was, however, acting as a double agent, reporting his cultivation of Plaitkais to both ASIO and to one of the leaders of Daugavas Vanagi, Arvīds Krīpens, in Sydney.50 Captive Nations Week

Captive Nations Week had been established in the United States in 1959 by a joint resolution of the Senate and House of Representatives. This commemorative activity had been proposed by American-born Professor Lev Dobriansky, of Ukrainian origin. In Australia, an ABN motion calling for a Captive Nations Week was passed by the NSW Liberal Party Migration Advisory Council.51 UCEM and the Joint Baltic Committee of Sydney (established in 1952), both chaired by Estonian Lia Looveer, met with a ‘group of Australians who had started to show interest in opposing communism’ and ‘from that group arose the Captive Nations [Council], which organised a mass forum open to everyone in August 1964.’52 The CNC NSW – membership of which closely conformed with that of the ABN – then established a Captive Nations Week Committee to organise annual events during the last week in October.53 Looveer was to become Secretary of this Committee, holding the position for two decades.54 Supporter Reginald Bolton, a NSW Liberal Party executive member, became the founding President (1965–1968). After Bolton’s death, ­Douglas Darby served as President for the next 17 years. Throughout the next decade or so, prominent Australian members of the CNC of NSW included the Returned Services League of Australia and the Australian Housewives

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Association, while patrons included politicians from the Liberal Party and the DLP.55 The CNC soon established branches in other states and affiliated with the ABN, APACL and the World Anti-Communist League.56 Senior figures, including governing Liberal Party ministers, spoke at events, bestowing unofficial legitimacy to proceedings. At the annual event in Adelaide in 1966, for example, speakers included not only the Federal Minister for Health but also the US Consul in South Australia and the President of the Good Neighbour Council in South Australia (who happened to be a former Australian Ambassador to Italy).57 However, official recognition for Captive Nations Week never eventuated.58 ASIO was aware that the leadership of both the ABN and the CNC had ‘been captured by known war criminal types,’ whose intention was now to ‘penetrate National Migrant Organisations to bring them into orbit.’59 ­Douglas Darby’s wife, Esme, representing the Australian Housewives Association, had occasion – obviously based on previous experience – to admonish Sydney members ‘not to have any “nasty slogans”’ in the upcoming Captive Nations Week march.60 In both 1965 and 1966, Dr Frank Knopfelmacher – a Czech Jew and prominent anti-communist political commentator – declined speaking invitations to CNC events in Melbourne because of the number of people involved who had highly dubious pasts. Others who steered clear of CNC events were BA Santamaria and Harold Holt (Prime Minister, 1966–1967).61 Case Study: Hungarian Fascists

As we have seen, ‘undoubtedly ultra-right-wing’ Hungarian organisations were the first to come to public attention in Australia and they remain among the most transparent of the right-wing DP groupings in Australia. While Jewish groups noted that Latvians, Croatians and Slovaks were all distributing antisemitic material, the Hungarians were identified as ‘hot-beds of anti-Semitic Fascist propaganda.’62 The editor of the moderate HungarianAustralian weekly Magyar Élet (Hungarian Life) agreed: besides ‘one or two’ exceptions, Hungarian organisations were full of ‘right wing extremists.’ One organisation, the Thursday Society, found it so difficult to keep Nazis out that it pronounced itself ‘unwilling to assume the role of War Crimes Judges’ and dissolved itself. Another organisation, the Hungarian Community Centre of Freedom Fighters, split, when those who did not want ‘to reestablish the times of 1944 [Arrow Cross]’ left, forming a new organisation, the Independent Hungarian Freedom Fighters.63 Local branches of the Hungarist Movement (Hungarista Mosgalom, more formally described as the Hungarist Movement World Association of Anti-Communist Hungarians, established in 1946 as the direct successor of the wartime Arrow Cross Hungarist Movement) were founded in Sydney,

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Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide.64 The movement’s ‘official paper,’ Út és Cél (Task and Goal), was described by intelligence officers as ‘completely National Socialistic in its contents.’ It was printed locally and raised funds by selling stamps depicting, among others, Szálasi and Adolf Hitler.65 Australian members also distributed the monthly Hidverok, printed in Bavaria with the purpose of reuniting right-wing migrants.66 Regular meetings included commemorating Szálasi’s birthday on 17 March and the anniversary of his appointment as national leader on 15 October. As Hungarian priests ‘unfortunately’ mostly refused to participate, the Melbourne group used German or Ukrainian priests.67 High-profile members in Australia included General Endre Littay, who had been Deputy War Minister from 1943; Lieutenant-General Gyula Vargyassy, who had also acted as Deputy War Minister under the Szálasi regime; Major-General Ferenc Szász, who was a close friend and advisor to Szálasi as well as being the Prefect of Kolozs and implicated in genocide; Béla Szentesi, a member of the Hungarian Parliament under Szálasi; and Count Jenö von Rejtho, a former instructor at the Hungarian Military Academy.68 Ferenc (Frank) Adorján, another ex-parliamentarian during the Szálasi period, founded a branch of the Hungarian Liberation Movement, originally created in a German displaced persons camp; this organisation later joined the ABN.69 Dr Andrew László, who had been convicted in Hungary of his activities as a member of the Rongyos Gárda militia but released on appeal in 1950, founded the Australian branch of the Hungarian Ex-Officers’ Association: no Jews allowed.70 Father István Ritli, who had served with the Hungarian Army in Germany, edited Tárogató, which was first published from Greta Migrant Camp in NSW and described by ASIO as a ‘pro-Nazi Hungarian newspaper.’71 Ritli then led the St Stephen’s Society in Sydney, which included another Arrow Cross priest, one who had attained the highest ecclesiastical position in Hungary in 1944–1945: Dr Stephen Ladomery (formerly, Ladomerszki), who had worn the Arrow Cross on his ecclesiastical gown and ‘carried a revolver in the belt of his habit.’72 The St Stephen’s Society established the Hungarian Printing and Publishing Co., which published the extreme right-wing publications ­Becsulettel (With Honour), established in Sydney in 1955, and its successor, the Sorsunk (Our Fate), from 1958.73 Readers of these publications were encouraged to subscribe to Eric Butler’s journal The New Times, described as the best English-language publication in Australia.74 Ritli also led the Cardinal Joseph Mindszenty Society, which barred Jews from becoming members.75 He was a close associate of Andrew Laszlo, who acted as his interpreter, and also employed a bodyguard, a Mr Galambos, who was apparently ex-French Foreign Legion and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment in post-war Hungary.76 Former Arrow Cross member and historian Victor Padányi was described by a compatriot – who was writing to recommend that the Australian government support Padányi’s work – as the author of ‘books and articles’ that

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were ‘famous throughout the world.’ In Australia he edited the right-wing newspaper A Híd (The Bridge) in 1953 and 1954; it was revived in 1963. Padányi was involved in the Liberal Party but ‘proved to be far too right wing for them.’77 He was then, briefly, President of the Hungarian branch of the New Australian Liberal and Country Movement, where he was ‘a constant source of embarrassment;’ when Padányi moved to Tasmania, the Liberal Party in Victoria warned their Tasmanian branch to ‘make every endeavour to keep him out of the Liberal Party in Tasmania.’ ASIO judged that Padányi would ‘always be a source of trouble and discontent’ among the Hungarian community, and so he ‘could prove to be a dangerous man.’78 In 1977 he published a pamphlet entitled Néhány szó a zsidó katasztrófáról (Some Words on the Jewish Catastrophe), which argued for a Holocaust of ‘only’ 300,000 Jews; the ‘Russian Bolsheviks’ had killed a further 1.2 million Jews, and so were the real war criminals. Moreover, Padányi argued that ‘the majority of the victims’ were not victims of genocide but simply ‘lost their lives in military operations, like strategic bombings, street fights and partisan warfare.’ This pamphlet was re-published in 1991 and, according to historian Tamás Stark, Padányi continues to be one of the most frequently cited champions of ­Holocaust denial in Hungary.79 Some Hungarist Movement members, including Padányi, were also involved in establishing Hungarian Turanism, an ethno-nationalist origins movement, in Australia. In 1963, for example, Padányi published a work Dentrumagyaria, arguing for a Caucasian origin for Hungarians. His grave at Melbourne General Cemetery is overseen by a large statue of a (mythical) Turanian soldier.80 Lajos Polgár – who would be investigated for war crimes by the Australian government in 2006 – became President of the Turanian Historical and Cultural Association.81 Melbourne’s Turanian Historical Society’s periodical Orient Observer was edited by Arrow Cross member Dr Barna Kósa and contributors included Deszö Saághy, who was later investigated for war crimes.82 JenŐ Csicsáky, President of the St Stephen’s Society in the late 1950s, wrote the book A Magyar ‘Mu,’ describing a sunken continent which was ‘the place of origin of humanity and especially Hungarians.’83 In a similar book Sons of Nimrod: The Origins of Hungarians, Anthony (Antal) Endrey QC wrote with his usual ‘fascist flair’ to argue that Hungarians originated in ancient Mesopotamia, where they ruled over Semitic peoples.84 The Nesz brothers – Ferenc (Francis), Károly (Karl/Charles) and Béla – were all active members of the Hungarist Movement. Ferenc had been a parliamentarian under Szálasi (and was reported to have returned to Hungary in 1956).85 Károly had been a member of one of the first antisemitic racial preservationist groups in pre-war Hungary, the Association of Awakening Hungarians (Ébredö Magyarok Egyesülete).86 He acquired the nickname ‘Bombing-Nesz’ through his connections with various bombing attacks in Budapest and became a ‘doyen of local Hungarian Nazis.’ In 1944 he was appointed a District Leader under the Szálasi government and cooperated

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closely with Adolf Eichmann in the Jewish deportations.87 He was the leader of the Hungarists in Queensland and President of the Hungarian Association, Brisbane. He was then apparently ‘ordered’ to resettle in Melbourne in order to organise an ‘extreme right-wing movement’ in Victoria. In ­Melbourne, Károly and his wife, Helene, shared a house with Victor Padányi and his family, from which house A Híd was published in late 1953.88 Brother Béla was ‘reliably’ connected by ASIO with the infamous swastika graffiti epidemic in Melbourne in early 1960 (timed to coincide with the Peace Summer, and coordinated with similar events in Germany), although it advised Prime Minister Menzies that no evidence had been found that the more than 100 ‘incidents were organised by any group – right wing or left wing.’89 Also involved were István Bokros-Botond, secretary in Melbourne of the Magyar Harcosok Bajtársi Közössége (Alliance of Hungarian Veterans, established in 1947), and Ferenc Antal, publisher of A Híd.90 László Megay, working in city administration since 1931 had, while mayor of Ungvár, cooperated fully with the Germans in the liquidation of the ghetto of 14,000 Jews. Indeed, he was later accused of beating and robbing inmates, raping girls and women and ‘boasting about his achievements and contribution towards the “Final Solution of the Jewish Problem.” He later fled Hungary with ‘30 cases’ of stolen valuables laden on his truck when he fled West.’ He was arrested at Regensburg – a Ukrainian DP camp – by the Americans in September 1946 but was subsequently released. In 1948 the  Hungarians requested his extradition, which was refused. That same year, he was removed from his position as Camp Leader at Passau, another Ukrainian DP camp. This was not due to his wartime activities, but because of allegations of fraud, falsification and drunkenness.91 Throughout the 1950s, while living in Sydney and then in Melbourne, Megay contributed to Becsulettel and its successor, Sorsunk.92 There was a falling out when the editor of Sorsunk, Bela Kardoss, threatened to ‘print certain stories about Megay’s history in Hungary’ if Megay did not resign as President of the Council for All Hungarian Committees in NSW; Megay was apparently in possession of information concerning Kardoss’s ‘shady business deals.’93 Megay first came to the attention of ASIO in 1954 after receiving complaints from the Jewish community, stemming from articles on his wartime background in the Hungarian-American social democratic newspaper Az Ember in 1946 and in the Jewish-Hungarian magazine Hatikva, published in Argentina in 1950.94 However, after reviewing Megay’s record, in Europe and Australia, ASIO reported that ‘the worst said of him is that he is a drunkard and immoral, both of which are outside our scope.’ He was ‘violently anti-communist,’ but ASIO judged that there was ‘no reason to say that Megay is an unfit person for naturalisation.’95 Megay did not back down from his right-wing activities. At a moderate commemorative event in Sydney in October 1955, both Megay and Ladomery

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made speeches praising Szálasi, emphasising that Hungarians would ‘remain faithful to their German friends and if necessary fight again with them.’96 Moderates within the Hungarian community complained to ASIO that ‘the continuance of the Nazi activities by Megay without interference from the government is a sign of weakness,’ that Megay’s naturalisation was ‘causing migrants to hold the Australian government authority to ridicule,’ and suggesting that ‘Megay be asked to discontinue his activities.’ ASIO ignored these complaints and received – and ignored – intelligence a few months later that a ‘secret session’ had been held to form another Hungarian right-wing group, to be led by Megay.97 In 1956, Dezsö Rapaics, a former Hungarian General (and a member of the Liberal Party), wrote a piece for the American Hungarian monthly ­Kroniká strongly condemning a pamphlet authorised by Megay and issued by the Federal Council of Hungarian Associations, glorifying the ‘ideology of 1944 and 1945.’98 He separately described Megay as of ‘the extreme right,’ later noting that Megay’s influence on some Hungarians … was not desirable’ and that ‘Megay was always repugnant for me.’99 Hatikva published another article on Megay in 1956, and then so did the Australian Jewish News, alluding to articles published in New York in Az Ember that alleged that Megay was now in hiding in Australia ‘with the money he took from his victims,’ the Jews of Ungvár.100 A Letter to the Editor published in the Melbourne Age argued: ‘It is a shame that such a person can become a public figure in our democratic country, instead of getting his well-deserved punishment.’101 When Ernest Platz from ECAJ wrote to Gluck Andor of Hatikva in order to obtain further information, Andor replied, with a telling understatement: Megay is just an ordinary war criminal. The fact is so well known in Hungary and outside that it is unnecessary to make further enquiries. He was a representative of the Szalasi Nazi regime and he has carried out all possible inhuman crimes against the Jews. In 1945, he fled with other war criminals. It is not necessary to search for fresh material. Naturally, he is still as anti-Semitic as ever.102 Before Megay met with the Acting Minister for External Affairs, Sir Philip McBride, in 1956 to discuss aid to Hungarian refugees after the Uprising, ASIO noted that he was ‘alleged to have been associated with the pro-Nazi movement in Hungary during the war.’103 A year later, when Labor MP ­Eddie Ward raised allegations of Megay’s war record in parliament – on behalf of ECAJ – the Department of Immigration Minister Athol Townley gave the usual anodyne reply that there was ‘no evidence.’104 However, even as far back as November 1950, ASIO had reported that there were definitely ‘Hungarians of the Nazi-type’ in Australia and a month

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later had received detailed information from George De Barcza describing ‘certain organisation of Hungarian migrants in Australia have been formed as, or have become, Nazi agencies.’105 Indeed, by 1953 ASIO was aware of the names of the leaders of Hungarist Movement branches in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide and reported a list of nine Hungarian associations in Australia that had been ‘infiltrated’ by the extreme right-wing: the Hungarian Cultural Association, the Hungarian Sportsclub, the Ferencváros Football Club, the Hungarian Ex-Servicemen’s Association, ABN, the Hungarian Cultural Home, the Young Men’s Club, the Mindszenty Association and the St Stephen’s Society. As well as using cultural associations as ‘hiding places,’ ASIO had received information that this small minority of ‘violent’ and ‘primitive’ Hungarian Nazis were planning to form a ‘Hungarist Legion’ military body.106 ASIO was able to report that a ‘fair number of Arrow Cross members have migrated to Australia since the war,’ that ‘membership of the Arrow Cross organisation is Commonwealth wide’ and that ‘members have formed small underground groups to renew and strengthen the ties of the old movement.’107 In 1955 a letter, almost certainly written by De Barcza to an ASIO informant, described the Hungarist Movement as ‘purely a national-socialist organisation just like the German one was under Mr Hitler’ and Australian adherents, while few in number, were ‘lunatics.’108 Another moderate Hungarian migrant described the Hungarists in Australia as ‘rather ridiculous:’ ‘They still greet each other the old Nazi fashion-way and when they meet a newcomer they enquire: Are you a Catholic or a Roman Jew (converted Jew) … my stomach turns and I feel like vomiting … hearing these remarks.’109 Perhaps ASIO also thought they were ‘ridiculous’ and anachronistic. ASIO acknowledged that the movement was ‘in fact, a Nazi Party, and that the leaders, who are in [Australia], were the Hungarian Nazis who were so active in Hungary during the war.’110 The various Hungarian organisations also ‘presented a distinctly Nazi-type exterior.’ However, no action was taken by the government because there was no evidence of ‘Hungarian group activity detrimental to Australia,’ and their anti-communism was seen as a positive. Indeed, there is some evidence that ASIO used contacts in the Hungarist Movement to inform on suspected communist agents.111 In any case, the Hungarists were confident that Australian authorities had assured them that ‘as long as we keep within the laws of their country nobody will be unjustly done harm by their authorities.’112 Case Study: Ustasha in Australia

One group who apparently had no intention of keeping within ‘the laws of their country’ were far-right Croatians. While there was no movement in Australia clearly labelled ‘Ustasha,’ the various Croatian extreme separatist groups in

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Australia had clear Ustasha lineages; the movement was ‘in their hearts.’113 Mate Nikola Tokić – who has delivered the most comprehensive appraisal of the various groups – notes that ‘unquestionably, war-time era members of the Ustasha played an active and even central role in Croat é­ migré politics during the entirety of the Cold War.’114 Even after young ­‘hot-heads’ – recent migrants from Yugoslavia rather than displaced persons – took up leadership positions during the 1960s, historian Kristina Kalfic judged that the older ‘cohort was sufficiently loud and held enough clout to make demands upon the generations that followed.’115 They were, though, ‘only the militant peak’ of the ‘large movement’ of Croatian separatism.116 Croatian groups had been under some degree of surveillance in Australia since the outbreak of the First World War. In 1948, the Commonwealth Investigation Service noted the arrival of the first known post-war Ustasha arrivals: Ivan Harabaic and Peter Krecak. The head of ASIO, Charles Spry, reiterated that ‘members of Ustaschi organisations should be regarded as being of security interest by virtue of their fascist sympathies.’ By 1953, ASIO files had been opened on the Croatian Clubs in Brisbane, Tasmania and Adelaide; the Croatian Cultural Association in Sydney; the Croatian Cultural Society in Western Australia; the Croatian Welfare Association (Caritas); the Australian Croatian Association; and the Croatian Liberation Movement. While willing and able to keep a close eye on Croatian organisations, Spry was careful to point out ASIO’s jurisdictional limit: as with other far-right groups, the dispersion of ‘political propaganda’ only ‘would not constitute a security threat to Australia.’117 In the early 1950s ASIO received information concerning the recent arrival of Dujo Krpan, who was alleged to have been a member of a Ustasha police unit summarily executing Serbians. An extradition request had been sent to the British in 1946, and then, six months later, the Yugoslav government sent detailed allegations along with eyewitness statements, including one involving the four-day massacre of 2,000 adult male Serbs in July 1941. The British had arrested Krpan twice but after the Vatican’s Fr. Krunoslav Draganović made a case for mistaken identity, released him for resettlement.118 The Y ­ ugoslav Embassy in Burma warned the Australian government in March 1955 that Krpan, who had resettled in Australia in 1950, was ­‘capable of carrying out and organising all terroristic undertakings.’119 He was, however, accepted for naturalisation later that year.120 In 1951 Ljubomir Vuina applied for permission to publish a Croatian language newspaper and so came under the notice of ASIO, who noted that Vuina’s Croatian Club in Adelaide – the first in Australia – was ‘the headquarters of the Ustashi movement in South Australia,’ with ‘approximately 60% of its membership of 3–400 said to be ex-members of the Ustashi.’121 Vuina had admitted on his immigration selection documents that he had been Chief of Staff to the First Ustasha Brigade, and it was later alleged that he had

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been a former colonel in the elite Black Legion, in charge of concentration camps.122 However, ASIO approved the newspaper and pondered whether all Croatians who were anti-Ustasha were ‘communists.’123 In 1953 ASIO noted Drajutin Sporish as the apparent leader of the Ustasha in Australia and leader of group paramilitary group ‘Bojna’ (Battalion), which was meeting under the guise of the Catholic welfare association, ­Caritas. ASIO described Sporish as the leader of a group ‘which has as its task the preparation of military training for the Ustachi;’ he was ‘an ardent fascist and a man who would stop at nothing to gain his own ends.’ His application to publish a Croatian-language newspaper was, however, approved.124 A few months later, ASIO warned that the Australian Croatian Association (AHD)’s publication Hrvat (The Croat) was becoming ‘the official organ of Fascist propaganda in Australia.’125 AHD was also distributing an international Ustasha newspaper, Drina, whose Spanish representative was a ‘war time henchman of Pavelic.’126 In responding to this report, Spry argued that because ‘the Australian Croatian Association is anticommunist and antiTito,’ ASIO had ‘no security objections’ to either the AHD or to Hrvat.127 Another Ustasha who attracted notice in Australia was Josip Bujanović. It was known that he was wanted as a war criminal by the Yugoslav authorities for atrocities including an incident at a hospital where ‘Serbs, Muslims and gypsies [sic] were either shot or axed to death.’ Towards the end of the war he had apparently been promoted from his parliamentary position to one of the positions of Deputy Leader.128 A former priest who had allegedly escaped Europe with the assistance of Fr. Draganović, Bujanović fled to Argentina with Pavelic before resettling in Australia.129 By mid-1954, an ASIO field officer noted the existence in Australia of ‘a strong band of Croat fanatics who follow implicitly the orders given by the war time Terrorist leader Dr Pavelic’ and warned that ‘this group of fanatics are growing stronger.’130 The first challenge for Croatian Ustasha arriving in Australia as displaced persons was to assert their dominance on the local scene in the face of the existing pro-communist Yugoslav Immigrants Association of Australia, which had been established in 1933 and contained an estimated 90% Croatian membership in 1946. Indeed, while right-wing Croatians were emigrating to Australia, the Yugoslav government had organised two ships to return pro-communist Croatians home from Australia in 1948 and 1949.131 To ­Croatians already in Australia, the DP arrivals ‘were viewed as little more than Hitlerite quislings.’132 The main way of doing this was by dominating the organisational structure of Croatian diaspora life, including Catholic organisations such as Caritas, that were ostensibly set up for the welfare of new arrivals.133 Kalfic has stated that Croatian migrants were ‘essentially forced to “fall in line” with Ustasha mythology’ in order to access the ‘social capital’ that diaspora organisations provided.134 The organisations were alleged to have sent representatives to

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meet arriving ships and into Australian migrant camps, guaranteeing jobs and homes, and lending money; any refusal to pay Ustasha levies (£12/year in 1961) was met with threats and, if necessary, violence.135 There was an allegation that some migrants were sponsored from camps in Europe and thus arrived in Australia already in debt to the Ustasha.136 Organisations also provided false documents such as work permits and driver’s licenses and then blackmailed new settlers into supporting the Ustasha; if they did not comply, informants would tell the Yugoslav authorities that they were Ustasha supporters, which would potentially result in them not being able to return home or the persecution of family members in Yugoslavia. Even military training camps were often mandated as compulsory attendance for recruits.137 These young Croatians, who held valuable Yugoslav citizenship, were seen as particularly useful for the fight ahead.138 The most influential Ustasha in Australia was Srećko Rover, a First Lieutenant in the Ustasha Supervisory Service in Sarajevo; it was later alleged that he had served with Pavelic’s private bodyguard and had given orders to kill in concentration camps.139 Other allegations later surfaced in Australia that Rover had been a member of the Ustasha Mobile Court Martial and had also been involved with a ‘cleansing operation’ in the area of Maglaj and in the torture of an individual in Sarajevo.140 Rover had been imprisoned in the immediate post-war period by both the British and Americans at least three times and was released every time. A report by the Counter Intelligence Corps’ (CIC) European Command noted that Rover was definitely ‘a quisling though not on the Foreign Office list of Yugoslav quislings.’141 In the immediate post-war period Rover had been a senior leader of the Križari network, leading sorties across the border; on one trek he led a group of men into Yugoslavia and all but Rover were killed.142 This incident was to dog his career, as he faced regular accusations of being a communist agent by his enemies. Indeed, after a disagreement over the use of funds he had raised in Australia for the ‘government-in-exile’ under Ante Pavelić in Argentina, Pavelić loudly accused him of being a Yugoslav agent who had caused the deaths of the Križar in 1948.143 In 1957, Rover was to win £500 damages against Stanko Ivanković, who had printed the same accusations in an ­Australian pamphlet.144 ASIO had soon discovered that Rover was sending money to Pavelić and was also ‘the man behind the scenes and the person actually receiving instructions from Headquarters overseas.’145 In 1955, after General Maks Luburić  – responsible for many of the wartime atrocities committed by the Ustasha  – split from Pavelić to form the Croatian National Resistance ­(Hrvatski Narodni Odpor, HNO), Rover led this organisation in Australia.146 The HNO was vehemently militant, with an aim to ‘annihilate Yugoslavia!’147 There were HNO branches in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, Geelong, Mareeba and Fremantle. In 1963, Luburić appointed Rover as head

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of HNO for Oceania. After Luburić was assassinated in 1969, HNO split into two groups, run from Spain and Canada; the Spanish group appointed Stefan Brbić of Perth as head for Oceania, while Rover was appointed Vice-­ Chairman of the Canadian-run faction.148 From 1972, Rover edited the transnational HNO newspaper Pregled, which advocated capturing political power in Croatia ‘through the barrel of an iron gun.’149 On the domestic scene, Rover established the Intercommittee of Croats Association in Australia and New Zealand, headed the Australian Croatian Association and acted as the editor of its newspaper, Hrvat.150 A translation of the first issue in April 1953, commissioned by ASIO, contained eulogies to senior Ustasha; it also repeated the anti-semitic trope that the Jews had killed Christ and were ‘false interpreters of the true faith.’151 Rover was granted citizenship in 1956. A rival, more moderate organisation – which nonetheless cooperated with HNO at all major commemorations – was established by Pavelic in 1956: the Croatian Liberation Movement (Hrvatski Oslobodilacki Pokret, HOP) and its military wing the Croatian Armed Forces (HOS).152 Its Australian iteration, the Central Committee of Croatian Associations (SODHA), had branches in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart, Geelong and Whyalla, led by Fabian Lovoković.153 In 1963, Lovoković claimed that membership of HOP had reached 10,000.154 Ivica Kokić was also high on the HOP hierarchy, being appointed Vice Chairman of the Croatian ‘government-in-exile’ in 1967.155 He acknowledged that he had been Ustasha, serving with the Railway Security M ­ ilitia (Ustasha Zebjeznicka Vojnica); it was later alleged that he had been a ­Ustasha officer in charge of firing squads.156 Kokić led at various times the Central Council of Croatian Liberation Movement in Australia, the Central Council of Australian Associations in Australia, the Croatian Soccer Club in Melbourne, and acted as Croatian representative on the Committee of Nations Behind the Iron Curtain.157 Two clerics who arrived in Australia via South America also became influential. Stejepan ‘Osvald’ Tot(h) arrived in Australia in 1955 as Father Roque (Roch) Romac Potočnjak – the name on his false documents – after spending eight years in Bolivia, where he had acted as Father Draganović’s ­Bolivian operative in the ‘ratline,’ resettling perpetrators such as Klaus Barbie.158 There were later allegations that during the war he had been a member of the ­Ustasha secret police and involved in Gestapo operations. In the immediate post-war period, he had been arrested in Operation Crossline and described as a local representative of Fr. Draganović’s Confraternity of San Girolamo and ‘one of the leading Ustasha organisers in Bagnoli Camp. We have had several reports that this man is a Ustasha with a very shady war career.’ Romac was classified ‘grey’ and ‘escaped.’159 In Australia, his activities were partly funded by Lovoković.160

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Father Josip Kasić then arrived in Melbourne in either 1960 or 1961 to serve as the official chaplain to the Croatians of Victoria and Tasmania.161 He had been active in terrorist operations in Bosnia-Herzogovina after the end of the war, and his arrival in Australia ‘livened things up considerably.’162 Kasić took over the parish magazine Croatia Home (Hrvatski Dom), which ran an unsuccessful campaign to invite to Australia the Vatican priest who had been so useful to the Ustase in escaping Europe, Fr. Draganovic.163 It was reported that at Sunbury Eucharistic Festivals and other places, Kasić allowed members of HOP to display their shield and the ‘U’ symbol. Kasić himself, according to the Catholic Worker, ‘maintained in press and pulpit a constant attack on ‘capitalists, Jews, Anglophiles, Croats who became naturalised and Croats who would not become involved in Ustase activities,’ with ‘many Croatians’ claiming that ‘under Father Kasic their section of the church is becoming an arm of a political party – a fascist one at that.’164 To round out a survey of the main characters involved in this post-war activity, we must include the arch-enemy of the Ustashe in Australia, proYugoslav Marjan Jurjević, who had arrived in Australia as a DP in 1950.165 Jurjević was remarkably well informed and an indefatigable public opponent of the Ustasha; he was the source for many anti-Ustasha articles in Tribune and the Guardian, characterising the Ustasha as ‘beasts in human form’ and ‘medieval throwbacks.’166 In the mid-1960s Jurjević presented a list of 31  ‘war criminals’ to Victoria Police – these included Lovoković, Kokić, Romac, Kasić and Rover, although Jurjević also denounced Rover as a ‘communist agent.’167 Jurjević was also the source of information used by left-wing politicians to stoke criticism towards ASIO’s handling of the Croatian terrorist threat. Spry described him as ‘a psychopath with a tendency to political intrigue,’ while Victoria Police and ASIO viewed him as a provocateur who ‘consistently failed’ to produce evidence to back up his claims.168 Asked in 1972 how many untried Nazi war criminals were participating in extremist activities in Australia, Jurjević replied: ‘Between 20 and 30, that is my opinion, that is coming from official source. I know personally about seven.’169 His official source was, of course, the Yugoslav Consulate.170 Operation Kangaroo

In 1961 four young dissident members of HOP established the Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood (Hrvatsko Revolucionarno Bratstvo, HRB), which was to grow to 240 members in Australia – with centres in Sydney, ­Wollongong, Melbourne and Geelong – and then become a transnational movement.171 The HRB was ‘incontestably’ a fascist organisation, which declared Australia to be ‘the citadel of Croatian national consciousness abroad.’172 While sympathetic to the aims of HRB, the more moderate HOP expelled two of its founders, Jure Marić and Geza Pašti, for refusing to

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divulge details of the Brotherhood to them.173 Indeed, the HOP newspaper published in Buenos Aires would go on to warn members that planned HRB incursions were a ‘manoeuvre by the Communists.’174 While the evidence is contradictory, Rover was rumoured to be the founder, a leader and/or a patron of the HRB.175 Similarly, despite his public protestations, informants pointed to Lovoković as a supporter of the HRB.176 HOP had conducted annual camps in regional Australia, organised by Lovoković and led by Kokić and Adolf Janković – these attracted around 100 participants, who paid for the privilege.177 In 1963, photographs became public of uniformed participants training with Australian Citizen Military Forces (CMF) in Wodonga, Victoria, and posing on Australian armoured vehicles for Spremnost.178 One photograph was captioned: ‘Today on the River Murray; Tomorrow on the River Drina.’ This seems to have been a circumstantial meeting between HOP members and former HOP member Luka Madjeric, who was now a member of the CMF, which resulted in the CMF Commander taking the opportunity for an ad hoc recruitment drive.179 By late 1965, Lovoković was pondering the idea of approaching the government to form a Croatian Volunteer Company in Vietnam.180 It should be noted that the Croatians were not alone in this sort of activity. For example, at around the same time, the Latvian Daugavas Vanagi set up a rifle range outside Melbourne ‘ostensibly for sporting activities’ but were instead apparently ‘training young Latvians for “Special Service” in South Vietnam and Malaysia.’ Authorities reported that both American and Australian selectors attended shooting sessions to select candidates for their service.181 Earlier, at a property in western Sydney, young Ukrainians were also reported to be wearing ‘a uniform type of dress and appeared to be drilling.’182 However, with the creation of the HRB came a new terrorist phase, an ultra-violent ‘demonstration’ of Croatian ‘existence.’ Between 1963 and 1972, it has been calculated that the Ustasha engaged in at least 65 incidents of significant violence on Australian soil although this figure is debatable, as we shall see. This domestic ‘politically motivated violence,’ in the parlance of the day, was in the context of a transnational campaign by Croatian separatist extremists (predominantly by the HNO) that involved, in the same period in Europe and North America, more than 50 assassinations or assassination attempts, 40 bombings of public buildings and monuments and two airplane hijackings.183 In July 1963, nine young Croatian-Australians (HRB) – including two of the original four founders, and all carrying Australian travel documents – crossed the border from Italy into Yugoslavia with the intent of engaging in acts of sabotage.184 This was not the first time that displaced persons resettled in Australia had encouraged or participated in European incursions: in 1953 the Russian NTS sent four young displaced persons to Australia for

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anti-communist work in Europe.185 However, that incident remained mired in secrecy. The Croatian ‘Operation Kangaroo,’ in contrast, resulted in wide publicity when the nine were immediately captured and sentenced to between six and 14 years in prison. HRB then gained the distinction of being the first emigrant organisation in the history of Western Germany to be banned.186 During their trial, the HRB members alleged that they had been trained in handling weapons, bomb-making and sabotage by Romac at the Croatian Catholic Club in Woollahra.187 ASIO, though, was inclined to think that the reports coming out of Yugoslavia were untrustworthy.188 Even after detailed information with regards to Romac’s involvement came to light during the trials, Attorney-General Billy Snedden declined to prosecute him, saying that he ‘did not want to see the whole issue revived by prosecutions which are not in themselves of great proportions.’ Romac was also able to travel overseas after this episode, visiting the diaspora in Europe.189 ‘Operation Kangaroo’ and its attendant publicity did lead to debates in both parliament and the press as to the nature of the Ustasha in Australia. One NSW Senator (Labor) characterised them as ‘neo-fascist;’ a (Liberal) Senator replied that the use of this pejorative sounded ‘like McCarthyism to me.’190 Most members of the Liberal Party seemed content to describe them as patriots who wanted to see their former conditions returned; Cabinet Minister William McMahon even described them as ‘a good bunch’ with ‘a good cause.’191 While not necessarily agreeing with this assessment, ASIO advised that Croatians should not ‘be singled out as constituting any special security threat to Australia’ as it could not prove terrorist training had taken place in Australia.192 In contrast, Jurjević leapt into action. He immediately notified ASIO that Romac was ‘an imposter’ and advised them of his real name.193 On ABC television he called for the removal of Romac and Kasić as priests, an action which resulted in Kasić suing both Jurjević and the ABC for defamation.194 In his own telling, Jurjević’s complaints were ignored by the Archbishop of Melbourne, Daniel Mannix; Monsignor Moran at St Patrick’s Cathedral; and the Minister for Immigration, Alexander Downer.195 He had more luck after a successful meeting with Opposition Leader Arthur Calwell (in his capacity as a Papal Knight). Despite thinking that Jurjević was ‘emotional and unbalanced,’ Calwell apparently passed his complaints on to Archbishop Simmonds.196 Kasić was then called to Rome in mid-1965 and on his return dissolved the controversial Cardinal Stepinac Association (commemorating Alojzije Stepinac, who had been tried by the Yugoslav government in 1946 for collaborating with the Ustase regime). This held until Archbishop Simmonds was replaced, when Kasić immediately reinstated the Association.197 Jurjević found supporters among Jewish leaders, who had already noted that ‘the Ustachi, Hungarista and other Balkan slanted splinter-groups’ were openly ‘Neo Nazi’ and that ‘Latvian, Lithuanian and Croatian publications’

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spread ‘race hatred and Hitlerite propaganda and beliefs weekly and monthly.’198 When Jurjević led a deputation to Victorian (Lib) politician, ­Rupert Hamer, representatives included those of the Australian New Settlers Anti-Fascist Association, the Victorian Fabian Society, Melbourne Trades Hall Council and JCCFAS. During this meeting, Todd Trevaks of JCCFAS noted the Jewish community’s concern that as well as an upsurge in ‘violent Croatian activity,’ there had also been a rise in anti-Semitic activity: Only a week previously, a window of the office of a Jewish newspaper in Carlton had had a shot fired through it. During the Warsaw Ghetto Commemorations, cars had been found with stickers on saying ‘Hitler was right’. Stickers were posted on lamp-posts and booklets had been distributed. Posters of the National Socialist Movement of London had been placed on lamp-posts in Melbourne. Senator Sam Cohen (Labor) had also received a death threat. Ernest Platz noted that the Ustasha were ‘anti-semitic and fascist in nature and activities’ and were currently ‘the most vocal’ émigré group.199 Jurjević also received support from the Labor left, including MP Jim Cairns and (future MP) Lewis Kent (aka Lajčo Kapolnai, a Jewish-Yugoslav).200 In 1963, ASIO reported that Kent, in a meeting with Jim and Philip Cairns, said: ‘the Government is doing nothing about the Nazis in this country, and we will have to fight these fascists with our own means.’ He suggested setting fire to Rover’s home, which was agreed to in principle. At a later meeting, Kent told the Cairns brothers that he would be letting ‘the Jews take their revenge,’ that is, ‘Samuel’ from the Stern Gang, who would presumably assassinate Rover.201 A year later, Cairns accused the Menzies government of being ‘prepared to shield and protect the most extreme fascist type organisation that has ever existed in this country.’202 Allegations of fascism, (historic) war crimes and current domestic and international terrorism made a heady and confusing mix, and both Lovoković and Rover protested against these allegations. Leading a HOP deputation to see the Secretary of the Department of Immigration, Lovoković complained that Croatians in Australia had been ‘unfairly attacked in Parliament, and had been treated harshly by the Press.’ He asked the government to ‘make a full enquiry into the allegations, and either punish those proved to be guilty of [historic] war crimes, or take action against those falsely accusing them.’203 In a letter to the Attorney-General, Rover admitted that ‘there are some fascists among the Croats’ but that ‘every nation has its share of odd individuals;’ ‘this does not make the Croatian nation as a whole, fascist inclined.’204 In a subsequent statement to ASIO, Rover pointed to his many screenings by the Allies and the IRO, stating categorically: ‘I deny that I am a war criminal. I did nothing in Croatia which could classify me as a war criminal. Anybody

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who is acting against Communists and Yugoslavs are automatically classified as war criminals by the Tito government.’205 In any case, chasing war criminals was not, as we know, part of ASIO’s brief. Domestically, ‘politically motivated violence’ attacks were generally low-level with few casualties, focused on Yugoslav consulates and the state-run travel agencies.206 When Marjan Jurjević established the Yugoslav Settlers Association, with an explicit allegiance to ‘the present Yugoslavia’ and clubrooms in Fitzroy, this was also attacked.207 Prime Minister Menzies reported in 1964 that Victorian Police had found that ‘isolated acts of assault and misbehaviour had occurred but found no evidence whatever to support allegations of Ustashi violence towards individuals of Yugoslav nationality from which systematic or organised attacks could be inferred.’ Menzies said that Commonwealth ‘investigations so far have not produced any evidence which would warrant legal proceedings.’208 Importantly, and to the frustration of the government, there were only claims of responsibility informally, via an HRB informant, and there were few convictions.209 The Commonwealth Police Force was certainly trying hard to gather evidence but there was simply not enough clear evidence of criminality in Australia.210 ASIO had kept a ‘watchful eye’ upon the Croatians, and by the mid-1960s, suspected membership of any of these groups was deemed sufficient ground for refusal of clearances for naturalisation.211 ASIO’s role, though, was to gather intelligence in order to counter ‘subversion,’ not to collect admissible evidence for future prosecution, and there was only weak collaboration with the various police forces.212 It was generally believed that the Croatians were ‘not regarded as representing any threat to Australia’ as ‘they were not seeking to change the state of affairs in Australia.’213 ASIO was also aware that some reports of bombs and death threats were false; Father Marko Gjokmarković for example, was well-known in Brisbane for making inflammatory and untrue reports, both to the police and the press.214 For events that actually occurred, ASIO judged that some of these were the responsibility of the Yugoslav UDBA (Uprava državne bezbednosti, State Security Administration) – which was an active and successful counter-terrorist force overseas – in an attempt to prompt the Australian government into action against the Ustasha.215 They were, in other words, deemed to be ‘false flag’ operations carried out by the Yugoslav intelligence service. There was some evidence for this as, for example, when police officers reported that building locks were broken from inside and bombs seemed to be set to cause minimal damage.216 ASIO received further intelligence that at least one UDBA officer had infiltrated the leadership of the HRB and had informed the Yugoslav government of the plan to send the Croatian nine to Yugoslavia in 1963; he returned to Yugoslavia in 1968.217 Another ‘Croatian Ustasha’ charged in 1972 with possession of explosives also quickly returned

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to Yugoslavia, which seemed to imply that he had been an agent provocateur.218 This was also the line pushed by supporters such as Liberal MP Bill Wentworth.219 When an HRB leader was shot in the hand, outside a Melbourne café in broad daylight, and alleged that his assailant was an UDBA agent, an ASIO officer agreed: ‘this was typical of present-day’ UDBA actions.220 There were murders attributed to the UDBA during the 1960s, including the shooting deaths of Yago Despot and his partner, just after he had complained about attempts by the UDBA to recruit him as an informer.221 ASIO also suspected that ‘pro-Belgrade Serbs’ were behind the 1972 bombing of a statue of General Draža Mihailović, wartime leader of the Chetniks, rather than those Croatians who had been convicted of an earlier attempt.222 In any case, the spate of terrorist activity seemed confined to Yugoslav targets. ASIO knew that almost half of the Yugoslav officials posted in Australia were UDBA or their supporting staff, as well as officials in the airline JAT and the staterun travel agencies.223 Similarly, the Yugoslav Consul-General attended many functions at the Yugoslav Settlers Association, and Jurjević and Kent personally appear to have had relationships with the UDBA.224 A context of allegations and counter-allegations also muddied the security waters. Romac reported receiving a death threat from a ‘communist gang’ and went into hiding at a church property in Tumbi Umbi, northern NSW.225 In turn, Jurjević reported receiving an average of ten death threats per year, by phone and mail.226 Rover, representing HOP at a press conference held with police, then denounced the Yugoslav Settlers Association as ‘communist-influenced, at least,’ an allegation that was supported by influential Australian Catholic BA Santamaria.227 Meanwhile, Lovoković, writing in the Australian International News Review, argued that ‘Croatians had been attacked because they dared criticise communism in Australia.’228 He said that he himself had been framed by the UDBA, who had given him a false biography as a war criminal.229 Further, almost all of the leading Croatians were accused at some time or other by informants of being Yugoslav agents; in one public campaign, Lovoković was even accused of being an undercover Serbian Chetnik.230 It should also be noted that Croatian Ustasha were not the only violent anti-Yugoslav groups in Australia. In 1962, Slovenians Ljenko Urbančič and Vlado Menart, together with some younger Croatians, formed the ­Yugoslav Freedom Fighters Movement.231 This group actively disrupted ­Yugoslav Social Club events, broke into a Yugoslav-owned printery and was present when the Yugoslav Consul General’s car was overturned in Oxford Street, Paddington, in November 1961.232 Their Yugoslav-Australian Journal was printed at a Redfern printery run by a member of the Hungarian Freedom Fighters. Urbančič stated that he welcomed reprisals and then all anti-Yugoslavs

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would be forced to support him.233 The Yugoslavs were also not the only targets of attacks. In 1971 the Soviet Embassy in Canberra was damaged by a fire bomb, after receiving threats from a group calling itself the ‘Australian Jewish Defense League;’ two non-Jewish Bulgarians belonging to a ‘Bulgarian émigré group centred in Perth’ were later convicted.234 In May 1964, Tomislav Lešić’s legs were blown off when a bag he was holding, near the Yugoslav Consulate in Sydney, exploded.235 Lešić alleged that he had been handed the bag by a Yugoslav UDBA agent; Rover said that he had been the ‘victim of a vicious communist trap.’236 ASIO was fairly sure that Lešić was responsible, and was later informed, by Vuina, that Lešić was affiliated with HNO; indeed, Lešić was later implicated in a major attack in ­Sydney in 1972 when a piece of one of his (now) artificial legs was blown off.237 Rover had apparently been ‘knifed in the head and body’ while visiting Croatian House in Melbourne in 1962; this incident was not reported to the police.238 Four years later, a young Croatian stabbed Srecko Rover multiple times, in an attempted murder; according to Srecko’s wife, Velma, the attacker had referred to the ongoing accusations that Rover had caused the deaths of his Križari group.239 It seems that some in the Croatian community had sympathy for the attacker, as collections were taken up to pay for the young Croatian’s defence.240 Publicly, though, Croatian Associations published an Open Letter to the Australian government alleging that the young man was a ‘Yugoslav-hired killer.’241 Spry advised the government that there was no evidence of Yugoslav involvement and that, in fact, ‘militant Croatian groups in Australia may make the attack an excuse for violence against their political opponents here.’242 In 1970, in a Melbourne concert hall during a performance by a Yugoslav singer, pamphlets were flung into the audience from the galleries. These contained photographs and descriptions of five Yugoslav agents, with rewards offered for their apprehension or murder.243 These pamphlets seem to have been published in retaliation for a list of five Croatians who were wanted dead – including Rover, Lovoković and Kasić – which had been disseminated by the first adviser to the Yugoslav Consulate.244 Following police raids on the HRB in Wollongong in the late 1960s, it appeared that HRB was ‘dead’ and there was a reluctance from both the police and ASIO to provoke the situation, potentially creating ‘martyrs’ to the Croatian nationalist cause.245 Operation Feniks

In June 1972, there was another incursion into Yugoslavia known as ‘Operation Feniks,’ in which 19 HRB (including six Australian citizens and three Australian residents) waged a guerrilla war against the largest deployment of the Yugoslavian Territorial Defence Forces in socialist Yugoslavia’s history.

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Fifteen were killed in the fight, four were arrested and three (all naturalised Australian citizens) were executed. While Attorney-General Ivor Greenwood immediately denied that there was any ‘credible evidence that any Croatian terrorist organisation exists in Australia,’ ASIO had been embarrassed.246 Laurie Aarons of the Communist Party of Australia called for Greenwood’s resignation.247 A few months later, in September 1972, 16 innocent passers-by were injured in a bomb blast on busy George Street, Sydney.248 Greenwood then offered the advice to Cabinet that along with the National Socialist Party of Australia and ‘immigrant anti-communist groups,’ the ‘Yugoslav problem’ was ‘the greatest single problem’ for Australia’s national security, and an Antiterrorist Coordination Unit was established.249 In March 1973, the new Labor Attorney-General, Lionel Murphy, received advice from his security adviser, Kerry Milte – who had been Superintendent of the Commonwealth Police Force, and a participant in the growing interoffice rivalry between the Police and ASIO – that ASIO was withholding intelligence on Croatian terrorism in Australia.250 This advice was received in the context of the new progressive Labor government’s suspicion of all DPs as ‘fascist.’ Prime Minister Gough Whitlam had characterised Croatians as guilty of ‘fascism, anti-Semitism and genocide;’ at a rally protesting Australia’s recognition of Soviet sovereignty over the Baltic states, he addressed a young Estonian protester as a ‘dirty Nazi bitch.’251 The advice also happened to be received just before a planned visit by the Yugoslav Prime Minister, Džemal Bijedić; the concern was that the Ustasha may risk an assassination attempt. Murphy expressed himself ‘astonished at it, the existence of a revolutionary terrorist organisation in this country;’ he was also astonished by ASIO’s sluggish reactions and what he saw as ‘serious gaps’ in intelligence.252 As historian Alexander Mitchell Lee notes, the issue of violent Croatian nationalism ‘tapped into a deep frustration, often bordering on vindictiveness’ within the Labor Party that stemmed from the release of ASIO intelligence by the Liberal government that had implicated Labor Party staffers in the 1954 Petrov affair; this had caused an irrevocable and damaging split in the Labor Party.253 Murphy’s subsequent ‘unprecedented, extraordinary’ raid on ASIO did not find a ‘smoking gun;’ ASIO had not been deliberately obstreperous.254 Instead, it had been sceptical about the Croatian threat, describing the main players as ‘thugs’ rather than terrorists, for example.255 However, the raid did underline Murphy’s declaration that ‘toleration of terrorism in this country is over.’ This became bipartisan policy when the Liberal government in 1978 passed the Foreign Incursions and Recruitment Crimes Act, which criminalised participation ‘in any hostile activity in or against a foreign state.’256 After members of the Liberal Ethnic Council of NSW attended a function at the ‘Croatian Embassy’ in Canberra, Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser was also forced to introduce legislation to ban emigres from masquerading as consular officials.257

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Émigré Fascists and the National Socialist Party of Australia

Not content to remain as overtly ethno-nationalist groups, some émigré fascists tapped into wider far-right networks of anti-Semitism and white supremacy. Hungarian, Dr FO Tamás, for example, acted as a liaison between the Hungarist Movement and Eric Butler’s League of Rights.258 There were also growing links with Australian Nazi parties. In 1960, ASIO reported that the ANWP had printed 20,000 ‘antisemitic leaflets’ using the Hungarian Printing and Publishing Co.259 Károly Nesz’s name then appeared on an Australian National Workers Party (ANWP, 1959–1963) membership and contact list.260 Béla Kantor led the Hungarist Movement in Western Australia; he described his set-up in that state as the ‘Western Australian Centre of the Hungarian SS Legion’ and himself as ‘the Representative of the Centres of the Hungarian SS Legions of Australia.’261 As well as publishing Út És Cél: a Hungarista Mozgalom Hivatalos lapja (Route and Destination, the official newspaper of the Hungarist Movement), he edited, from 1960, Hungarista Mozgalom Ausztráliai Szórványának Tájékoztató Szolgálata (Information Service of the Australian Faction of the Hungarist Movement, known as the Hungarista Bulletin and Perseverance).262 The presence of Kantor’s ‘receiving depot and distribution centre for anti-semitic literature’ in the small Western Australian town of Merredin – and his proclivity towards showing anti-semitic films – caused a flurry of publicity in 1965 after the local Jewish community complained.263 Kantor was then sought out by Alan and Norma Benjamin – of Jewish Research Services, acting as local agents for the Simon Wiesenthal Centre – who travelled from Melbourne in order to go ‘and look at [his] ugly dial and check whether [he] might be building any local gas ­ovens.’264 They left Merredin seemingly convinced that Kantor was ‘nonviolent’ and had perhaps been confused with ‘another “Bela Kantor” who may be a more sinister character.’265 While presenting to the Benjamins as ‘not generally anti-semitic,’ Kantor was indeed busy shoring up links with domestic Nazi groups. By 1968 Perseverance was published in English and French, rather than Hungarian, and in a statement published that year Kantor explained the reason for this: Our non-Hungarian comrades who, in the past quarter century, have always given place to our articles in their publications, show an increasing interest in our movement, its activities and ideologies. We feel it our duty to inform them at greater length without burdening them with Hungarian texts which they cannot understand.266 Perseverance was ‘not a newspaper, not a magazine but an information bulletin’ for ‘we National Socialists’ and was ‘not published for the general

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public but [was] made only for those National Socialists who do not read Hungarian.’ As well as including international news – both geo-political as well as details of the various National Socialist parties – it included profiles on transnational Nazis such as George Lincoln Rockwell and claimed a reach of 2,180 copies distributed domestically and 720 overseas.267 Upon receiving a copy of Perseverance, Claude Woods, the Victorian leader of the National Socialist Party of Australia (NSPA) wrote to Kantor: ‘I feel inclined to stress my belief that the only way to successfully defeat the common enemy is on a united basis.’268 Another organiser of the NSPA exclaimed, upon receiving his copy, that ‘they are now allied with the party’ and, indeed, his name appeared on a 1969 list of NSPA members or supporters.269 An even more explicit connection with the domestic far-right occurred in 1967, when Ferenc (Frank) Molnár – who claimed to have served in the Hungarian Army during the war – joined with a former ANSP leader, Ted ­Cawthron, to form the National Socialist Party of Australia (NSPA, 1967-early 1970s). The mainstream press reported Molnar as saying that he ‘would like to see the party with 500 members in 18 months and 50,000 financial members in five years.’ Molnar himself was described as a great admirer of Szálasi, who he described as ‘one of history’s greatest National Socialist patriots, hung before a jeering crowd of Jew-Communists in 1946.’270 A newsletter distributed in January 1968 claimed that Molnár had ‘been an active and dedicated National Socialist for 30 years and has much invaluable practical political experience.’271 A later article published in Woroni described Molnár as: The real force behind the party at that time. [He] is a stocky Bauer type with heavy Hungarian accent, the temperament of a spoiled child and a remarkably paranoic disposition. (He’s afraid the Yids are out to get him!!) He … is moustached. He is married with two attractive young children both blond. Frank was a Hungarian Nazi, during the war.272 Indeed, Molnár claimed to have visited Dachau during the war (although not specifying in which capacity that trip could have been made) and used this supposed eyewitness testimony as the basis for a strident denial of the Holocaust, made during an appearance on a national television program ­‘Encounter,’ and published in the Australian National Socialist Journal in two issues in 1968 and then as a pamphlet titled The Big Lie: Six Million Murdered Jews.273 Molnar was also an office bearer, along with Cawthron, in the antisemitic Free Palestine Committee set up by notorious neo-Nazi Graeme Theo Royce.274 The new party’s logo featured a swastika inside a map of Australia.275 NSPA launched the Australian National Socialist Journal with Editor-in-Chief

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Cawthron and Associate Editors: Molnar and another Hungarian, OJ Varga. Wentworth immediately sent a copy to the Attorney-General, Nigel Bowen, noting its antisemitism but advising: ‘you will note some good sense.’ In this instance, Wentworth’s concern was that communists may ‘get ahold of and use for propaganda purposes.’276 Molnár’s time in the National Socialist Party of Australia saw him encourage links with the various anti-communist émigré groups in Australia. Molnár and Cawthron attended various emigre demonstrations, including a Ukrainian demonstration of around 300 people outside the Soviet Embassy in May 1968, described by ASIO as becoming ‘out of hand [resulting] in fruit and crackers being thrown at the Embassy and in three Russian flags being burnt outside the gates.’277 The NSPA justified their involvement by saying they would ‘always support other anti-Communist groups sharing this common objective.’278 Molnár was also quick to involve both Hungarists and the Croatian Ustase in the NSPA, admitting to the press that there were ‘private links.’279 These ‘private links’ probably included Matija Moger, alleged to be ‘an ex-SS officer who participated in Jewish exterminations in Zagreb in 1942–1943’ who was an ‘open anti-Semite who corresponds with local and overseas anti-Semites’ and had a library ‘containing some 300-400 books of an antisemitic nature.’280 In one failed endeavour to make such links explicit, Molnar attempted to use the Hungarian-Australian Club in Dickson, Australian Capital ­Territory – of which he held the liquor licence – as an ‘instrument to propagate extreme right-wing views.’281 He was joined in this attempt by Ilona Janković, the wife of HOP leader Adolf Janković, who had been expelled from HOP in 1965 due to ‘militancy and intrigues against the leadership,’ that is, Lovoković.282 This resulted in Molnar and Adolf Janković establishing another group, the Canberra-Queanbeyan Committee of the Hungarian Freedom Fight.283 ASIO kept tabs on the NSPA, and on Molnar, characterising him as ‘aggressive’ but also judged him to be ‘particularly inept in his activities’ and ‘not popular,’ demonstrated by the earlier ‘total failure of his campaign for control of the General Staff Association of ANU.’284 In this judgment, ASIO proved correct. The relationship between Cawthron and Molnár started to deteriorate shortly after it started, and Cawthron accused Molnár of stealing $30,000 from the Party, mostly in the form of printing equipment.285 In this dispute, Cawthron tried to use Molnár’s European migrant heritage as a sign of his unsuitability to lead the National Socialist Party of Australia, claiming on national television that Molnár’s heart was ‘in Hungary, not in Australia’ and declaring that as the NSPA were a nationalist party, they ‘should have a native-born Australian in charge.’ Cawthron added, ‘[Hitler] was a German National Socialist, just like Mr. Molnar is a Hungarian National

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Socialist and I’m Australian National Socialist.’ Molnár retorted that ‘the only Australian[s] are the aborigines [sic]’ and suggested that the NSPA’s concern was more with the identity and culture of Australia’s white population, rather than nationality.286 It seems that Molnár was not even popular with his Hungarist brethren. As early as 1959, a Hungarist Movement contact had denounced Molnar to ASIO, together with a suspected communist Istvan M, as suspicious characters.287 In December 1968, the Hungarist Movement sent a letter to ­Cawthron describing Molnár as ‘unreliable;’ another letter, sent two months later asserted, according to an ASIO summary, that: Molnar had been expelled from the Sydney Branch of the Hungarist Movement in 1960 for ‘untrustworthy conduct’ in that he failed to render a proper account of costs of publications on the Movement’s behalf. It was further alleged that Molnar had, after repeated warnings, maintained contact with ‘enemies of the Movement.’288 This disloyalty towards a fellow Hungarist was not unusual; there were apparently constant disagreements within the Hungarist Movement – as we have already seen with Lajos Polgár and between Béla Kardoss and László Megay – and members were often expelled.289 However, this particular case may stem from a battle for influence between Molnár and Ferenc (Frank) Megadja, an infamous Arrow Cross leader who had arrived in Australia in 1956.290 Megadja is alleged to have been involved in rapes, torture, executions and massacres in Budapest, including the murder of a nine-year-old boy.291 By 1959 Megadja had been appointed leader of the Hungarist Movement in NSW, and he became the Sydney distributor for Út és Cél.292 Megadja always travelled with a bodyguard, Emód Tarisznyas, ‘a big powerful man’ known as the ‘Enforcer.’293 As a sign of the tensions between Molnár and Megadja, when the merging of the National Socialist Party of Australia and the ANSP was announced in Perseverance in January 1969, Molnár’s name was removed, while Cawthron (as well as John Stewart and Leslie Ritchie) were named in full.294 Cawthron expelled Molnár from the National Socialist Party of Australia in February 1969. Molnár began to focus on his printing business – set up with the allegedly stolen presses – and offered to take over the printing of Ustasha material.295 However, his Hungarist brethren were quite clear, with Perseverance announcing in May 1969 that ‘Ferenc K. Molnar is not a member of the NSPA and letters concerning the Party should not be addressed to him.’296 Hungarian links with the NSPA continued after the ANSP merged into the NSAP, and in September 1969 former ANSP leader Eric Wenberg received an invitation to visit Béla Kantor in Western Australia.297 A month later, both the National Socialist Bulletin and Perseverance reported that

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Wenberg had addressed a meeting to commemorate the 1956 Hungarian revolution: In a stirring 15-minute speech, comrade Wenberg outlined the growth of the Jewish-Communist menace from its inception and stressed the necessity for patriots throughout the world to unite in smashing it. His speech was continuously interrupted by spontaneous cheering and clapping from the audience of 300 or more. At the conclusion there was a standing ovation.298 In April 1970, representatives of the Hungarist Movement, the Ustasha and a German immigrant group attended a meeting of the National Socialist Party of Australia in Sydney. In May, the NSPA’s Cass Young prepared material for discussion at a Ustasha meeting. In August, another meeting of the Australian Nazi Party and ‘Nazis from New Zealand’ was held in Sydney, led by Cawthron, which included ‘Croatian Ustasi, Hungarian fascists’ and ­‘Yugoslav fascists.’ The Tribune reported that ‘the migrant group representatives contributed little to the discussion, although each promised a certain block vote from their followers for the Nazi Party.’ Discussions ‘centred around the Jewish question:’ ‘While some pressed for a policy of total ­‘removal,’ the majority adopted a policy that ‘good’ Jews would be allowed to stay in Australia under the Nazis, while the ‘bad’ Jews would be deported to Israel.’ After this meeting, ‘further and more selective discussions were held between Nazi leaders and Ustashi leaders,’ ‘when they adjourned to nearby bushland for pistold shooting practice.’ A subsequent meeting agreed that the Ustasha ‘were to carry out physical attacks on well-known communists and anti-war militants selected by the Nazis. In return, the Nazis would supply the Ustashi with pistols and fake passports.’299 In November 1970, the Sydney members of the Hungarist Movement raised £1000 for the NSPA to run in the 1970 Senate election – 35% of the total funds it managed to collect that year – and urged fellow Hungarists to vote for ‘a young, dynamic party:’ the ‘National Socialist Party of Australia.’300 By this time, the NSPA was selling, along with various Nazi memorabilia, the ‘Hungarista flag’ and the Croatian Ustasha flag.301 Five months later Megadja, along with eight other Hungarists – making up 25% of the congress – attended the 1971 Annual National Congress of the NSPA in Queanbeyan.302 In a speech reported in Perseverance, Megadja warned that those ‘elements which had caused the destruction of Hungary’ were also ‘hard at work’ in Australia and would ‘dig Australia’s grave just as they dug Hungary’s and Europe’s in the past.’303 The ASIO report on the NSPA conference noted that Megadja addressed the audience in Hungarian and was translated by an interpreter, while the Hungarian national anthem was played and all present stood to attention ‘to honour Szalasi.’ Megadja

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reportedly ‘spoke on the political situation in Hungary, from as far back as 1908 until the present time’ and ‘commented that both the Hungarist Movement and the NSPA must work together for a common cause.’304 Following the congress, 22 members of the NSPA demonstrated outside the Soviet embassy.305 A month later, a meeting of Hungarians was held in ­Sydney, addressed by two Hungarians and one ‘Australian.’ An informant reported: ‘After each speaker finished talking they gave the Nazi salute to the audience.’306 Notes 1 Letter from Alfred Poninski to Malcolm Muggeridge, 16 March 1956, Captive Nations Council of NSW Records, 1953–1998, MLMSS 7171 [hereafter, CNC NSW], Box 24, State Library of New South Wales [hereafter, SLNSW]. 2 ‘Buletin Di Informatii’, file note, 28 April 1954, Dr Constantin Ion UNTARU – Volume 1, 1954–1969, A6119, ASIO, 194 [hereafter, Untaru, Volume 1 ASIO], National Archives of Australia [NAA]. 3 ‘Untaru’, memorandum from Officer to Senior Field Officer, 26 July 1962, Dr  Constantin Ion UNTARU – Miscellaneous Papers, 1962–1970, A6119, ASIO, 2804, NAA. 4 Letter from Director General to Regional Director for ACT, 10 July 1964, Associations Individual Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, 1956–1965, A6122/46, ASIO, 1725 [hereafter, ABN], NAA. 5 See CNC NSW, Box 24, SLNSW. 6 Ljenko Urbančič, Srečanja Portreti Dejanja 1-2-3 (Waverley, NSW: mtm press, 1995). See, for example, ‘Samo ena pot – pot generala Rupnika’, Jutro, 29 June 1944, Translation [1979], Lyenko Urbanchich – Reference of Documents to Attorney-General by NSW Attorney-General, 1979, A432, Attorney-General’s Department, CS1979/7096 Part 1, NAA. 7 Drew Cottle and Angela Keys, ‘Douglas Evelyn Darby, MP: Anti-Communist Internationalist in the Antipodes’, Labour History, 89 (2005): 93; ‘Yugoslav Freedom Fighters Movement’, memorandum, 16 March 1962, Lyenko ­URBANCHICH (URBANCIC) – Volume 1, 1961–1972, A6119, ASIO, 2332 [hereafter, Urbancic ASIO, Volume 1], NAA. 8 ‘Ljenko Urbancic’, memorandum, 10 June 1971, Urbancic ASIO Vol 1, NAA. 9 Pauli Heikkilä, ‘“Less is more or more the merrier?” International cooperation among Estonian exiles in Meie Kodu 1952–1991’, 54th ASEES Convention, Chicago, Illinois, 10–13 November 2022, 3; Attachment to letter from Ernest Platz to S Einfeld, President, ECAJ, 7 December 1953, Series 1: Mark Aarons – ­General Australian War Crimes [hereafter, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes], Box 8, SLNSW. 10 Lia Looveer Papers including further records of the Joint Baltic Committee and the Captive Nations Council of New South Wales, 1956–2005, MLMSS 8489 [hereafter, Looveer], SLNSW; see Katalin Kádár Lynn, ‘The Hungarian National Council/Hungarian National Committee’, in Lynn, The Inauguration of Organised Political Warfare, 238. 11 The Liberal Party–Country Party Coalition was in power nationally from 1949 to 1972. 12 Darby later said that he understood their anti-assimilationist stance as his ‘mother had been a Jerseywoman’. ‘Address to the Joint Baltic Committee’, 16 June 1974, Darby family – papers, 1902–1986, with Cusack family papers,

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approximately 1914–1950, MLMSS6164 [hereafter, Darby], Boxes 39 and 46, SLNSW. 13 United Council of Migrants from Communist Dominated Europe: The President’s Report to the Annual General Meeting, 1955, Joint Baltic Committee Records, 1952–2000, MLMSS 7629 [hereafter, Joint Baltic], Box 12, SLNSW. 14 Membership of the NSW Liberal Party Migrant Advisory Council did not require membership of the NSW Liberal Party. ‘Lovokovic – From the Croatian Liberation Movement and Liberal Party Migrant Advisory Committee’, Terrorist Activities – Ustasha, 1967–1973, M132, Attorney General’s Department, 330, NAA. 15 Australian Liberal, September 1959. 16 Lovoković admitted joining the Ustasha Youth Organisation and undergoing military training during 1943–1944. Marjan Jurjevic, Ustasha under the Southern Cross (Melbourne: 1973), 43; see memorandum from John L Jansen, Senior Investigator, to the Director, undated but c. 1990, Lovokovic, Fabijan, ­1987–1992, A9525, SIU, PU32 [hereafter, Lovokovic SIU], NAA. 17 ‘Croats in Australia’, Outlook, Nov–Dec 1963, 11. 18 Mark Aarons, War Criminals Welcome: Australia a Sanctuary for Fugitive War Criminals Since 1945 (Melbourne: Black Inc, 2001), 415. 19 Cited in ‘Working with Secret Police’, Tribune, 11 September 1963. 20 Eric Butler had previously published ‘one of the most vicious anti-Semitic diatribes ever seen in Australia’, The International Jew: The Truth About ‘The Protocols of Zion’ (Adelaide, 1946). Hilary L Rubinstein, ‘Early Manifestations of Holocaust Denial in Australia’, Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal XIV (1997): 96; Current Activities of the Right Wing Movement Within This State’, memorandum from AW Witton, Detective Senior Constable to the Office in Charge of Police, Special Branch, 6 September 1966, Urbancic ASIO Vol 1, NAA. 21 Memorandum, 28 March 1969, Urbancic ASIO Vol 1, NAA. 22 Peter Charles Henderson, ‘A History of the Australian Extreme Right Since 1950’, PhD diss., University of Western Sydney, 2002, 143, 210. 23 Mark Aarons, Sanctuary! Nazi Fugitives in Australia (Melbourne: William Heinemann Australia, 1989), 271. 24 Mark Aarons, ‘Ardent Nazi took Liberal to Extremes’, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 March 2006. 25 ‘The Pattern of the Ultra Right’, Outlook, April 1966. 26 In 1969 UCEM would attempt to birth ‘a migrant organisation with a coordinating role for the purpose of wielding migrants into a political force’. This ‘United Council of Immigrants’ included Constantin Untaru, who was ‘aggressive in speeches’. ‘United Council of Migrants’, memorandum to the Director, Special Reports Branch, 2 June 1969, Untaru, Volume 1 ASIO, NAA. 27 ‘Australia: Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations and National Guard’, Report No. 587, 30 August 1955, ABN, NAA. 28 According to intelligence reports, the ABN was wary of engaging with leftist Italians who ‘were organised by the Communists to provoke brawls and other violence and disorders in order to discredit the anti-communist migrants’ as ‘fascists’. ‘United Council of Migrants from Communist-Dominated Europe: The Secretary-General’s Report, 29 October 1956, Joint Baltic, Box 12, SLNSW. See Jayne Persian, ‘Vladimír Ležák Borin: Cold War Warrior’, in Recovering History through Fact and Fiction: Forgotten Lives, eds. Dallas John Baker, Donna Lee Brien and Nike Sulway (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017), 78–87; ‘Australia: Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations and National Guard’, Report No. 587, 30 August 1955, ABN, NAA.

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29 This contribution to OUN ideology included genocidal antisemitism. In a 1941 publication, Stets’ko stated: ‘I therefore support the destruction of the Jews and the expedience of German methods of exterminating Jewry to Ukraine’. Iaroslav Stets’ko, ‘My biography’, August 1941, cited in Per Anders Rudling, ‘Ukrainians’ in European Fascist Movements: A Sourcebook, eds. Roland Clark and Tim Grady (London: Routledge, 2023), 382, 378. 30 Aarons, Sanctuary!, 51; Aarons, War Criminals Welcome, 314. 31 The APACL later merged with the ABN to form the World Communist League. 32 During this visit, Stets’ko also met with the (Liberal) Victorian Premier, Henry Bolte; the (ALP) Lord Mayor of Sydney, Harry Jensen; DLP Senator Frank McManus; the Archbishop of Melbourne, Mannix; and Sydney’s Cardinal ­ ­Gilroy. Aarons, Sanctuary!, 79. 33 Stephen Dattner, ‘Ukrainian Anti-Semite’, Letters to the Editor, The Australian Jewish News, 14 June 1957; Stephen Dattner, ‘Reply to Senator Gorton’, Letters to the Editor, The Australian Jewish News, 12 July 1957. 34 JG Gorton, Senator for Victoria, Letters to the Editor, The Australian Jewish News, 26 July 1957. 35 Press Release, 28 April 1966, Megay, Laszlo Dr, 1987–1992, A9525, SIU, PU34 [hereafter, Megay SIU], NAA. 36 Memorandum from EL Charles, Department of Immigration to Mr  McGinness, 3 July 1957, Liberal Party Migrant Advisory Council, Part 1, 1956–1963, A446/182, Department of Immigration, 1961/65401, NAA. 37 ‘Uniform youths meet Prof S.’, The Australian, 4 December 1964. 38 RW Connell & Florence Guild, Politics of the Extreme Right: Warringah 1966 (Sydney University Press, 1967), 44; Playford ‘Extremist Migrants’, Dissent, autumn 1968, 45; Rubinstein, ‘Early Manifestations of Holocaust Denial in ­Australia’, 101. 39 Among other publications, the League of Rights published Borin’s pamphlet ‘Communist Penetration into Australian Churches’ in 1954, and Butler provided the Foreward. Stephenson acted as Borin’s literary agent, including for his book The Uprooted Survive: A Tale of Two Continents (London, Melbourne: ­Heinemann, 1959). Joseph Parro, ‘P. R. Stephenson and Transnational Fascism: From Interwar Adoption to Post-War Survival and Transmission’, MA diss., University of Melbourne, 2021, 57–61; John Playford, ‘Playford’s People: A Chequered Career’, Outlook, February 1969, 15. See Evan Smith, ‘Keeping the Nazi Menace Out: George Lincoln Rockwell and the Border Control System in ­Australia and Britain in the Early 1960s’, Social Sciences, 9:9 (2020), 6. 40 Henderson, ‘A History of the Australian Extreme Right Since 1950’, 140. 41 See, for example, Australian International News Review, 18 January 1966. 42 Letter from Dr L Megay, President, Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, Central Delegacy for Australia and New Zealand to Richard Casey, Minister for External Affairs, 23 December 1957, Anti Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, 1957–1958, A10302, Department of External Affairs, 1958/343, NAA. 43 Aarons, Sanctuary!, 183. 44 Ibid., 193. 45 See Heikkilä, “Less is more or more the merrier?”, 6. 46 Australijas Latvietis, translation of article, 20 March 1964, Bagun-Berzins, ­Arnolds, 1987–1992, A9525, SIU, PU93 [hereafter, Bagun-Berzins SIU], NAA. 47 Heikkilä, “Less is more or more the merrier?”, 9. 48 Letter from Director-General ASIO to Deputy Director-General (NSW) and Regional Directors, 7 June 1965, ABN, NAA; ‘A Note on Political Fragmentation’, April 1972, Exhibit 81 (Part 2) [etc], 1975, A12388, 81 Part 2 [hereafter, Exhibit 81], NAA.

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49 There is evidence of a Romanian, who arrived in Australia via Brazil, sending intelligence with regard to Romanians in Australia, including Constantin Untaru, to the Berlin Repatriation Committee during the mid-1960s. Various letters from  Mr C Gregoriadis to the Berlin Repatriation Committee, 1965, Untaru, Volume 1 ASIO, NAA; Letter from Director General to Regional Director for ACT, 10 July 1964, ABN, NAA. 50 Robert Manne, The Petrov Affair: Politics and Espionage (Sydney: Pergamon Press, 1987), 212. 51 John Playford, The Truth Behind ‘Captive Nations Week’ and the Extremist Emigres – ABN (Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations) in Australia (Sydney: Outlook, 1968), 2, 9. 52 Looveer, SLNSW. 53 See Jean I Martin, Community and Identity: Refugee Groups in Adelaide, Immigrants in Australia 1, The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1972), 74. 54 Heikkilä, “Less is more or more the merrier?”, 7. 55 Darby, Box 46, SLNSW. 56 Henderson, ‘A History of the Australian Extreme Right Since 1950’, 142. 57 CNC NSW, Box 1, SLNSW. 58 Playford, The Truth Behind ‘Captive Nations Week’, 9. 59 ‘Balkan Anti-Soviet Organisations’, Memorandum to Regional Director, Qld, 28 July 1964, ABN, NAA. 60 Darby, Box 46, SLNSW. 61 Playford, The Truth Behind ‘Captive Nations Week’, 12, 15. 62 ‘Nazi collaborators in Australia organise’, Jewish Advocate, April-May 1959; Attachment to letter from Ernest Platz to S Einfeld, President, ECAJ, 7 December 1953, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 8, SLNSW; Egon Kunz, Blood and Gold: Hungarians in Australia (Melbourne: F W Cheshire, 1969), 188. 63 Stephen Lovas, ‘Politics of Hungarian Migrants in Australia’, MA diss., Department of Government, University of Sydney, 1969, 58, 50, 53. 64 Registration of newspapers, periodicals and books – “Hungarista Bulletin” ­Hungarist Movement – World Association of Anti-Communist Hungarists – Bela KANTOR, 1966, PP263/1, Postmaster General’s Department, 228/4/1523, NAA; Lynn, ‘Hungary’, in East Central European Migrations During the Cold War: A Handbook, ed. Anna Mazurkiewicz (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2019), 185. 65 Ethnic Press Analysis Service, September 1972, MEGADJA, Frank, 1959–1971, A6119, ASIO, 3207, NAA. 66 ‘“Nyilaskeresztes” (Arrowhead Cross Society)’, memorandum from Regional Director, Tasmania to Deputy Commissioner of Police, Hobart, 28 July 1953, Dr  Victor A PADANYI, 1953–1954, A6119, ASIO, 171 [hereafter, Padanyi ASIO], NAA. 67 Ilona Fekete, ‘From Arrow Cross to Cogwheel: Australian-Hungarian Diaspora and the 1990s Far-Right in Hungary’, Australian Association for European History, Online Conference, 2021 (unpublished). 68 Letter from Mr C Aronsfeld to Dr J D Playford, 14 October 1963, and Letter to Ernest Platz, Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism from Mr C Aronsfeld, Correspondence with Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Antisemitism, 24 July 1951–12 September 1963, 3000/1/680/1-49 [hereafter, Correspondence with JCCF&A; ‘List of suspected leaders of Hungarian Nazis in Australia’, undated, Australia, 1940–1962, 1658/10/5/1 [hereafter, Australia]; Letter to Dr A Wiener, Wiener Library, from Monty Schaffer, Victorian Jewish

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Board of Deputies, 19 May 1960, Correspondence ECAJ, 3000/9/1/422, W ­ iener Holocaust Library, United Kingdom [hereafter, Wiener Library]; ‘Hungarist Movement’, Minute for Regional Director, SA, 7 January, 1959, MEGADJA, Ferenc, 1959–1971, A6119, ASIO, 3207 [hereafter, Megadja ASIO], NAA; Personal correspondence from Ilona Fekete, 19 September 2019; Aarons, Sanctuary!, 168, 169. 69 ‘List of suspected leaders of Hungarian Nazis in Australia’, undated, Australia, Wiener Library; Personal correspondence from Ilona Fekete, 19 September 2019 and 25 November 2022. 70 LASZLO, Andrew, 1950-1951, A6126, ASIO, 41, NAA; List attached to letter from Ben Green, ECAJ, to Holt, Minister for Immigration, 19 March 1951, Correspondence with Victorian Jewish Board of Deputies, 3000/9/1/1463/1-16 [hereafter, Correspondence Board], Wiener Library. 71 ‘Hungarian Activities in Sydney’, 15 December 1950, Suspected Nazi Party Activities Amongst Migrants in Australia, 1949–1954, A6122, ASIO, 163 [hereafter, Suspected Nazi Party, ASIO], NAA; ‘Hungarian Meeting, Sydney, [date illegible] subsequently reported in the Sydney Sunday Sun’, Memorandum to the Director, Sydney, 14 April 1950, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, SLNSW; Miriam Gilson & Jerzy Zubrzycki, The Foreign-Language Press in Australia, 1848-1964 (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1967), 29, 30; Aarons, War Criminals Welcome, 303. 72 ‘Rev IG Ladomery: Becsulettel and Sorsunk – Hungarian Publication’, memorandum, 29 May 1958; and memorandum, 29 May 1956; and memorandum, 12 December 1955, Stephen LADOMERY [aka LADOMERSZKI/LADAMEYERSKY] – Volume 1, 1955-1958, A6119, ASIO, 2734 [hereafter, Ladomery ASIO], NAA. 73 ASIO assessed distribution at around 60 subscribers. ‘Rev IG Ladomery: Becsulettel and Sorsunk – Hungarian Publication’, memorandum, 29 May 1958; and ‘Hungarian Newspaper Published in Sydney – Becsulettel (Per Honesty), Evaluation’, 4 May 1955, Ladomery ASIO, NAA. 74 John Playford, ‘Migrant of the Year’, The Bridge, Oct–Nov 1967, 59. 75 ‘Hungarian Activities in Sydney’, report from Investigator to Principal Section Officer C, 15 December 1950, Suspected Nazi Party, ASIO, NAA. 76 ‘Father Ritli: Hungarian Priest’, Memorandum to the Director, 16 May 1950, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 11, SLNSW. 77 Letter from Gabor Schupp, received 30 January 1952, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 1, SLNSW; Indexed (C.I.), Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 11, SLNSW. 78 ‘“Nyilaskeresztes” (Arrowhead Cross Society)’, memorandum from Regional Director, Tasmania to Deputy Commissioner of Police, Hobart, 28 July 1953, Victor Padanyi ASIO, NAA; Indexed (C.I.), Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 11, SLNSW. 79 Tamás Stark, ‘Antisemitic Writings of the Arrow Cross Emigration’, in Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide, eds. John K Roth, Elisabeth Maxwell, Margot Levy and Wendy Whitworth (London: Palgrave, 2001), 906. 80 Ilona Fekete, ‘Sons of Nimrod: The Ethno-Genesis of Hungarians in the Diaspora and its Reception’, Australian Historical Association Conference, University of New South Wales, 2021 (unpublished). 81 Poljar had split from the Hungarist movement in 1959 to form a rival organisation, the Hungarian Brotherhood (Hungarista Testvéri Közösség). Memorandum from the Director-General, ASIO, 21 May 1969, Polgar, Lajos Miscellaneous Papers, 1969, A6119, ASIO, 3853, NAA; Fekete, ‘Sons of Nimrod’, 4.

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82 Fekete, ‘Sons of Nimrod’, 3. 83 ‘Jenö Csicsáky: The Hungarian “Mu”’, https://moly-hu.translate.goog/konyvek/ csicsaky-jeno-a-magyar-mu?_x_tr_sl=hu&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_ pto=sc. 84 Fekete, ‘Sons of Nimrod’, 4; Fekete, ‘From Arrow Cross to Cogwheel’, 6. See ‘Anthony (Antal) Endrey QC’, Immigration Place Australia, https://immigrationplace.com.au/story/anthony-antal-endrey-qc-2. 85 Letter from N Robinson, World Jewish Congress to Monty Schaffer, Victorian Jewish Board of Deputies, 8 April 1960; and letter from GC Aronsfeld to ­Schaffer, 21 March 1960, Correspondence Board, Wiener Library. 86 Dennis Eisenberg described Karoly Nesz as one of the most senior Hungarian fascists in Australia. Fekete, ‘From Arrow Cross to Cogwheel’, 7; see Karoly Nesz, 1987–1992, A9525, SIU, PU37 [hereafter, Karoly Nesz SIU], NAA. 87 Letter to Dr A Wiener, Wiener Library, from Monty Schaffer, Victorian Jewish Board of Deputies, 11 March 1960; and letter to Monty Schaffer, Victorian Jewish Board of Deputies, from Dr A Wiener, 12 May 1960, Correspondence Board; and ‘List of suspected leaders of Hungarian Nazis in Australia’, undated, Australia, Wiener Library. 88 ‘NESZ, Karl or Karoly or Charles’, memorandum from Attorney-General’s Department to Headquarters, ASIO, 7 October 1955; and file notes, 21 April 1953, 12 January 1954 and 13 October 1954, Karl Nesz ASIO, NAA; File note, 12 January 1954, Victor Padanyi ASIO, NAA. 89 This seems to have been part of a coordinated worldwide swastika daubing campaign. There were also earlier antisemitic occurrences with unknown perpetrators, including the desecration of Jewish graves in Fawkner Cemetery, ­Melbourne, in 1952. ECAJ Report of the Standing Committee on Public Relations for the Half Yearly Conference, Sydney, February 1952, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 8, SLNSW; ‘Jewish Council Makes Report’, The Australian Jewish Herald, 18 March 1960; Fekete, ‘From Arrow Cross to Cogwheel’, 3; David Horner, The Spy Catchers: The Official History of ASIO 1949–1963 (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen and Unwin, 2014), 447; see Associations individual – League of Rights – Volume 3, 1961-1966, A6122, ASIO, 1628, NAA. 90 Katalin Kádár Lynn, ‘Hungary’, in East Central European Migrations During the Cold War: A Handbook, ed. Anna Mazurkiewicz (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2019), 184; Letter to Monty Schaffer, Victorian Jewish Board of Deputies, from Dr A Wiener, 12 May 1960, Correspondence Board; and ‘List of suspected leaders of Hungarian Nazis in Australia’, undated, Australia, Wiener Library. 91 ‘Laszlo Megay’, memorandum from Spry, Attorney-General’s Department Headquarters to Secretary, Department of Immigration, 3 July 1957; and Memorandum, undated; and Emil Havas, letter to the Editor, Az Ember, 5 May 1956 (translation), Megay SIU, NAA; Letter from Dezso Rapaics (de Ruhmwerth), Life President of the Hungarian Australian Society (Vic) to John Playford, 29 August 1963, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 21, SLNSW; Playford, The Truth Behind ‘Captive Nations Week’, 18–19. 92 Lovas, ‘Politics of Hungarian Migrants in Australia’, 34. 93 ‘Rev IG Ladomery: Becsulettel and Sorsunk – Hungarian Publication’, memorandum, 29 May 1958, Ladomery ASIO, NAA. 94 Hatikva, 1 September 1950, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 21, SLNSW; Lovas, ‘Politics of Hungarian Migrants in Australia’, 35. 95 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 275. 96 Memorandum, 23 October 1955, Ladomery ASIO, NAA.

124  The ‘Whole Exiles’ Set-Up in Australia

97 Aarons, War Criminals Welcome, 327. 98 Vitéz Rapaics Dezsö, ‘Alakítsuk meg a Magyar Nemzeti Bizottmány’, Kroniká, 15 July 1956. 99 Letter from Dezse de Rapaics to the United Council of Migrants from Communist-Dominated Europe, 24 October 1955, CNC NSW, Box 24, SLNSW; Letter from Major-General Dezso Rapaics to John Playford, 13 December 1956; and letter from Dezso Rapaics (de Ruhmwerth), Life President of the Hungarian Australian Society (Vic) to John Playford, 29 August 1963, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 21, SLNSW. 100 ‘In Australia’, The Australian Jewish News, 10 August 1956; the articles in Az Ember were published on 5 May, 2 June and 28 July 1956; see Megay SIU, NAA. 101 ‘Europe May Be Overrun’, Age, 5 November 1956. 102 Letter from Gluck Andor, Hatikva to E Platz, 10 February 1958, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 21, SLNSW. 103 Australia would ultimately resettle 13,177 Hungarian refugees using ‘abridged screening’, with ‘the acceptance of some degree of risk’. Horner, The Spy Catchers, 515, 516. 104 House of Representatives Hansard, 29 August 1957; Letter from Ernest Platz to Dr Martin Foldi, 23 January 1958, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 21, SLNSW. 105 ‘Hungarian Activities in Sydney’, Report, 18 November 1950, Suspected Nazi Party Activities Amongst Migrants in Australia, 1949–1954, A6122, ASIO, 163, NAA; Letter from Heyes, Department of Immigration to Director, CIS, 10 December 1953, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 11, SLNSW. 106 ‘Extreme right-wing political organisations and movements of Hungarian immigrants in Australia’, memorandum, 24 November 1953, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes, Box 21, SLNSW. 107 Memorandum from Regional Director, Tasmania, 28 July 1953, Padanyi ASIO, NAA. 108 Letter from United Council of Migrants from Communist Dominated Europe in Australia to redacted, 4 January 1955, Ladomery ASIO, NAA. 109 Lovas, ‘Politics of Hungarian Migrants in Australia’, 125. 110 ‘Hungarist Movement’, 28 January 1959, Molnar, Ferenc Kalman (aka Frank) Volume 1, 1957–1969, A6119, ASIO, 3442 [hereafter, Molnar ASIO, Volume 1], NAA. 111 ‘Hungarist Movement’, Minute from South Australia to Regional Director, SA, 7 January 1959, Megadja ASIO, NAA. 112 Út és Cél, translation, c. January 1955, Ladomery ASIO, NAA. 113 Drew Cottle and Angela Keys, ‘Fascism in Exile: ‘Fascism in Exile: UstashaLinked Organisations in Australia’, in Histories of Fascism and Anti-Fascism in Australia and New Zealand, eds. Evan Smith, Jayne Persian and Vashti Jane Fox (London: Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right, 2022), 122; Crossexamination of Stanko Ivankovic, Rover v Ivankovic, 26 June 1957, Srecko ROVER – Volume 1, 1953–1965, A6119, ASIO, 2737 [hereafter, Rover ASIO, Volume 1], NAA. 114 Mate Nikola Tokić, ‘Avengers of Bleiburg: Émigré Politics, Discourses of Victimhood and Radical Separatism during the Cold War’, Croatian Political Science Review, 55:2 (2018): 76. 115 ‘Croatian Liberation Movement (HOP), Central Council of Croatian Associations in Australia (SOHDA)’, memorandum to Headquarters, ASIO, 19 February 1965, Fabian LOVOKOVIC – Volume 1, A6119, ASIO, 2792 [hereafter, Lovokovic ASIO, Volume 1], NAA; Kristina Kalfic, ‘“The Bomb is Set …”: Responses to Croatian Political Activism in Australia, 1947–1989’, PhD diss., University

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of Wollongong, 2017, 158; see Hamish McDonald, Reasonable Doubt: Spies, Police and the Croatian Six (Bondi Junction, NSW: Doosra Media, 2019), 192. 116 ‘Yugoslavia – The Ustashi and the Croatian Separatist Problem’, memorandum, 27 September 1972, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP79R00967A 000500020001-7.pdf; see Gojko Sekulovski, Yugoslav Ambassador, cited in John Blaxland, The Protest Years: The Official History of ASIO, 1963–1975, Volume II (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2015), 141. 117 [Add Spry ignored when it came to the left, as pointed out by – Burgmann etc] Kalfic, ‘The Bomb is Set …’, 148, n. 54, 149; Aarons, Sanctuary!, 140, 229. 118 Aarons, Sanctuary!, 209–218. 119 File Note, March 1955, Tome KRPAN, 1955-1956, A6126, ASIO, 1127, NAA. 120 Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, 1 December 1955. 121 Vesna Drapač, ‘Perceptions of Post-WWII Croatian Immigrants: The South Australian Case’, Croatian Studies Review, 3–4 (2004), 28, 31; Aarons, Sanctuary!, 226-227. 122 ‘Ljubomir VUINA: Applicant for Landing Permit’, memorandum from Field ­Officer to Senior Section Officer ‘F’, 21 May 1964, VUINA, Ljubimir, ­1987–1992, A9525, SIU, PU95, NAA. 123 Aarons, Sanctuary!, 226–227. 124 Aarons, Sanctuary!, 209, 227; Aarons, War Criminals Welcome, 401. 125 Mate Nikola Tokić, Croatian Radical Separatism and Diaspora Terrorism During the Cold War (Chapel Hill, NC: Purdue University Press, 2020), 146. 126 References to Drina indicate an ambition for Bosnian land, outside Croatia proper. Aarons, Sanctuary!, 228; Alexander Mitchell Lee, ‘“They Seem Like a Good Bunch”: Liberal Party Support for Violent Croatian Nationalism in Australia, 1949–1972’, PhD diss., Australian National University, 2022, 86. 127 Tokić, Croatian Radical Separatism, 146. 128 Attorney-General’s Department, Special Investigations Unit, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1994), 89, 90. 129 Bujanovic was located alive in South Australia in 1987 but the investigation was not deemed to contain sufficient evidence for prosecution. Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 90. 130 Aarons, War Criminals Welcome, 405. 131 Luka Budak and Walter F Lalich, ‘The Croatians in Sydney’, Sydney Journal 1, no. 3 (2008): 92–93. 132 Tokić, Croatian Radical Separatism, 35. 133 Jurjevic, Ustasha Under the Southern Cross, 47; Tokić, Croatian Radical Separatism, 40–41. 134 Kalfic, ‘The Bomb is Set …’, 158. 135 Report, Commonwealth Police Force, 28 April 1964, Lovokovic ASIO, Volume 1, NAA; Statement of Marjan Jurjevic, undated, Ustashi Incidents – Victoria Police Reports, A432, Attorney General’s Department, 1964/2414 [hereafter, Ustashi Incidents], NAA; see ‘Croat Society Accused of Money Threats’, Canberra Times, 2 May 1964; Vicki Banovic, ‘Sieg Heil! Croat Style’, Sydney Observer, 15 February 1970. 136 Jurjevic, Ustasha Under the Southern Cross, 47. 137 Tokić, Croatian Radical Separatism, 67. 138 Giorgio Cingolani and Pino Adriano, Nationalism and Terror: Ante Pavelić and Ustasha Terrorism from Fascism to the Cold War (Hungary: Central European University Press, 2018), 422. 139 Statement of Srecko Rover, c. 22 July 1964, Rover ASIO, Volume 1, NAA; Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 66, 68; Marjan Jurjevic, ‘Reasons for Nomination as War Criminals’,

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Ustashi Incidents, NAA; see United Croats Melbourne, Dosta Sa Zlocinima: Povodom atentata na g. Srecka Rovera I suprugu (1966). 140 Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 67. 141 Aarons, Sanctuary!, 224. 142 Statement of Srecko Rover, c. 22 July 1964, Rover ASIO, Volume 1, NAA. 143 See Rover ASIO, Volume 1, NAA. 144 ‘£500 Damages for Accusation’, Canberra Times, 28 June 1957. 145 Aarons, War Criminals Welcome, 402; see Rover ASIO, Volume 1, NAA. 146 Tokić, Croatian Radical Separatism, 46; Lee, ‘They Seem Like a Good Bunch’, 74. 147 Lee, ‘They Seem Like a Good Bunch’, 74. 148 Jurjevic, Ustasha Under the Southern Cross, 45, 27; ‘Croatian Activities – Queensland’, memorandum to Headquarters, ASIO, 18 January 1965, Lovokovic ASIO, Volume 1, NAA. 149 Jurjevic, Ustasha Under the Southern Cross, 46; ‘A Few Words’, Pregled, March 1972, translation, Terrorist Activities – Ustasha, 1967–1973, M132, Attorney General’s Department, 330 [hereafter, Terrorist Activities], NAA. 150 ROVER Srecko – Part 1, 1956–1972, A6980, Department of Immigration, S201953 [hereafter, Rover Part 1], NAA; Tokic, ‘Party Politics’, 401. 151 Aarons, Sanctuary, 164. 152 Jurjevic, Ustasha Under the Southern Cross, 27; Statement of Srecko Rover, c. 22 July 1964, Rover ASIO, Volume 1, NAA. 153 Jurjevic, Ustasha Under the Southern Cross, 42, 43; see Lovokovic ASIO, ­Volume 1, NAA. 154 ‘Croats in Australia’, Outlook, Nov–Dec 1963, 10. 155 Jurjevic, Ustasha Under the Southern Cross, 44. 156 Statement of Ivica Kokic, undated; and Marjan Jurjevic, ‘Reasons for Nomination as War Criminals’, Ustashi Incidents, NAA. 157 KOKIC, Ivica, 1955–1984, A6980, Department of Immigration, S203347 [hereafter, Kokic Imm], NAA. 158 Aarons, Sanctuary!, 241–242, 249; see ROMAC, Stephan Roch, 1961–1986, A6937, ASIO, PP/13 [hereafter, Romac, ASIO], NAA. 159 Aarons, Sanctuary!, 249, 243–245, 248. 160 ‘Kardinal Stepinac Society’, report, 14 October 1965, Fabian LOVOKOVIC – Volume 2, 1965, A6119, ASIO 2793 [hereafter, Lovokovic ASIO, Volume 2], NAA. 161 Catholic Worker, February 1963. 162 Cingolani and Adriano, Nationalism and Terror, 422; Dave Davies, Ustasha in Australia (Communist Party of Australia, 1972), 5. 163 Bulletin, 26 January 1963; Statement of Fr. Kasic, undated, Ustashi Incidents, NAA. 164 ‘Catholic Fascists’, Catholic Worker, February 1963; Jurjevic, 47. 165 JURJEVIC, Marjan – Nationality: Yugoslavian – Arrived Melbourne per Strathaird 30 April 1950, 1950–1956, B78, Department of Immigration, 1956/ JURJEVIC M, NAA. 166 ‘Santamaria and Ustashi “trimmings”’, Guardian, 20 February 1964. 167 Marjan Jurjevic, ‘Reasons for Nomination as War Criminals’, Ustashi Incidents, NAA. 168 Blaxland The Protest Years, 126; ‘Jurjevic, Marjan’, memorandum from D Farrant, Constable First Class, to the Superintendent, Victoria District, 10 June 1964, Ustashi Incidents, NAA; Lee, ‘They Seem Like a Good Bunch’, 180. 169 4 Corners transcript, 10 June 1972, ROVER, Srecko, 1986, A6937, ASIO, PP/2, NAA.

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170 ‘Inquiries re Mirijan Jurjevic’, memorandum from John L Jansen, Senior Investigator, 18 August 1987, Lovokovic SIU, NAA. 171 Stuart Koschade, ‘The Internal Dynamics of Terrorist Cells: A Social Network Analysis of Terrorist Cells in an Australian Context’, PhD diss., Queensland ­University of Technology, 2007, 187. 172 Tokić, Croatian Radical Separatism, 86, 92, 145. 173 ‘Croatian Liberation Movement (HOP), Central Council of Croatian Associations in Australia (SOHDA)’, memorandum to Headquarters, ASIO, 19 February 1965, Lovokovic ASIO, Volume 1, NAA; Koschade, ‘The Internal Dynamics of Terrorist Cells’, 191, ftn. 66. 174 Excerpt of interview, undated, Regional Director, Queensland, Lovokovic ASIO, Volume 1, NAA. 175 Rover’s headstone at Fawkner cemetery in Melbourne is inscribed with the words ‘Otac hrvatske politicke emigracije’ (the father of Croatian political emigration). See ‘Croatian Activities in Australia’, memorandum to Headquarters, ASIO, 15 February 1965, Lovokovic ASIO, Volume 1, NAA; ‘Croatian A ­ ctivities  – Queensland’, memorandum to Headquarters, ASIO, 18 January 1965; and ­ Statement by Marjan Jurjevic, undated, Ustashi Incidents, NAA; Rover ASIO, Volume 1, NAA; Tokic, Croatian Radical Separatism, 73; C ­ ingolani and Adriano, Nationalism and Terror, 421; Ben Schneiders and Simone Fox Koob, ‘“Symbols of Hate”: The lingering afterlife of Croatian fascism in Australia’, Age/Sydney Morning Herald, 11 June 2023. 176 See Lovokovic ASIO, Volume 1, NAA. 177 Summary, Central Crime Intelligence Bureau, May 1970, Kokic Imm, NAA; ‘Adolf Jankovic’, Memorandum, Commonwealth Police, undated, unsigned, JANKOVIC Ilona, 1957–1967, A6980, Department of Immigration, S200830 [hereafter, Ilona Jankovic], NAA; ‘Croatian Activities’, memorandum to Headquarters, ASIO, 5 February 1965, Lovokovic ASIO, Volume 1, NAA; Koschade, ‘The Internal Dynamics of Terrorist Cells’, 192, ftn. 81. 178 Spremnost, Jan–Feb 1963, translation in Jurjevic, Ustashu Under the Southern Cross, 38; ‘Is Army Helping Fascist Group?’, Tribune, 3 April 1963. 179 Statement of Luka Madjeric, undated, and Statement of Ivica Kokic, undated, Ustashi Incidents, NAA; Koschade, ‘The Internal Dynamics of Terrorist Cells’, 193, ftn. 85. 180 ‘Command of the Croatian Liberation Movement’, memorandum to Headquarters, ASIO, 24 December 1965, Lovokovic ASIO, Volume 2, NAA. 181 ‘UPMALIS, Arvids’, 6 April 1966, Mark Aarons papers relating to War Crimes & other papers, 30(59), MLMSS 10621 [hereafter, Aarons Papers], SLNSW; see ‘Menzies Govt. Harbors Latvian Fascists Here’, undated, Daugavas Vanagi, ­Latvian Relief Society Volume 1, 1952–1977, A6122, ASIO, 2993, NAA. 182 ‘“Plast” – Ukrainian Youth Movement’, 24 May 1955, Aarons Papers, SLNSW. 183 Tokić, Croatian Radical Separatism and Diaspora Terrorism During the Cold War (Purdue University, 2020), 2; Tokic, ‘The End of “Historical-Ideological Bedazzlement”’, 422, 432; McDonald, Reasonable Doubt, 70. 184 Koschade, ‘The Internal Dynamics of Terrorist Cells’, 191, 196. 185 Antoshin, ‘NTS in Australia During the Cold War’, 3. 186 Tokić, Croatian Radical Separatism, 100–102. 187 Tokic, ‘Party Politics’, 401; Tokić, Croatian Radical Separatism, 100. 188 Blaxland, The Protest Years, 120. 189 Aarons, Sanctuary!, 242. 190 Kalfic, ‘The Bomb is Set …’, 150; Senate Hansard, 10 April 1963. 191 Jurjevic, Ustasha Under the Southern Cross, 54; ‘Croats in Australia’, Outlook, Nov–Dec 1963, 10; Aarons, War Criminals Welcome, 423; Plain Australian, ‘Bigshot Pal of Ustashi’, Tribune, 4 December 1968.

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92 Kalfic, ‘The Bomb is Set …’, 162. 1 193 ‘ROMAC, Stephan Roc, born 3.3.1913, Majerje, Varasdin, Yugoslavia’, Romac, ASIO, NAA. 194 This case was ultimately unsuccessful. Jurjevic, Ustasha Under the Southern Cross, 50. 195 Jurjevic, Ustasha Under the Southern Cross, 48–49. 196 Blaxland, The Protest Years, 126. 197 Jurjevic, Ustasha Under the Southern Cross, 50, 51. 198 ‘Complacent or Panic?’, Australian Jewish News, 6 March 1964; Rubinstein, ‘Early Manifestations of Holocaust Denial in Australia’, 108, ftn. 42. 199 Executive, JCCFAS, Press Release, Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and AntiSemitism, Box 2, Australian Jewish Historical Society; ‘Notes of Deputation to the Honourable RJ Hamer, 13 May 1964’, Ustashi Incidents, NAA. 200 Jurjevic, Ustasha Under the Southern Cross, 49–50; Lachlan Clohesy, ‘Anti-­ Communism Undermined: ‘Anti-Communism Undermined: The Uncomfortable Alliances of W. C. Wentworth’, in Labour History and Its People: The 12th Biennial National Labour History Conference, Australian National University, 15–17 September 2011, ed. Melanie Nolan (Canberra, ACT: Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, 2011), 331; ‘Lewis Kent previously Lewis Kopolnai: Sponsor of mother-in-law from Yugoslavia’, memorandum from Regional Director, Victoria, to Headquarters, ASIO, 7 August 1964, KENT, Lewis aka ­KAPOLNAI (KOPOLNAI), Bata, Volume 1, A6119, ASIO, 5884 [hereafter, Kent ASIO], NAA; ‘Bomb Thrown at ALP Candidate’, Canberra Times, 25 April 1967. 201 Memorandum from Field Officer to Senior Field Officer, 24 December 1963, Kent ASIO, NAA. 202 Clohesy, ‘Anti-Communism Undermined’, 330. 203 ‘Deputation from the Croatian Liberation Movement’, Department of Immigration, 26 May 1964, Lovokovic ASIO, Volume 1, NAA. 204 Letter from Srecko Rover, Croatian National Council, to William Snedden, ­Attorney-General, 16 May 1964, Rover ASIO, Volume 1, NAA. 205 Statement of Srecko Rover, c. 22 July 1964, Rover ASIO, Volume 1, NAA. 206 Two men were also convicted of planning to blow up a statue of General Draza Mihailovic at the Serbian Centre in Canberra. There were other incidents at Serbian churches. ‘Yugoslavs Jailed for Nine Months’, Canberra Times, 13 January 1970; ‘Terrorism and Violence in Australia: More Serious Acts of Terrorism and Violence reported since 1963’, undated, Interdepartmental Committee on Terrorism, Violence in Australia, 1972, A432, Attorney General’s Department, 1972/7013 [hereafter, Interdepartmental AG], NAA. 207 Blaxland, The Protest Years, 131; See ‘Disturbances in the Yugoslav Community’, memorandum from LF Dunn, Sergeant, to the Superintendent, Victoria District, 26 February 1965, Kent ASIO, NAA. 208 House of Representatives Hansard, 27 August 1964, Question: Yugoslav Immigrant Organisations. 209 Blaxland, The Protest Years, 137. 210 Memorandum, Field Officer, undated, Rover ASIO, Volume 1, NAA. 211 Spry, cited in Blaxland, The Protest Years, 123. 212 Blaxland, The Protest Years, 134, 127, 133, 137. 213 Garfield Barwick, Minister for External Affairs to Hubert Opperman, Minister for Shipping and Transport, 10 May 1963, Serbian-Croatian Relations – Part 1, 1962–1963, A6980, Department of Immigration, S250693 [hereafter, SerbianCroatian], NAA. 214 Gjokmarković was probably acting as a provocateur, if so. ‘Croatian Activities in Australia’, memorandum to Headquarters, ASIO, 15 February 1965; and ‘Croatian Activities in Queensland’, memorandum to B1 Officer, Queensland,

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3 February 1965, Lovokovic ASIO, Volume 1, NAA; Letter from EA Barkworth, General Secretary to the President, Good Neighbour Council of Queensland, 17 October 1973, Serbian-Croatian, NAA. 215 Blaxland, The Protest Years, 128; Tokić, Croatian Radical Separatism, 9, 111, 116; McDonald, Reasonable Doubt, 202. 216 McDonald, Reasonable Doubt, 59, 61, 205. 217 Geza Pasti disappeared in France in 1965; it is not clear whether he returned to Yugoslavia. Blaxland, The Protest Years, 143; ‘Croatian Activities’, memorandum to Headquarters, ASIO, 5 February 1965, Lovokovic ASIO, Volume 1, NAA; Interview with Enver Begovic and Saban Piric, undated, Ustashi Incidents, NAA; Lee ‘They Seem Like a Good Bunch’, 88. 218 Blaxland, The Protest Years, 149; see interview with Ivan Murdrinic, 2 June 1972, Terrorist Activities, NAA. 219 ‘Violence in Australia’, This Day Tonight, 18 September 1972. 220 ‘Croatian Activities’, memorandum from Senior Field Officer, Victorian Office, Melbourne, 2 April 1965, Rover ASIO, Volume 1, NAA. 221 Jurjevic blamed the Ustasa. Jurjevic, Ustasha Under the Southern Cross, 59; Kristy Campion, ‘The Ustaša in Australia: A Review of Right-Wing Ustaša Terrorism from 1963–1973, and Factors that Enabled their Endurance’, Salus Journal 6, no. 2 (2018): 45–46; McDonald, Reasonable Doubt, 209, 211. 222 Blaxland, The Protest Years, 146; see ‘Protest to PM over Bombing’, Canberra Times, 12 January 1972. 223 McDonald, Reasonable Doubt, 206, 213; Blaxland, The Protest Years, 143. 224 Report, Field Officer, c. 22 July 1964; and ‘Vro Viskic’, memorandum, 12 March 1964, Rover ASIO, Volume 1, NAA; Blaxland, The Protest Years, 131; McDonald, Reasonable Doubt, 207. 225 This property was also used for a HOP annual conference and a Cardinal ­Stepinac Society picnic in 1965. ‘More Police Action on Ustashi Sought’, Sun, 12 May 1964; see Lovokovic ASIO, Volume 2, NAA. 226 Jurjevic, Ustasha Under the Southern Cross, 58. 227 ‘Police at Croat Interview’, Age, 20 May 1964; BA Santamaria, ‘Point of View: The War Against Croatians’, News Weekly, 21 May 1964. 228 I Leibler, ‘Australia’s Radical Right’, Quadrant (1966): 18. 229 Indeed, in 1971 Lovokovic offered HOP assistance for anti-Soviet demonstrations organised by the Jewish Board of Deputies in Sydney; this offer was declined. McDonald, Reasonable Doubt, 113; ‘Croatian Community’, Contact Report, 23 March 1971, Fabian LOVOKOVIC – Volume 4, A6119, ASIO, 2795 [hereafter, Lovokovic ASIO, Volume 4], NAA. 230 See Lovokovic ASIO, Volume 2, NAA. 231 Menart was also a prominent member of the NSW Ethnic Communities’ Council. See Vladimir Menart, ‘Notes on the Definition of “Ethnic”’, 2 October 1975, Making Multicultural Australia, http://www.multiculturalaustralia.edu.au/doc/ menart_1.pdf. 232 S. Bjelica, Secretary to the Consulate General of Yugoslavia, ‘Freedom Fighters in Battle for Bennelong’, Letter to Editor, The Bulletin, 13 January 1962; ‘Yugoslav Freedom Fighters Movement’, memorandum, 23 June 1962, Urbanchich ASIO, Volume 1, NAA. 233 ‘Yugoslav Freedom Fighters Movement’, memoranda, 6 April 1962 and 23 May 1962, Urbancic ASIO, Volume 1, NAA. 234 ‘Police Act on Threats’, Canberra Times, 16 January 1971; ‘Crude Bombs Blast Soviet Embassy’, Canberra Times, 18 January 1971; ‘Embassy Bomb Blast and Letter Threats “Rare Coincidence”’, Australian Jewish Times, 21 January 1971; ‘Prisoners Were Guarded by Civilians’, Canberra Times, 23 April 1971; ­Blaxland, The Protest Years, 146.

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35 Jurjevic, Ustasha Under the Southern Cross, 59. 2 236 ‘Threat to Kill Priest in Church: Croat “war” in Sydney’, Sydney Morning Herald, 10 May 1964; Letter from Srecko Rover, Croatian National Council, to W ­ illiam Snedden, Attorney-General, 16 May 1964, Rover ASIO, Volume 1, NAA. 237 ‘Croatian National Committee for Europe (3/2/1273)’, memorandum, 1 April 1971, Ljubomir [Lubomir] VUINA – Miscellaneous papers, A6119, ASIO, 2742, NAA; Jurjevic, 59; ‘Tomislav Lesic: Bomb-Prone Croat’, Tribune, 26 September 1972. 238 ‘Srecko ROVER’, memorandum, 23 August 1963, Rover ASIO, Volume 1, NAA. 239 Police interview with Pernar, 12 October 1966, Rover Part 1, NAA. 240 ‘Croatian Activities’, Report, 6 November 1966, Aarons Papers, SLNSW. 241 ‘Subject: Attempted Murder of Mr Srecko Rover and His Wife’, Public Appeal: By the Croatian Associations to the Federal Government of Australia, undated, Rover Part 1, NAA. 242 ‘Mr. Srecko Rover and his wife’, memorandum from Spry, Director General of Security, ASIO, to the Secretary, Department of Immigration, 28 November 1966, Rover Part 1, NAA. 243 Jurjevic, Ustasha Under the Southern Cross, 33; ‘Kokic, Ivica’, Memorandum from RF Bothe, Investigation Officer, to the Director, Special Reports Branch, 7 May 1970, Kokic Imm, NAA. 244 Statement of Jose Bujanovic, 26 April 1972, Lovokovic SIU, NAA. 245 Lee, ‘They Seem Like a Good Bunch’, 154, 156. 246 Tokić, Croatian Radical Separatism, 138, 138 ftn. 85, 147; Jurjevic, Ustasha Under the Southern Cross, 42; Koschade, ‘The Internal Dynamics of Terrorist Cells’, 70McDonald, Reasonable Doubt, 205. 247 Letter from L Aarons, National Secretary for the National Committee, Communist Party of Australia, Sydney, to Senator Lionel Murphy, 18 September 1972, Terrorist Activities, NAA. 248 Blaxland, The Protest Years, 152. 249 ‘Terrorism: its nature, objective and revolutionary role’, ASIO draft report, 25  September 1972, Interdepartmental AG, NAA; Ivor J Greenwood, ‘Terrorism and Violence in Australia’, 28 September 1972, Acts of Political Violence and Terrorism – possible Royal Commission, 1972, A432, Attorney General’s Department, 1972/5776, NAA. 250 McDonald, Reasonable Doubt, 64; Lee, ‘They Seem Like a Good Bunch’, 188. 251 Lee, ‘They Seem Like a Good Bunch’, 176; Letter from Tina Taemets to PM Whitlam, 12 December 1974, Statutory Declaration of Tina Taemets 1974, and ‘PM called me Nazi, says woman’, undated c. 23 November 1974, Estonian Society in Brisbane – Whitlam, Estonian Archives of Australia. 252 Notes of meeting at ASIO Regional Directorate, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, 15 March 1973; and Notes of meeting at ASIO Headquarters, ­Melbourne, 16 March 1973, http://tenc.net/docs73.htm. 253 Lee, ‘They Seem Like a Good Bunch’, 10. 254 Peter Barbour, Director-General of ASIO, cited in Blaxland, The Protest Years, 336. 255 Notes of meeting at ASIO Headquarters, Melbourne, 16 March 1973, http:// tenc.net/docs73.htm. 256 Tokić, ‘Party Politics’, 411; Tokić, Croatian Radical Separatism, 151. 257 Aarons, War Criminals Welcome, 271; McDonald, Reasonable Doubt, 113. 258 ‘List of suspected leaders of Hungarian Nazis in Australia’, undated, Australia, 1940–1962, 1658/10/5/3, Wiener Library. 259 ‘Hungarian Affairs in Victoria’, memorandum, 1961, Karoly Nesz SIU, NAA. 260 ‘Membership and Contact List & Correspondents of the Australian Nationalist Workers’ Party, undated (c. October 1960), Australia, Wiener Library.

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261 Kantor’s ‘chief assistant’ was Arpad Szedlak. Article (translated), Út és Cél, undated c. 1954, attachment to letter from United Council of Migrants from Communist Dominated Europe in Australia to redacted, 4 January 1955, Ladomery ASIO, NAA. 262 Perseverance was published in Australia until 1992, when Laszlo Nagy was listed as editor with Bela Kantor as publisher. International Hungarian fascist newspapers, including Hídfo (Bridgehead, 1948-1995), were also distributed in Australia. ‘Arrowhead Cross’, memorandum, 10 July 1953, Kantor ASIO, Volume 1, ASIO Central Office, A6119, 256 [hereafter, Kantor ASIO], NAA; Hungarista Mozgalom Ausztráliai Szórványának Tájékoztató Szolgálata, 1 January 1969; Rubinstein, ‘Early Manifestations of Holocaust Denial in Australia’, 101, 108 ftn. 42; Zoltán Kékesi, Memory in Hungarian Fascism: A Cultural History (London: Routledge, 2023), 133). 263 ‘Anti-Jew Depot Alleged: Merredin Named As Base’, Daily News, 11 October 1965. 264 Jewish Research Services were later ‘officially adopted’ by the Victorian Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women. ‘P, Arnoldas’, Alan L. Benjamin, File Note P768, November 1976; and ‘Visit by Mr Alan Benjamin’, file note, LR Luck, First Secretary, Australian Embassy, Vienna, 11 January 1978; and letter from Alan Benjamin to Simon Wiesenthal, 9 May 1978, Arnoldas P SIU, NAA. 265 ‘Record of Interview with Bela Kantor by couple [Alan L & Norma Benjamin] introducing themselves as Jewish ex-servicemen interested in Nazis’, 23 January 1970, Kantor, ASIO, NAA. 266 Hungarista Mozgalom Ausztráliai Szórványának Tájékoztató Szolgálata, 1 January 1969. 267 ASIO assessed distribution at around 200 copies per month in 1968. Historian Hilary Rubinstein states that Perseverance also influenced the Christian Anarchists and various Holocaust denial groups loosely associated with the University of Melbourne. Minute, 10 February 1970; ‘Hungarista Bulletin’, memorandum, 17 October 1966, Kantor ASIO, NAA; Rubinstein, ‘Early Manifestations of Holocaust Denial in Australia’, 103. 268 Minute Paper, August 1973, Kantor ASIO, NAA. 269 Bela Kantor was naturalised in 1975. Minute Paper, August 1973; and Memorandum from Secretary, Department of Labour and Immigration, 23 January 1975, Kantor ASIO, NAA. 270 ‘Nazi Youth Corps in ACT’, The Courier, 8 February 1968. 271 NSPA Newsletter, January 1968, Australian Nationalist Socialist Movement, 1963–1972, A432, Attorney General’s Department, 1963/2409 PART 1 [hereafter, ANSM], NAA. 272 ‘Sieg Bloody Who’, Woroni, 22 April 1970, 9–10. 273 ‘Transcript of a Recording Made of Encounter, 27.4.68’, 22 May 1968, Molnar ASIO, Volume 1, NAA; NSPA Research Unit, ‘The Big Lie: The Six Million ­Murdered Jews, Part 1’, Australian National Socialist Journal (Summer 1968), 6. 274 ‘Graeme Theo ROYCE’, memorandum to Headquarters, ASIO, 29 June 1967, Cawthron, Edward Robert, 1961–1967, A6119, ASIO, 2246, NAA; see Smith and Persian, ‘European and Australian Fascisms’, 144. 275 Henderson, ‘A History of the Extreme Right in Australia Since 1950’, 212. 276 Wentworth later described adherents as ‘comparatively innocent’. Letter from Wentworth to NH Bowen, Attorney-General, 27 April 1968; and letter from Wentworth to NH Bowen, Attorney-General, 15 July 1971, ANSM, NAA. 277 ‘Ukrainian Demonstration Outside the Embassy of the USSR – Sunday 26th May, 1968’, 6 June 1968, Molnar ASIO, Volume 1, NAA. 278 David Harcourt, Everyone Wants to be Fuehrer: National Socialism in Australia and New Zealand (Cremorne, NSW: Angus & Robertson, 1972), 116.

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279 There were reports of ‘two Hungarians’ attending an annual HOP conference in New South Wales in 1965. Woroni, 25 July 1968, 5; ‘Fourth Conference of Croatia Youth – Croatian Liberation Movement held at Tumbi Umbi from 27th to 29th December, 1965’, memorandum from Special Branch to the Officer in Charge of Police, January 1966, Lovokovic ASIO, Volume 2, NAA. 280 Report, 15 July 1963, M Moger, 1987–1992, A9525, SIU, PU589, NAA. 281 Molnar was expelled from this club in 1973 for antisemitic comments to a Jewish member. Report, 1973, Molnar, Ferenc Kalman (aka Frank) Volume 2, 1969–1973, ASIO, A6119, 3443 [hereafter, Molnar ASIO, Volume 2], NAA; Memorandum, 11 October 1967, Molnar ASIO, Volume 1, NAA. 282 ‘Adolf Jankovic’, Memorandum, Commonwealth Police, undated, unsigned, Ilona Jankovic, NAA; Memorandum from JM Davis, Commissioner, Commonwealth Police Force, to Secretary, Attorney-General’s Department, 13 May 1970, ANSM, NAA; ‘Adolf JANKOVIC’, memorandum for Headquarters, ASIO, 9 February 1965, Lovokovic ASIO, Volume 1, A6119, 2792, NAA. 283 ‘Hungarian-Australian Club’, 29 June 1970, Molnar ASIO, Volume 2, NAA. 284 Memorandum, 26 November 1968; and Report, undated [1968], Molnar ASIO, Volume 1, NAA. 285 Harcourt, Everyone Wants to be Fuehrer, 31. 286 Transcript of a Recording Made of This Day Tonight, 28.2.69’, Molnar ASIO, Volume 1, NAA; see Jayne Persian and Karen Agutter, ‘European Post-War Migrants and Indigenous Australians: A History in Fragments’, History Australia 18, no. 1 (2021), 112–129. 287 ‘Hungarist Movement’, Minute from South Australia to Regional Director, SA, 7 January 1959, Megadja ASIO, NAA. 288 ‘Notes on Recent Development of NSPA’, March 1969, 2, Molnar ASIO, Volume 1, NAA. 289 Fekete, ‘From Arrow Cross to Cogwheel’, 3. 290 Tamás Stark notes that the 1956 revolution, and particularly the release of Ferenc Fiala, Szálasi’s press secretary, gave the Arrow Cross a new impetus. Stark, ‘Antisemitic Writings of the Arrow Cross Emigration’, 898. 291 Zoltán Gábor, ‘Slavko’, Holmi (2014), http://www.holmi.org/2014/06/zoltangabor-szlavko. 292 ‘Hungarist Movement’, memorandum to the Regional Director, South Australia, 7 January 1959; and ‘Hungarist Movement’, memorandum from the DirectorGeneral to the Regional Director, New South Wales, 15 January 1973, Megadja ASIO, NAA; ‘List of suspected leaders of Hungarian Nazis in Australia’, Australia, Wiener Library. 293 Tarisznyas was later implicated in a massive tax avoidance scheme and jailed for fraud under the name Robert Sterling. ‘Hungarist Movement’, 28 January 1959, Molnar ASIO, Volume 1, NAA; Harcourt, Everyone Wants to be Fuehrer, 38; Megadja ASIO, NAA; David Elias, ‘Costigan’s Bridge to the Tax Rebels’, The Age, 9 September 1982, 7; ‘Paradise Lost: A Cautionary Tale for All Who Dream of Land’, Sydney Morning Herald, 2 May 1981, 41. 294 Perseverance, 1 January 1969, 13. 295 ASIO report, 1972, Molnar ASIO, Volume 1, NAA. 296 Molnar and his wife, Olga, went on to found the Australian branch of a ‘Hungarian ancient faith’ and published a monthly, Hungarian Faith. Perseverance, 15 May 1969, 7; ‘Ferenc Kalman (Frank) Molnar, Immigration Place Australia, https://immigrationplace.com.au/story/ferenc-kalman-frank-molnar-2/; ‘Magyar Kulturális Szemle’, Ösi Gyökér, 1988 (translated by Ilona Fekete, 2021). 297 ‘Nationalist Socialist Party of Australia’, 17 September 1969, Kantor ASIO, NAA.

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98 Harcourt, Everyone Wants to be Fuehrer, 116; Perseverance, 15 May 1970, 8. 2 299 ‘Australian Nazis Exposed’, Tribune, 23 September 1970. 300 Memorandum, ‘National Socialist Party of Australia’, 30 July 1971, Megadja ASIO, NAA; Harcourt, Everyone Wants to be Fuehrer, 116. 301 National Socialist Bulletin, September 1971. 302 Memorandum, ‘National Socialist Party of Australia – Fourth Annual Congress, Queanbeyan, 10/11th April 1971’, 20 April 1971, Megadja, ASIO, NAA; ‘The National Socialist Party of Australia (NSPA), undated, Exhibit 81 (Part 2), NAA. 303 Perseverance, 15 June 1971, 16. 304 ‘National Socialist Party of Australia: Fourth National Congress’, 19 April 1971, Niemeyer, Errol Robert Volume 2, 1970–1973, A6119, ASIO, 3453, NAA. 305 Memorandum, ‘National Socialist Party of Australia – Fourth Annual Congress, Queanbeyan, 10/11th April 1971’, 20 April 1971, Megadja ASIO, NAA. 306 Report, 3 November 1970, Kantor ASIO, NAA.

5 WAR CRIMES INVESTIGATIONS

During the 1960s, in the wake of the Adolf Eichmann trial in Israel, the Soviet propaganda war in pursuit of those alleged war criminals who had ‘escaped’ to the west resumed. This chapter follows this resumption of interest, which resulted in the main countries of International Refugee Organisation (IRO) ­resettlement – the United States, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom – all instituting judicial processes in order to be able to either denaturalise and deport, or criminally charge domestically, alleged perpetrators of the Holocaust.1 In Australia, this late burst of official activity resulted in over 700 investigations, with three trials and no convictions. Marjan Jurjević began the publicity onslaught in Australia. Not content with exposing the Croatian Ustasha, in 1964 he printed and distributed a recent Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic publication: ‘War Criminals in Australia – Daugavas Vanagi, Who Are They?’2 This named various now-­ residents of Australia as former perpetrators: Arvīds Krīpens, an assistant to General Oskars Dankers, General-Director of Latvia during the German occupation, who had ‘solved’ the Jewish problem in Smiltene, Latvia; Arnolds Bagun-Bērzinš, a member of the Latvian Police Battalion who had taken part in massacres in Byelorussia; Kārlis Ozols, a participant in the destruction of Jewish ghettos in Riga and Byelorussia; and Jānis Labuts, Jānis Cerulis, Vilis Runka and Edgars Rungainis, all members of the Latvian Security Police.3 A laudatory biography of Arvīds Krīpens published in Australijas Latvietis a year earlier seemed to confirm allegations against him. It described Krīpens as the organiser of a group of 50 men calling themselves the ‘Green Partisans,’ who in 1941 ‘cut off the only road out of Riga, stopping Soviet citizens and Jews from escaping’ the Germans. When the Latvian Legion was formed, he took command of the 15th Waffen SS Division, 32nd Infantry DOI: 10.4324/9780429276880-7

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Group, serving in the east. To evade repatriation in the immediate post-war period, Krīpens attempted suicide, which saved him from being handed over by the British.4 This biography of Krīpens, published in Latvian, was, however, unread by Australian authorities, who judged that ‘whilst it is possible that there may be some degree of truth in the allegations, the “unmasking” or “exposure” of these persons is probably a means of persecuting them for their anti-­communist activities in this country.’ Bagun-Bērzinš was interviewed by Victoria Police and admitted joining the 26th Latvian Police Battalion under German administration; he said that his duties included ‘searching forests for partisans.’5 However, the police thought that his role as Information Officer of Daugavas Vanagi made him a particular target; a Latvian newspaper alleged that Bagun-Bērzinš had joined the RSL ‘for protection from ­Melbourne’s Jews.’6 That same year, Russian newspaper Trud published the Australian addresses of Lithuanian Balys Križanauskas, Byelorussian Tomofei Astapov aka Tom Estago and Ukrainian Henrich Wagner, denouncing them as ‘men responsible for the most terrible wrongdoings, mockery and violence against Soviet patriots.’7 This came to the attention of Australian authorities; a handwritten note on the file asked: ‘no action necessary is there?’8 Another Latvian publication, Political Refugees Unmasked, which was also publicised in various mainstream articles in Australia in 1965, denounced Arvīds Upmalis, Chief of Police in Bauska district, as responsible for the mass shootings of Jews and Roma.9 A sometime friend of his, Jānis Mūrnieks, ordered 50 copies for distribution in Australia.10 When interviewed, Upmalis admitted that he had been officer-in-charge of the Bauska police district but denied the allegations.11 He complained that he had received threatening letters from Israel and South Africa, including this missive: Murderer Do you sleep at night? Do not the murdered people visit you at night? You will not escape god’s revenge It is coming, even in Australia.12 This was particularly concerning to Upmalis because the deputy of the Arajs Kommando, Herberts Cukurs, had been exposed in Political Refugees Unmasked and subsequently assassinated by Israeli forces in Uruguay.13 Political Refugees Unmasked also named: Arvīds Mellins, implicated in the execution of several thousand Jews in Riga; Arnolds Smits and Juris ­Mikelsons, both reporters for Tevija, a ‘newspaper specially licensed and supported by the Hitlerite occupants’ whose journalists were ‘rabid instigators of race hatred’; and Argods Fricsons.14 Indeed, Fricsons – known as ‘Mr Volleyball’ to hundreds of Australian players – was to be interviewed in Australia

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twice by the German authorities in relation to proceedings in Germany against German nationals accused of murder in Liepaja, Latvia.15 Another publication, Valmiera Runa, published by the Soviet Latvian Journalists Association in 1968, contained similar accusations, including allegations against Julijs Jantiis, a guard at Valmiera concentration camp. A year later, Golos Rodini alleged that Nikolai Alfertschik had received three decorations from Hitler for carrying out mass arrests in a Smolensk ghetto, executing political prisoners in Minsk, and taking part in operations against ‘partisans.’ He was outed as living under the new name Pavlov and working as an electrician in Melbourne.16 Another publication, titled Are the Executioners Really Alive? Yes, They Are! They Live in Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Adelaide, and charged Ukrainian Fillip Kapitula with participation in a mass shooting. The author, I Dementyeva, asked: ‘Why don’t the citizens of the Australian city [Adelaide] ask their neighbour [Filipp] Kapitula, living at 15 Frederick Road, Royal Park, how he spent the Christian holiday of Assumption in 1942?’17 Around this time, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ)’s Ernest Platz wrote a frustrated letter to the editor of Australian Jewish News with regard to warnings given by a former Israeli Attorney-General that there were Nazi war criminals who may be hiding in Australia. Platz exclaimed: ‘My Council has been saying [this] for many years.’18 There were ‘many lesser Eichmanns.’19 Similarly, some years later, Alan Benjamin of the Jewish Research Services stated his intention to ‘grit [his] teeth and hang on grimly in the hope I will live long enough to see the allegations proved or disproved as the case may be.’20 During the mid-1960s, University of Adelaide academic John Playford began publishing on the various ‘extremist émigré’ groups ‘under the leadership of former Nazi collaborators’: ABN, Captive Nations, Latvians, Croatians, and Hungarians, in leftist publications such as the American Dissent.21 In 1966 an ABC radio series also accused ‘a prominent Ukrainian leader, ­Yaroslav Stetsko, of being “a nazi war criminal”.’ The Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations (AFUO) indignantly protested against this radio series, describing it as a ‘McCarthy-style Nazi witch hunt at the ABC.’22 Building on the work of Jurjević and Playford, in 1979, more than a decade later, journalist Mark Aarons (son of CPA leader Laurie) presented a documentary on ABC radio, alleging that Lyenko Urbančič had acted as a propagandist for the Nazis in Slovenia, including as editor of the major collaborationist magazine Slovensko Domobrantsvo (Slovenian Homeguard). The Yugoslav War Crimes Commission had apparently titled him ‘Little Goebbels.’23 Urbančič, though, had his political reputation as a prominent member of the Liberal Party to protect; he responded publicly that in post-war Europe his past had been ‘checked right down to the last detail.’24 This was true. The British War Office Screening Mission (the ‘Maclean Mission’) had ‘bleached’ his background so that he went from category ‘black’ through ‘grey’ to ‘white.’ In the wake of the documentary, however, Urbančič was suspended from the

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Liberal Ethnic Council of NSW presidency and from his state executive position. The Liberal Ethnic Council itself was also immediately disbanded, and Urbančič narrowly escaped being expelled from the Party.25 Around the same time, the indefatigable Simon Wiesenthal alleged in the Sunday Mail that there were ‘up to 100 war criminals’ in Australia and named one: Balys Kryžanauskas, of the Lithuanian Security Police, alleging that he had killed up to 1,300 people for the Nazis.26 Kryžanauskas immediately wrote a letter to the editor saying that he welcomed Wiesenthal’s investigation of war criminals but asked: what of those murdered by the Soviets? He wrote: I believe that the communist Russia is red and the Nazi Germans are brownish red and both had the same policy to destroy the Baltic states and Jews. And now I am over 80 years old man, without homeland, family in this strange country. Tell me Mr S Wiesenthal, why?27 However, western governmental attitudes towards harbouring alleged perpetrators, what Eric Lichtblau has termed the phenomenon of the ‘Nazis next door,’ was slowly changing; scholars have attributed this change to factors including the Eichmann trial and the 1961 publication of Raul Hilberg’s comprehensive history of the Holocaust, as well as more generally to the cultural shift of the 1960s and generational change.28 In 1979 the United States was the first to establish an Office of Special Investigations that led to the denaturalisation and deportation of several hundred people, based on Section 340(a) of the US Immigration & Nationality Act 1952, which made it possible to initiate proceedings in cases where citizenship was ‘illegally procured or … procured by concealment of a material fact or by wilful misrepresentation.’29 The United States, then, initiated prosecution on an immigration technicality, denaturalised citizens and deported them based only on the prosecution being able to prove some sort of misrepresentation in the original immigration documents. As many displaced persons concocted false background stories and claimed false identities, this was a fairly straightforward task.30 Australia did not automatically cooperate with America’s OSI. In fact, it was deliberately obstructive; it has been argued that this was a result of ‘bureaucratic inertia’: it still had not reached a policy decision with regard to how to deal with alleged war crimes.31 The government did not respond to a repeated request, dating from 1981, with regard to a potential witness, Kazys S, of the 12th Lithuanian Police Battalion, implicated in atrocities in Lithuania and Byelorussia. When Labour once again ousted the Liberal Party from power in 1983, the international shift coalesced with domestic conditions. Meetings were held between the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Attorney-General’s Department, the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Interpol Office, who all advised the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet that Australia did in fact consider war crimes to be criminal

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activity and could therefore respond to US requests. Australian authorities then advised the OSI that Kazys had died in 1968 and apologised for ‘any past inconvenience.’32 In future, any requests would be referred directly to the Australian Federal Police for action.33 In 1985, the United States Justice Department announced the arrest of Latvian Konrāds Kalējs, who had been naturalised in Australia in 1957 and shortly thereafter resettled in the United States. By early 1986, it seemed that he may be deported to Australia due to his membership in the Arajs Kommando. ECAJ made representations to Prime Minister Bob Hawke, taking the opportunity to lobby the federal government to institute trials for war crimes, in Australia as in the United States.34 Hawke, as a long-time champion of the state of Israel and apparently Australian Jewry’s ‘favourite Gentile,’ was receptive.35 At exactly the same time, a five-part ABC expose appeared, both on radio and television, with research by Mark Aarons and John Loftus, a lawyer formerly employed in the US Department of Justice’s OSI. Aarons called for ‘some form of official investigation’ and according to a later report by the Attorney-General’s Department, this series ‘seriously placed’ the question of punishing war criminals on the political agenda.36 The timing was indeed serendipitous, as Canada had, a year earlier, established the Deschênes Commission, an inquiry into whether war criminals had resettled in Canada in the post-war period.37 In June 1986 an official inquiry was announced, to be headed by a former deputy secretary in the Attorney-General’s Department, Andrew Menzies.38 The Menzies Inquiry and the War Crimes Debate

Menzies was to be guided by the definition of war crimes as stated in Article 6 of the Charter of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal: (a) Crimes against peace; (b) War crimes; and (c) Crimes against humanity: namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.39 Menzies was not a historian or a political warrior; he was a public servant. As such, he acknowledged the pragmatic arguments against pursuing war crimes convictions: These matters occurred over 40 years ago. In so far as persons now in Australia are concerned, most … have lived apparently blameless lives in Australia for many years and acquired Australian citizenship. Their crimes were committed in an entirely different environment and not against Australians. They would all now be of advanced years.40

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In some respects, though, Menzies was interrogating history in attempting to answer the main questions: ‘were Australian migration procedures sufficiently imperfect to allow war criminals to enter the country and if so, who were the criminals?’41 In order to clarify the original migration security screening policies and procedures, he interviewed seven former Department of Immigration officers and corresponded with two more; he also interviewed Charles Spry, the Director-General of ASIO (1950–70), and five former ASIO officers. He concluded that, due to various assumptions made and failures of the security screening, ‘it was more likely than not that a significant number of persons who committed serious war crimes in World War Two have entered Australia, and some of these are now resident in Australia.’42 Menzies then scoured government files in order to draw up a list of probable suspects who were believed to have resettled in Australia. He included extradition requests and international investigations involving German and American prosecutors, domestic investigations by ASIO and the Commonwealth Police, and denunciations from Mark Aaarons, Marijan Jurjević, Jewish organisations and other sources over the decades.43 The Simon ­ Wiesenthal Centre also provided a further list of 40 names. In all, there were 180 likely suspects, and Menzies narrowed that down to 70 for which ‘further investigations were clearly warranted.’ The three broad categories he found were: participation in police or ‘security’ units; participation as guards or administrators in the operation of German-established concentration camps and prisons; and participation in national or local puppet governments.44 Menzies initially recommended approaching foreign states for extradition requests that met a prima facie threshold. If that was ‘not thought appropriate,’ the government should proceed ‘by way of revocation of citizenship and deportation.’ However, as Menzies acknowledged, this advice was complicated by the existing legal framework in which authorities could only act against those who had been citizens for less than ten years. He concluded that, unfortunately, ‘it would not now be practicable to prosecute for possible offences committed by any of the listed persons in relation to their entry to Australia.’45 Menzies thus proposed making amendments to the War Crimes Act in order to be able to prosecute war criminals domestically. This legislative change should be supported by the establishment of a ‘clearly identified organisation dedicated to the task of dealing’ with the investigative work involved, and only ‘really serious war crimes’ should be pursued.46 This advice was accepted by the Hawke government; Attorney-General Lionel Bowen then contradicted Sir Garfield Barwick’s earlier statement, declaring that ‘this Government does not regard the chapter as closed.’47 Vocal opposition to the proposed war crimes legislation began immediately. The Australian Ethnic Reporter, Tygodnik Polski, Australijas Latvietis, Magyar Elet, Australian-Ukrainian Review and Baltic Review all condemned the war crimes legislation, often in unrestrained language.48 Community

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organisations also sent open letters to parliamentarians as well as making official submissions to the Senate, the upper house of the Australian parliamentary system. It had long been an argument of the various so-called Captive Nations that the crimes of the Soviet Union were ‘genocide’ and were equivalent or outweighed the Holocaust; some termed the Ukrainian famine, the Holodomor, ‘the Soviet Holocaust,’ while J Stačiūnas, President of the Baltic Council of Australia (BCA), described the infamous mass deportations as the ‘Baltic Holocaust.’49 Ukrainian George Mencinsky of the Captive Nations’ Council (CNC) of New South Wales (NSW) asked: ‘Why don’t mainstream historians research ALL HOLOCAUSTS – not just ONE,’ and accused war crimes trial proponents of ‘stirring ethnic hatreds.’50 Any collaborators had merely been caught ‘between the twin evils of Nazism and Communism.’51 Historian Wendy Lower has noted that Holocaust denial has its roots in the ideology of the Third Reich: ‘most Nazi perpetrators and their ­accomplices – and even many witnesses – could not empathise with the Jews, during the war or after.’52 We thus see an explicitly antisemitic flavour added to the argument against the Australian war crimes trials. Eva Brenners, president of the Federation of Latvian Organisations, argued that ‘whole ethnic groups’ were being ‘categorised as war criminals by Jews intent on bringing their persecutors to justice.’53 In a letter to (Jewish) MP Barry Cohen, Dr A Viliunas blamed ‘Wiesenthal, supported by businessmen and the Israeli taxpayers’ money,’ who were ‘looking for new hunting grounds,’ and argued that ‘the average Australian doesn’t know, and doesn’t care, what happened 47 years ago in Europe, in relation to who killed who.’ He went on: I will not raise the philosophical question of Jesus Christ’s divinity, but every person in the world knows and acknowledges that as a human He existed and was of Jewish Nationality. His biggest teaching was not only to forgive the enemy but to love the enemy. The problem is that we don’t make Jews like Jesus Christ anymore! He ended the letter: ‘You may call me anti-semitic – I don’t mind.’54 Many argued that Jews themselves had committed war crimes. Former Hungarian DP Anthony Endrey, an Australian QC and former high-ranking legal advisor to the Australian Senate: Local Jews played a prominent part in the setting up of Communist regimes and the operation of Communist regimes and the operations of the secret police and this fact is well documented … Many Jews in these countries therefore committed serious inhumanities during the period covered by the Bill which would constitute war crimes under the provisions discussed above. A number of these Jews are now in Australia.55

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Further to this point, Latvian Mr EG wrote to the Attorney-General with a list of 24 Jews he said should be investigated; these individuals had all apparently committed war crimes in Latvia under Soviet rule in 1940–41 and EG surmised that some could now be in Australia.56 In 1987, Lithuanian Antanas Kramilius, a vocal Holocaust denier who later received an Order of Australia Medal ‘for service to the Lithuanian community,’ admitted to a reporter at the Sydney Morning Herald that he himself ‘could be’ on ‘lists of suspected war criminals and Nazi collaborators supposed to be living in Australia’ due to ‘his experiences in World War TwoLithuania.’57 He wrote a letter to MP Barry Cohen that was striking in its overt antisemitism, attaching a list of the ‘Real Rulers of Russia’: ‘all Jews,’ and a copy of Protocol for World Conquest (1956), purportedly written by Jews in Chicago.58 A Giniunas and Lia Looveer from the Joint Baltic Committee sent a letter to various ministers of parliament: As the evidence seems to come from Jewish and Soviet Union sources with an argument that Nazi war-criminals should be brought to justice, they should not forget that the Goyim (non-Jews), and possibly residing in Australia, have lost 50 to 70 million human beings in the Soviet Holocaust and yet, they have never asked the Australian Government to pursue the NKVD-KGB war criminals (many of whom were Jews). The biggest crimes against humanity were committed in the Soviet Union under the Stalin regime. At times the Central Executive Committee consisted of 61 members, of which 41 were Jews. As far as we are aware the governing body, that is, the Council of the People Commissariat (the Ministry) of the Soviet Union consisted of 22 persons, of which 17 were Jews, or of Jewish extraction.59 Responding to this letter, MP Barry Cohen wrote: ‘I have just finished reading your anti-semitic tirade. If ever I needed to be convinced that War Crimes Trials should proceed your letter did the trick. Thank you for your help in clarifying the issue. You are a disgrace to the community.’60 Meanwhile, Looveer denounced the ‘coordinated campaign of baseless allegations from Mr Mark Aarons’ and called for the ‘communist’ Aarons to be sacked from the ABC.61 ECAJ did initiate meetings with the various community groups but, with the exception of ‘the Ukrainian community’s young leadership,’ found that they ‘brought to these meetings a resonance of centuries of anti-Semitism that had climaxed in the Holocaust.’62 As well as this sort of vocal antisemitism and Holocaust denial, there was fear that Soviet authorities would use the war crimes trials in order to enact long-held revenge against the exiles. The Australian Lithuanian Community of Adelaide told senators that former DPs had long been referred to by the

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Soviets as ‘fascists, bourgeois nationalists, quislings and at best – émigré scum.’ They were now being ‘demoralised as harbourers of war criminals, their leaders silenced for fear of extradition.’63 Eva Brenners argued: ‘To slur an entire race without solid evidence is very wrong and painful. What is happening now resembles a witch hunt. It is always those who fought on the side of the losers who are blamed.’64 J Stačiūnas agreed, stating in an open letter to senators that ‘we never dreamed that a democratic country would embark on prosecution of its own citizens on evidence supplied by another war criminal – the KGB and their indoctrinated witnesses.’65 He lamented the ‘unleashing [of] “Soviet justice” on Australian pensioners.’66 In desperation, emigres began obliquely threatening the Australian government. Dr A Viliūnas, of the Joint Baltic Committee, drafted a letter that argued that the Baltic DPs had been used as ‘white slaves’ by Australia: maltreated, discriminated against, and sexually harassed; and that the land did not even belong to the government but to the ‘aborigines.’ The Balts were not (yet) instituting investigations with regards to these historic crimes, but neither should it be accepted that ‘most war criminals are of Baltic or of Ukrainian origin.’67 In a similar vein, the CNC (NSW), supported by Andrew Endrey, suggested that the Australian airmen who took part in the Dresden bombings be charged with mass murder under the proposed legislation.68 Lionel Bowen evidently took this charge seriously enough to compose a lengthy letter justifying the bombing of Dresden, in response.69 Slovak Terézia Král, President of the CNC of Victoria (Vic), wrote a letter to all Senators and Members of Parliament, which contained a veiled threat: While [East European communities] have made every effort to keep their culture alive and their history unforgotten, they have not tried to exert political influence unduly – they have considered such action to be divisive. They must now wonder whether the price paid for such quiet loyalty is too high.70 The CNC (Vic) also organised a ‘symposium on the proposed war crimes legislation in Australia,’ which included papers by Dr Anthony Endrey QC and various Australian anti-legislation speakers. The proceedings were published with a foreword by anti-Soviet author Nikolai Tolstoy, who took the opportunity to reproach Australian ‘kangaroo courts,’71 BA Santamaria agreed, arguing that the debate was arousing suspicion ‘in the minds of everyone who had a Ukrainian, Polish, Croatian or Baltic neighbour.’72 There were also moderate voices amongst the DP ethnic communities. Algis Kabaila, Chairman-designate of the BCA, for example, wrote to the Federal Executive of the Australian Lithuanian Community that it was unacceptable to blame ‘the Jews’ for crimes against ‘the Lithuanians,’ and ‘to even suggest that the Holocaust never took place, is obscene.’73 This was perhaps

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typical of the ‘guilty feeling’ that other members of the BCA identified among the executive; an acceptance of ‘the fact that among us there are a number of real war criminals.’74 The official stance of the BCA was that ‘any justly proven war criminal should be brought to account for his actions’; they were supportive of war crimes legislation, pursuant to ‘certain safeguards.’75 Official submissions focused on the use of evidence produced from within the Soviet Union. In its submission to parliament, the BCA argued that ‘Soviet supplied evidence is unreliable,’ while Alex Chernov QC, Acting President of the Law Council of Australia, and a child of Russian DP parents born in Lithuania, released an official statement arguing that ‘there is a real risk that trials will not be fair.’76 Similarly, Michael Lawrisky and Lev Havryliv of AFUO wrote two separate articles for the mainstream press that were critical of the OSI’s use of Soviet evidence.77 These critiques forced Neal M Sher, the Director of the OSI, to assure Menzies that there was no evidence of Soviet disinformation, including forged documentation, and that in fact in at least three cases the Soviet government had produced witnesses or documentation for the defence.78 During the debate in the Senate, Lewis Kent, using parliamentary privilege, named six ‘Yugoslav’ migrants to Australia as war criminals, including Srecko Rover and Lyenko Urbančič.79 Rover responded to a journalist: ‘I don’t consider myself a war criminal,’ while Urbančič stated: ‘I have nothing to pay for or apologise for. I think some people should apologise to me.’80 On the other side of the debate, Liberal senators variously railed against ‘communist atrocities’ and the ‘left-wing bias of the ABC.’81 The four-day Senate debate resulted in a close vote of 38:33. The dominant view was that defendants should, wherever possible, be prosecuted in Australia.82 The government thus followed the path of domestic criminal prosecutions. The new legislation provided for the prosecution of individuals ‘who committed serious war crimes in Europe during World War II’ and who ‘entered Australia,’ subsequently becoming ‘Australian citizens or residents.’ Its preamble stated that: [it is] essential in the interests of justice that persons so accused be given a fair trial with all the safeguards for accused persons in trials in those courts, having particular regard to matters such as the gravity of the allegations and the lapse of time since the alleged crimes.83 Alleged perpetrators were guaranteed a ‘fair’ criminal trial: the evidence, for crimes that occurred over 45 years ago, must include documentary evidence and, ideally, eyewitnesses to the alleged individual perpetrator carrying out a war crime. Of course, the nature of the Holocaust was such that very few eyewitnesses to genocide survived in order to testify against their killers; for these particular trials, any potential eyewitnesses were overseas

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and ageing and usually not able to speak English. As Perth’s Rabbi RubenZacks had foreshadowed in 1951, while ‘the “prima facie” evidence was overwhelming,’ it would prove almost impossible to prepare a criminal case in Australia for war crimes committed overseas.84 The Special Investigations Unit

The Australian Special Investigations Unit (SIU), modelled on the United States’ Office of Special Investigations, was established within the AttorneyGeneral’s Department, and was given authority to directly liaise with the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. Its clear objective was to ‘seek and obtain admissible evidence’ of the commission of war crimes as defined in the amended War Crimes Act, for the ‘purpose of charges being laid and prosecutions being undertaken in the ordinary criminal courts of Australia.’85 As the Australian government had not kept rolling evidence files on alleged war criminals, the SIU was, for practical purposes, starting this work – in 1987 – from scratch. The SIU was led in the first instance by Robert Greenwood QC and then by Graham Blewitt, with a peak staff of up to 52 investigators and historians. The Menzies Review’s list of 70 names provided a basis to begin work; the SIU also considered that another 123 individuals identified by the Review were suitable for investigation. Mark Aarons’ comprehensive investigations also provided names and allegations: so, many of the files contained photocopied pages from Aarons’ recently published book, Sanctuary: Nazi Fugitives in Australia (Melbourne: William Heinemann Australia, 1989). Aarons was also still actively requesting information from various Eastern European governments, and even interviewing potential eyewitnesses in Eastern Europe; in many cases, the SIU merely followed in the footsteps of his investigations. In addition, the Chief Prosecutor of the USSR sent a list of 164 names. The Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem provided ten lists of names. From these ten lists, 265 individual files were opened.86 Other major sources included Jewish organisations in Australia; governments of the Netherlands, Canada, Britain and the United States; and denunciations received from the general public.87 In one case, SIU investigators noticed that a relative of a suspect ‘seemed somewhat nervous about his own position in the war’ and a new file was opened for him.88 However, a list of 30,000 names sent by the OSI was completely ignored; this massive list was culled from OSI files as well as its list of displaced persons rejected for entry into the United States and was meant to provide a starting point for the SIU’s own investigations.89 The SIU opened 841 individual files but this number is misleading, as it included some files in duplicate and some in triplicate. At least six files were created for information purposes only, for high-profile perpetrators who had never resettled in Australia.90 The main nationalities investigated were:

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238 Lithuanians, 111 Latvians, 84 Ukrainians, 45 Hungarians and 44 Croatians.91 Many of the files contained only scraps of information culled from the various lists. A total of 248 individuals were ‘not [now] located in Australia.’92 Meanwhile, 262 individuals had either died or were thought ‘probably deceased’ due to their age, including many of those named in previous chapters, and five out of eight of those whose extradition had been previously requested.93 Although the list received from the Soviet Procurator contained 164 names including patronymics, dates of birth and birthplaces, there were never any allegations attached. The Soviets said that they would only provide specific allegations, if such existed, if the SIU established that suspects were alive and well.94 It seemed as though the list had been prepared sometime during the 1960s and so comments included, for example, ‘believed to be in Sydney, 1958.’ Due to the resources involved in checking each name, only the records of the state where the suspect was believed to reside were checked. If no state was specified, no records were checked and the file was marked ‘not located.’ Of 164 names investigated, 100 were ‘not located’; only a few merited any real investigation.95 Similarly, all of the Croatian investigations initiated by Jurjević, except for those into Srecko Rover and Josip Bujanović, were suspended by mid-1990. After accessing six boxes of material from Jurjević’s daughter, Angela, investigators found that most of his 32 allegations were ‘totally uncorroborated and unsubstantiated.’ Jim Cairns and Lewis Kent admitted that they had never seen documentary evidence for any of the allegations they raised in Parliament.96 Some allegations were such that, even if proven, they either did not amount to a war crime under the Act or were not viewed as worthy of prosecution under the Act. Wartime collaboration with the German authorities was not a crime under the Act, and so investigations into the group identified by Aarons as implicated in the quisling Byelorussian government – only three out of the 14 named were located – came to nothing, as did investigations into Constantin Untaru and Lyenko Urbančič.97 Various allegations including giving up hidden Jews or assisting Jews for financial reward were also not deemed crimes under the Act. One Polish Jew, denounced for keeping a ‘cake of human soap in his Australian home,’ admitted that he did indeed have both human soap and a canister of Zyklon gas from Majdanek concentration camp, which he kept as ‘a memento of the camp.’ This ‘did not amount to an offence under the Act.’ While involvement in deportations for forced labour would amount to an offence under the Act, the DPP took the view that any charges for participating in forced deportations of Jews ‘would not be of such a serious nature to justify a prosecution.’98 If evidence seemed worthy of further investigation, the suspect was unobtrusively sighted in order to validate identification and fitness for interview.

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The interviews themselves were a fairly informal process and relied on a cooperative interviewee. Initial contact usually involved two investigators, who could only speak English and really had very limited geopolitical knowledge, knocking on the door, introducing themselves and asking if the householder was the person they were looking for.99 Suspects could simply refuse to be interviewed; others simply answered ‘no comment, no comment.’100 One Ukrainian suspected of being an auxiliary SS, and who had been interviewed as far back as 1949, was vigorously defended by his wife, who refused to let him speak. The investigators noted that his innocence was thus accepted by them ‘at face value although perhaps reluctantly.’101 Most interviews were conducted with the interviewee answering in halting English; interpreters seemed to be called in only rarely.102 Even when Ivan Polyukhovich was arrested, his post-arrest interview was carried out in the presence of a PolishEnglish (rather than Ukrainian) interpreter.103 Some of those investigated were in such ill health that they would not be fit to stand trial and so investigations were not pursued.104 The case of Filip Kapitula, for example, caused some ‘excitement’ at the SIU as this was ‘one of the few Ukrainian cases with specific allegations.’ Kapitula had been denounced in Soviet newspapers and his extradition requested in the early 1960s; he also appeared in a Wiesenthal list based on a document held at the Yad Vashem Archives.105 Then, in the wake of the 40th anniversary of the Nuremberg trials, Soviet authorities once again attempted to draw attention to the many suspects who had resettled in the west.106 These alleged perpetrators were, according to one Ukrainian headline, ‘Not Forgotten or Forgiven.’ In 1988 the Vladimiretski District Executive Committee sent a petition with hundreds of signatures, denouncing Kapitula as an auxiliary policeman who participated in a mass shooting of ‘2,000 civil citizens, Jews mainly, in Smolyarnya woods, not far from our town.’ He was also accused of shooting infant and child ‘escapees.’ The Committee stated: Each day removes us from World War Two but even now the pain of losing families and relatives, whose lives were taken by Nazis and their assistants, is still in the hearts of our people. The International Tribunal in Nuremberg demanded the punishment of Nazi executioners for their crimes to mankind, but not all the criminals have been punished. One of them now is taking shelter in your country.107 In an initial interview, Kapitula set the scene: Ukrainians were shooting. Outside the ghetto. Saw Germans were taking Jews into field, my house was on hill, saw Jews were going up, saw Germans were shooting Jews. There was truck taking Jews to sand hill, put them in pit, blow the sand hill up to cover bodies. Yes shooting going on, many, many old Jews all shot by Germans.

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Kapitula admitted: ‘I did help move the Jews but remember, they [the Jews/Bolsheviks] shot my mother and also I had to do what I was told by the Police.’ By the time of a second interview, a few months later, investigators reported that ‘he has obviously had a think about this last interview’ and was now stating that ‘another Kapitula had been responsible for shooting Jews and that we had probably confused him with this person.’ They described him: ‘His physical condition was not the best, he had no teeth, and his clothing and body were in a putrid state. Probably on the verge of senile dementia.’ And so, even though the case against him was good, the investigation was suspended.108 Similarly, a Ukrainian Chief of Police in Rovno, Petro H, was the basis of allegations from eight different sources, including a witness in Australia who had seen Petro ‘attending a mass grave, wearing a Gestapo uniform.’ He was described as a ‘faithful stooge’ of Reichskommissar Koch; his immediate supervisor had been SS Hauptfuhrer Holdinghausen, responsible for the massacre of up to 100,000 Ukrainian Jews and non-Jews. In the post-war period, Petro had been named on the Lubbecke List, a ‘List of individuals who should be removed from camps and handed over to the Soviet authorities as war criminals’: During the war he served with the Germans as a commissioner of the criminal police in the Ukraine where he arrived in the wake of the German army. He taunted and shot Soviet citizens who were not guilty of anything at all, including women and children. During the German retreat he took an active part in the destruction of towns and villages of the Ukraine.109 An informant to the Commonwealth Police in 1970 alleged that Petro (and two of his nephews, also residing in Australia) had: ‘shot Ukrainian patriots and nationalists, burnt down villages, and threw small children, women and old people into the fire.’ Although these allegations were serious, the investigation was suspended as it was ‘apparent that H was likely to be unfit to stand trial.’110 Indeed, he died in 1992. Many suspects perhaps realised that they could use their age as a ‘get out of jail free’ card. Latvian Arnolds K, for example, was interviewed in 1989, where he volunteered the information that he had served in the 16th Battalion of the Latvian Army. Just one year later there seemed to have been a sudden decline in Arnolds’s health: he ‘did not appear to comprehend the questions’ and was ‘rambling in non-related responses.’111 Other cases, with identifiable suspects in good health, progressed further, to original historical research being carried out by a full-time team led by Associate Professor Kwiet from the School of German Studies at the University of New South Wales.112 The SIU also used the services of nine leading historians, including Raul Hilberg, Christopher Browning, Martin Gilbert and Richard Breitman; these historians were crucial in providing contextual

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historical information, and could also potentially be used as expert witnesses in court.113 SIU requests were initially ignored and/or material was restricted by Soviet authorities, and promised archival material was missing when historians travelled to the Soviet Union.114 After complaints from the SIU, historians from the west were – for the first time – given virtually open and direct access to previously restricted Soviet archives, including the KGB war crimes collection. Australia also concluded a formal undertaking with Soviet authorities – the first by the Soviets with a western government – to cooperate in arranging for Soviet citizens to travel to Australia for the purpose of giving evidence in court.115 However, this did not mean that Soviet authorities were unproblematically cooperative. Besides not forwarding the specific allegations with regard to names they themselves had provided, bribery and participation in heavy drinking sessions with archive officials were necessary in Ukraine, for example.116 In at least one case, a ‘financial incentive’ of $1,000 was offered to potential witnesses ‘for information that would lead “to the identification and location of [the suspect]”.’117 It was an incredibly frustrating task. Richard Breitman noted at one point: ‘as Konrad [Kwiet] says rather frequently these days, there are certain crimes that by their very nature are not documented and so when you talk about evidence you are only talking about witness testimony. That is all you have got.’118 Mobile killing units, for example, ‘came, shot and left.’119 There was very little ‘concrete, direct proof’ and ‘lawyers, rather than historians, set the tone’ of both the initial investigations and subsequent legal processes.120 It was apparent that historians at the SIU sometimes thought that their legal advisers were ‘giving up too easily’ in not pursuing cases that had some potential.121 Group Investigations

One benefit of the western movement towards some form of retributive justice was that there were wide-ranging internationally cooperative investigations into particular perpetrator groups. In Australia, this involved allegations surrounding 69 named individuals.122 Of course, if any allegation could be proved, charges could only proceed against individuals for individual war crimes. The largest group investigated in Australia was the 12th Lithuanian Police Battalion, which had carried out mass killings in Lithuania and Byelorussia. Evidence about this police battalion provided to British authorities had had a significant impact on the establishment of the UK War Crimes Act (1991); members had also been indicted in the United States by OSI.123 ­Graham ­Blewitt suggested that a joint approach be taken by all of the war crimes groups interested in researching the history of the Battalion, and instigated an

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international conference, which was held in Canada in 1991 and attended by representatives from Australia, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union.124 However, the Lithuanian government proved ‘reserved in their cooperation.’125 There were initially 32 suspects in Australia, most of whom had been named by the Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem: seven were not located, 18 had died, one was overseas. The SIU judged that four of the allegations were false, while eight were not substantiated (although four of these individuals were ‘definitely’ members of the Battalion).126 One of the most ‘promising’ investigations was into alleged squad leader Antanas S, who admitted that he served in the 12th Battalion, in Minsk, Kovno and Vilnius but insisted that ‘he had always been inside the Battalion office.’127 Breitman asserted that Antanas ‘could hardly have been in the given locations on the given dates (and later been promoted for conscientious performance of duty) without committing murder’ as ‘the standard operating procedure was to have all members of a company participate in executions.’ He judged that if the SIU could ‘locate convincing eyewitnesses, this case is air-tight.’128 However, it seems that no eyewitnesses could be located and Antanas shut down his second interview: ‘I think I was in the Battalion and I don’t have to say anything.’ When investigators asked him to speak with Scottish investigators (regarding their case against Anton Gecevičius aka ­Gecas) in return for indemnity in Australia, Antanas just replied: ‘I should go to solicitor.’ 129 After Zigmas P admitted membership of the Battalion, he argued that ‘you didn’t have to shoot Jews unless you wanted to’; further: ‘I think it’s very bad what you are doing, look what the Jews are doing to the Arabs in Israel.’130 Zigmas also refused another interview after meeting with his solicitor.131 Another interview, with Albinas L, was even less successful. Although Albinas admitted membership of the battalion, he ‘seemed to be in extremely poor health’ and ‘drank two scotches during [the] conversation.’132 The SIU reported that ‘from the evidence at hand it is difficult to imagine that anyone who served with the Battalion was not implicated in its genocidal patterns of behaviour.’133 However, the evidential burden of proof was too high to convict individuals in Australia.134 In contrast, information from the SIU led to charges being laid against members of the unit in Germany.135 There were 17 allegations from various sources naming former individual members of Latvia’s Arājs Kommando. Historical research had previously established that ‘every member of the Arajs Kommando was required to actively participate, at least once, in the execution of Jews.’ Indeed, there was a plethora of evidence to draw upon, including the German trial of Viktors Arājs himself, and the SIU liaised ‘extensively’ with the OSI, the Department of Justice and Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Canada, and the British War Crimes Inquiry in England. However, in this case, the United

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States were ‘reluctant to share testimonies,’ as they did not welcome intervention in their own cases.136 Some witnesses were interviewed but proved of little use in drawing up specific allegations against individuals. Out of the 17 individuals, the SIU reported that four had not been located, three had died, three were overseas, three of the allegations were false, and four were not substantiated.137 One of the cases that were deemed ‘not substantiated’ was that of Valentīns L, who had been refused migration to the United States in 1951 on the grounds that he had persecuted Jews; he resettled in Australia. Another, Teodors B, had been refused naturalisation during the 1950s more than once, on the advice of ASIO, although the SIU could not locate the reasons for this refusal. He was eventually naturalised in 1968. In 1992, his solicitor advised the SIU that he would not participate in any interview or make any comment. During his interview with the SIU, Eižens P admitted that he had been a member of the Arājs Command and the Latvian Legion; he also admitted witnessing an execution in the Bikernieki Forest although, of course, not to taking part in it. There was ‘substance’ to the allegation but ‘insufficient evidence.’138 Konrads Kalējs was the most infamous of this group. In 1985 he had been arrested in the United States and ordered to be deported to Australia.139 As company commander and a commander of the Arājs Kommando Guard Unit in several concentration camps – and thus a direct subordinate of ­Viktors Arājs – it could be proved that he had taken part in, for example, raids around Nasva, Estonia, killing Roma. The SIU was again, though, frustrated: In relation to proving the allegation that Kalejs was a war criminal, it is one thing to establish in a civil court a case based on the civil onus of proof, the applicable standard in American deportation proceedings; it is quite something else to establish beyond reasonable doubt in a criminal court that he is guilty of war crimes.140 While the US deportation was under appeal, the Australian government did not make a request for extradition, as there was, again, ‘not sufficient evidence’ to prosecute under the Act.141 Allegations against two members of Lithuania’s Kupiškis Execution Squad, an ad hoc killing squad organised by German national Dr Werner Loew, were also unable to be substantiated. There was documentary and witness evidence that Antanas G was implicated in killings in both Kupiškis and Kaunas – and Antanas admitted to being in those locations – but apparently no eyewitness evidence.142 Similarly, Antanas I admitted working with Loew but only as an office assistant. 143 In 1990 the Canadian Department of Justice handed the SIU a list found at the home of their suspect, Radislav Grujičić. This list set out 16 names of former members of Section IV (Communists) of the Belgrade Special Police

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(Specijalna policija Uprave grada Beograda), who had migrated to Australia, noting that three had died. These former policemen were accused of responsibility for the arrest of thousands of Serbian citizens, although it appeared that all of those who had migrated to Australia were of low rank with little meaningful authority. The Yugoslav authorities deemed that membership of Section IV constituted a war crime; for two of this group Yugoslavia had been granted extradition in the immediate post-war period but, due to British policy changes, extradition was not affected.144 Of the original 16, 13 had migrated to Australia, although five had since died. The SIU liaised with Canadian authorities, conducted archival research in Yugoslavia, and located potential witnesses. While all of the eight suspects admitted serving with Section IV, each denied culpability. Only one, Novak B, admitted being present at an execution; this assisted the Canadians in their trial of Grujičić, but did not assist the Australian authorities, who found that there was ‘substance’ to the allegation ‘but insufficient evidence.’145 The last group was that of the Turets Police, accused of participating in mass executions of Jews in Byelorussia. Of the six suspects identified by the Soviet Procurator’s office, one was not located, three were dead, one was overseas and refused to be interviewed, and one denied taking part in the shootings and so the SIU was ‘unable to substantiate’ the allegation.146 Individual Investigations

Most allegations were simply ‘not substantiated.’ Aleksejs D-M, for example, was alleged to have been a member of the Latvian Criminal Police who was a close associate of Captain Eduard Roschmann, ‘the Butcher of Riga.’ The SIU judged that he was ‘likely involved in commission of war crimes’; there was ‘substance’ to the allegations but ‘insufficient evidence.’ Another man, Leonhard P, was described in the Berlin Document Centre as a member of the Estonian Home Guard Battalion (Schutzmannschaft), the 3rd Estonian Volunteer Brigade and the 20th SS Infantry Division, as well as being chief of a civil prison in Pskov, Russia, where around 500 Jews were executed in 1942. Leonhard admitted this documented service but denied any knowledge of or involvement in actions against Jews. The SIU was thus ‘not able to substantiate the allegation.’147 For Lithuanian Ignas T there was ‘detailed evidence’ that he was ‘a member of a fascist organisation, that he participated in the events in Kaunas immediately after the German invasion,’ and that he served the Germans in an official capacity. However, even proof of having been a ‘high-level German collaborator’ was not a war crime under the Act. There were further allegations of participation in pogroms and executions but, with no documentary evidence; any charge would have to depend upon ‘credible witnesses and [Ignas] himself’ admitting to the charge. While there were witness statements

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to Ignas performing beatings at the gate of Kaunas ghetto, these were deemed by Kwiet to include ‘confusing’ information and were, in any event, not enough. Ignas initially consented to an interview but then ‘became agitated,’ accusing the SIU investigators of being KGB officers and ended the interview. The case was suspended: ‘appears to be true, but the allegation cannot be sustained.’148 Dezsol S was approached by the SIU because in 1970, while being interviewed by the Commonwealth Police in relation to Croatian activities in Australia, he had volunteered that he was a former Hungarian Army officer attached to the Ustasha during the war. In his 1992 interview he made a number of surprising admissions indicating that he had engaged in a series of criminal wartime activities. He described an action against partisans in Byelorussia in 1942: ‘We put them under the railway tunnel, poured in diesel oil, and we burnt the lot.’ Subsequently, Dezsol participated in quashing the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1944: ‘We were indiscriminately shooting everybody. The order was given to me to bring down the ghetto.’ The SIU made extensive overseas enquiries but was unable to corroborate any of these voluntary admissions. Similarly, Lithuanian policeman Vytautus U volunteered during an interview that he had once tied a man ‘to a tree and threw water over him until he froze to death.’ His son admitted that Vytautus had once told him an anecdote related to an execution site. However, ‘despite strenuous efforts,’ the SIU was unable to substantiate the allegation.149 While the government later praised the reliability and integrity of S­ oviet evidence, there were also cases which fell on the basis of substandard ­Soviet evidence. Anatoli Kubaida, for example, was accused by Ukrainians in the mid-1980s of being an auxiliary policeman, an OUN leader ‘who obsequiously cringed to Hitlerite fascism during the war’ and who took part in ‘a savage massacre of the civilian population.’ He was one of the ‘­menials of fascists’ ‘who now hide themselves’ in Australia. Previously published books – Lest We Forget by Michael Hanusiak (US, 1973) and No Statute for War Criminals by V Evintov, V Leonenko and A Shishko (Ukraine, 1986) – contained specific allegations that Kubaida was second in command of a Ukrainian military unit that was responsible for mass murders at Babi Yar in 1941 and that he was Chief of Staff of the Ukrainian Guard Police in Kiev in 1941 and ordered the killings of thousands of prisoners-of-war. It was further alleged that he had been a member of a Ukrainian Wehrmacht unit involved in partisan warfare in 1942.150 The Babi Yar allegation remained unsubstantiated as these shootings were almost exclusively carried out by the Einsatzkommando. However, Breitman did find that during 1942, Kubaida simultaneously controlled both the Ukrainian Order Police Kiev and the Ukrainian Security Police. Two orders signed by Kubaida, relating to the arrest and detention of Jews, were ‘the most important and incriminating documents I have seen in any of the Australian cases.’151 While this

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evidence seemed strong, Kwiet stated that he had ‘some problems’ with the Soviet-­produced eyewitness statements: ‘They seem to me very similar, if not identical; an impression which reduces the validity, [and] especially arouses suspicion on my part.’152 In other cases, the suspects fell gravely ill or died before investigations were completed. One particularly strong case was that against Argods Fricsons.153 Breitman’s judgement was that, as a direct subordinate of Wolfgang Kügler, who had most infamously commanded the massacre of 2,700 Jews at Liepāja beach: ‘Fricsons was a key participant in carrying out Himmler’s policies.’154 Kwiet agreed: Fricsons was ‘very much part of the machinery of death.’155 The case against him garnered some documentary evidence but unfortunately ‘no actual eyewitnesses.’156 He died in 1990. Other major investigations, such as that into Srecko Rover, simply ran out of time.157 Robert Greenwood had advised the Senate in 1988 that not more than twenty individuals were viable cases for prosecution and that ‘in his opinion the likelihood is that it would be fewer’; a few months later he revised that figure downwards, stating that ‘about a dozen prosecutions would be the maximum.’158 By the end of the investigations, allegations against 27 individuals (all naturalised citizens) had been substantiated, that is, the SIU was ‘satisfied that the suspect had committed serious war crimes.’ These included the investigation into Josip Bujanović. However, for most of these suspects, the SIU was not able to reach the evidentiary threshold under Australian law.159 A lack of political will again surfaced – most keenly felt with the loss of ally Attorney-General Lionel Bowen in 1990 – and the unit was shut down after five years, in 1992, after costing the Australian government $15 million.160 There were, according to Graham Blewitt, ‘no votes in war crimes.’161 War Crimes Trials

Ultimately, only four individual files were referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions; three were charged and reached the stage of committal hearings: 78-year-old Mikolay Berezowsky, 69-year-old Heinrich Wagner and 75-year-old Ivan Polyukhovich.162 Importantly, in all three cases, there were eyewitnesses still alive and willing to give evidence at trial (coincidentally, all originally from Ukraine), and all three cases involved Ukrainian mass killing sites that could be verified forensically.163 In a further coincidence, all three men were residents in Adelaide, South Australia. Former Ukrainian auxiliary policeman Mikolay Berezowsky was charged in September 1991 that he, when acting as Chief of Police, was party to the ‘murder of 102 Jewish people being described as the Jews of Gnivan ­[Hnivan’, a Soviet village in Vinnytsia province], comprising mainly women and children and some elderly males.’164 Indeed, he was accused by one eyewitness of beating a baby to death in its mother’s arms.165

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There was documentary evidence and at least five witness statements in the immediate post-war period that identified a Berezowsky as a policeman or as the ‘Head of Police’ in Gnivan. Twenty-five witnesses were called by the prosecution, including twenty-two from overseas. Forensic evidence, including grave exhumation, also confirmed the statements of eyewitnesses. However, under cross-examination the star witness – a 12-year-old survivor – cast doubt on the validity of his post-war Soviet witness statement, thus raising questions about all of the evidence gathered from Soviet sources. In addition, eyewitness identification of Berezowsky in the courtroom was sketchy; one eyewitness identified a random American tourist seated in the gallery as the suspect.166 The date of the mass killing also remained an issue, as Berezowsky had a documented alibi for the supposed time period: he was attending special military training far from Gnivan.167 The case was dismissed by Magistrate David Gurry after a five-week committal hearing when he judged that there was insufficient evidence to bring Berezowsky to trial.168 Ukrainian-born ethnic-German Heinrich Wagner was charged in September 1991 with three counts under the Act. Wagner had evacuated with German forces towards the end of the war; in a displaced persons camp in Germany he changed his identity to that of an ethnic Ukrainian named Andrej Woijtenko. The IRO interviewer was aware of this change of name and was ‘convinced’ that he was Volksdeutsch, but Wagner/Woijtenko was, in the end, given the ‘benefit of doubt.’169 As Woijtenko, he resettled in Australia in 1950 and was naturalised in 1957. He then changed his name, by deed poll, back to Heinrich Wagner.170 Wagner had first come to the Australian authorities’ attention after brief allegations of ‘firing on the children’ – and his home address, in Adelaide – were published in a Soviet newspaper, Trud, in 1964.171 He had been a Volksdeutsch liaison officer between the German and auxiliary Ukrainian police forces in the village of Israylovka in the Kherson province of Soviet Ukraine and was accused of being party to the ‘murders of about 104 Jewish people being described as the Jews of Izraylovka’ as well as the subsequent shooting of 19’ Mischlinge’ (part-Jewish) children and one other murder.172 Two eyewitnesses named Wagner as among those who carried out the shooting of the children. Australian archaeologist Richard Wright, who exhumed the gravesite in 1991, reported: We found about two meters down nineteen children, all lying higgledypiggledy. One of them was shot in the head, but the youngest was only six months by growth of the teeth. And these bones were in such a poor state you could often not tell whether they had been shot or not, but there they were lying higgledy-piggledy, no adults. But there was something like twenty centimetres of soil underneath the children and then, suddenly, there were the adults.173

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The forensic evidence thus matched eyewitness reports. However, in this case, there were also serious issues with regard to changing statements from the eyewitnesses which spoke to their credibility and reliability. The SIU’s Ludmilla Stern attempted to argue that there were serious communication problems between the Australian barristers and the Soviet witnesses, not least in interpreting and translating from the mix of Ukrainian and Russian used by these witnesses, but this intervention was ignored by the court.174 Again, both of the star witnesses – Nikolay Daviborshch and Ivan Zhilun – critiqued their own previous statements, saying that the Soviets would ‘try to get you to say anything’ and the ‘Soviet court or the Soviet investigator used to say “We need the person but the charge we will find”.’ Daviborshch’s more recent statements put him further from the scene and therefore unable to identify individual perpetrators, while Zhilun – who had previously been sentenced to 25 years’ hard labour for the same crime and who had stated in 1989: ‘I saw Wagner personally shot them’ – was not able to identify him from a photo-board.175 The committal hearing in 1992 determined – ­perhaps generously – that there was a case to answer but the Director of Public Prosecutions then withdrew the charges after Wagner suffered a serious heart attack.176 Ivan Polyukhovich had been a forest warden (heger) in the pre-war eastern Polish village of Serniki (now north-western Ukraine). He was accused of hunting and killing Jews under German occupation, and in taking part in a mass shooting during the second wave of mass killings of Ukraine’s Jewish population, in the autumn of 1942. After his two stepdaughters visited Serniki in the early 1980s, and it became common knowledge that he was living peacefully in Australia, a public meeting held there brought the matter to the attention of the Australian press. Serniki representatives wrote: During the past war, this monster in human form turned traitor to his own people and became most actively involved in punitive missions against Soviet partisans and in beastly reprisals over civilian residents. He took part in the extermination of perfectly innocent people. Testimony rendered by numerous eyewitnesses show that the hands of this ruthless hangman are washed in the blood of some 50 humans which he personally tortured and butchered. One of Poliukhovych’s most heinous atrocities is his participation in the shooting of 725 citizens of Jewish nationality at the village of Sernyky.177 A second public meeting called for the extradition of Polyukovich: People would like justice done even though it’s many years ago that the atrocities had been perpetrated. The mood of the people attending the meeting was very angry – demanding that those who had perpetrated

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crimes should not be allowed to live out their lives in peace and quiet in other countries but should be brought to justice. People were in tears and the elderly eyewitnesses were very distraught when they recalled events during those dark days.178 Readers were encouraged to cut out an adjacent form to send to the Australian Embassy in Moscow to demand justice. Because of this publicity, which was reproduced in the Australian press, Mark Aarons had interviewed potential witnesses before the SIU was even established.179 Subsequently, a cablegram from the Australian Embassy in Moscow sending allegations published by TASS (Russian News Agency) on 18 December 1986 was later found unopened in material given to the SIU by Andrew Menzies.180 Another TASS publication, in 1987, contained six eyewitness accounts; these make for horrifying reading and include the casual murders of infants and children.181 Polyukhovich was initially charged with 13 offences, including participating in mass murder: between about the first day of September 1942 and about the thirtieth day of September 1942 near the village of Serniki in the Rovno district in the Ukraine, Europe, was knowingly concerned in the murder of about 850 persons, whose names are not known but who are described as the Jews from the Serniki Ghetto, such killings being wilful killings, and did thereby commit a war crime contrary to Section 9 of the War Crimes Act 1945.182 On 29 July 1990, one day before his committal hearing was due to begin, Polyukhovic was shot in the chest – this was initially treated by police (and the outraged Ukrainian community) as an attempted murder; Michael Moravsky, president of the AFUO denounced a ‘vigilante mentality’ amid ‘war crimes hysteria.’183 The shooting was, however, ultimately judged to be self-inflicted; Polyukhovich spent three months in hospital.184 Polyukhovich’s lawyers then challenged the validity of the amendments to the War Crimes Act 1945, which was ultimately upheld by the High Court in August 1991.185 It was not, then, until 28 October 1991 when his committal hearing opened, and Polyukhovic was committed for trial to the Supreme Court of South Australia, on two counts, including the mass murder charge.186 There was no documentary evidence in this case but eyewitness evidence was taken from the United States, Canada, Israel and Ukraine, and 36 ­overseas witnesses – including relatives of the accused, appearing for the prosecution – were called to give evidence in person.187 One eyewitness was a then 16-yearold who was one of several young men who were forced to fill the grave after the mass killing in Serniki. He described a grave up to 50 m long with a ramp on one side, containing hundreds of bodies. In 1990, this mass grave site was the subject of the first foreign-led exhumation, worked by a Soviet forensic

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team led by Richard Wright.188 This team examined 553 bodies (of the probably 850 victims), who were exactly where the witness had said they would be, and with forensic and ballistic evidence that pointed to collaborator involvement.189 At the top of the grave lay the skeletal remains of a woman with an infant in her arms, next to a young teenager, which corroborated accounts that after the mass killings, Polyukhovich and two other men had taken a woman and two children down a ramp into the grave.190 However, the issue of identity was integral: eyewitnesses persisted in describing ­‘Ivanechko’ as a policeman – wearing a police uniform and carrying a submachine gun – not a forest warden, and there was just no evidence that Polyukhovich had ever joined the police. Further, Kwiet was forced to admit that there were no known cases where a forest warden had participated in a pit killing.191 Three months after the trial began, Polyukhovic was found by a jury – after only one hour’s deliberation – to be not guilty of all charges. Defense teams held the prosecution to the standard of proving ‘that our client was seen pulling the trigger’; although forensic evidence was ‘objective and reliable,’ it remained unlikely to indict an individual defendant.192 As Peggy O’Donnell has noted, the case ‘had bodies, shell casings associated with the murder weapon, a crime scene in the form of a mass grave, eyewitnesses and a motive, but could not convince twelve Australian citizens on a jury that Ivan Polyukhovich was guilty beyond reasonable doubt.’193 The Adelaide Advertiser reported that ‘one of Australia’s most monumental legal exercises ended with a whimper.’194 The fourth case referred to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, against Latvian Kārlis Ozols was dropped as the SIU closed. The Secretary of the Attorney-General’s Department reportedly proclaimed that the the Ozols ‘case would go ahead over his dead body.’195 Former Director of the SIU, Robert Greenwood QC, publicly protested in the strongest terms: ‘Pulling the plug means a tremendous amount of money and resources are being thrown away.’196 ECAJ agreed, suggesting that ‘to abandon the fourth trial is in many ways to deny the validity of the whole investigation.’197 The case was referred by the SIU to the Australian Federal Police, but they ultimately refused to complete the investigation, citing budgetary concerns.198 Legacy

When asked decades later whether the Polyukhovich trial was a failure, prosecutor Greg James answered: ‘Certainly not. [The accused] couldn’t evade prosecution. We showed the world a fair trial according to law. It also became the model for subsequent war crimes legislation, including the International Criminal Court.’199 Indeed, many of the prosecutors, investigators and forensic experts involved in the Special Investigations Unit were subsequently involved in international war crimes investigators with the International

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Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague.200 In Australia, authorities began responding, finally, to extradition requests. After very long legal processes in the United States, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, and ‘intense international pressure,’ in 2001 Latvian Konrāds Kalējs was ordered to be extradited from Melbourne to Latvia; he died before his appeal could be heard.201 However, the Australian government continued to deny the OSI the right to interview witnesses in Australia.202 In 2007 Charles Zentai was also ordered to be extradited to Hungary but this was overturned on appeal when the High Court ruled against extradition because the alleged war crime did not exist in war-time Hungary.203 In doing so, the High Court continued six decades of Australia’s ‘antipathy to retrospective criminality,’ and effectively ended any further extradition attempts of alleged Nazi war criminals.204 In Australia and Canada, three criminal prosecutions were undertaken, with no convictions; in the United Kingdom, only one person was successfully convicted.205 Many of the more serious offenders had already died by the time that investigations in Australia began in 1986.206 Konrad Kwiet later described his work with the SIU as ‘the most challenging time of my academic career’ because ‘the large majority of genocidal killers got away with it.’207 However, there were some positives. Investigator Bob Reid argued that survivors found the experience ‘cathartic.’208 The trials also served a purpose in acting as ‘didactic’ or ‘pedagogic’ exercises; perhaps we could even describe them as ‘show trials.’209 Historian Richards Plavnieks has noted that although justice can ‘remain palpably unsatisfying,’ war crimes trials, whether carried out in Europe or in resettlement countries such as Australia, can serve ‘the cause of truth’: The crimes at issue are beyond punishment, the perpetrators beyond rehabilitation, and the victims beyond any fitting compensation. In the long term, then, the best that could realistically be hoped for was the discovery, preservation, and dissemination of knowledge about what happened. For the most part, that is what happened.210 Notes 1 See Judy Feigin, The Office of Special Investigations: Striving for Accountability in the Aftermath of the Holocaust (US Department of Justice: 2006); Alti Rodal, Nazi War Criminals in Canada: The Historical and Policy Setting from the 1940s to the Present (Ottawa: 1986); Sir Thomas Hetherington and William Chalmers, War Crimes: Report of the War Crimes Inquiry (Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1989). 2 See KENT, Lewis aka KAPOLNAI (KOPOLNAI), Bata, Volume 1, A6119, ASIO, 5884, National Archives of Australia [hereafter, NAA]. 3 Vilis Runka had resettled in Germany in 1962. Kripens died in 1968. Arvids Kripens, 1987–1992, A9525, Attorney-General’s Department, Special Investigations

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Unit [hereafter, SIU], PU77, NAA; ‘Latvian Fascsists’, Outlook, February 1964, 14; ‘Daugavas Vanagi’, report, undated c. 1965, War Crimes – Arvids Upmalis, 1966, A1838, Department of External Affairs, 1550/26 [hereafter, Upmalis External], NAA; Attorney-General’s Department, Special Investigations Unit, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1994), 113. 4 Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 243. 5 Ibid., 248. 6 ‘Melbourne’s Latvians: Head of the Information Centre and his Henchmen … Murky Springs’, Dzimtenes Balss, September 1964, translation, ‘Daugavas V ­ anagi’, report, undated c. 1965, Upmalis External, NAA. 7 ‘Wild Animals Disguised as Human Beings: Traitors Shall Not Go Unpunished’, Trud, 20 April 1964, translation, memorandum, 12 May 1964, Vagner/Wagner, Heinrich, 1987–1992, A9525, SIU, PU44 Part 1 [hereafter, Wagner SIU], NAA. 8 Handwritten note on letter to Mr Griffith, 20 May 1964, Wagner SIU, NAA. 9 ‘Daugavas Vanagi’, report, undated c. 1965, Upmalis External, NAA; ‘Latvian Relief Society Daugavas Vanagi’, letter from RW Whitford, Commissioner, to Director-General, Melbourne, October 1965, Aarons Papers, 30(59), SLNSW; ‘2 Men Accused: “Victims of a Red Plot”’, Truth, 16 April 1966. 10 ‘Arvids UPMALIS – M. SANDLERS – DZIMTENES BALSS’, report to the Superintendent, Victoria District, 7 December 1965, Mark Aarons papers relating to War Crimes & other papers, 30(59), MLMSS 10621 [hereafter, Aarons Papers], State Library of New South Wales [hereafter, SLNSW]. 11 In 1987 Aarons located witnesses in Latvia, but Upmalis died in 1971. See ­Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 245–247. 12 ‘Latvian Relief Society Daugavas Vanagi’, letter from RW Whitford, Commissioner, to Director-General, Melbourne, October 1965, Aarons Papers, 30(59), SLNSW; ‘Upmalis – Arvids’, Letter by JM Davis, Deputy Commissioner, to Secretary, Department of External Affairs, 12 January 1966, Upmalis External, NAA. 13 ‘Daugavas Vanagi’, report, undated c. 1965, Upmalis External, NAA. 14 Evidence against Fricsons also appeared in the list of Latvian War Criminals held in Wiener Library and Yad Vashem Archives. ‘Latvian Fascists Again’, Outlook, February 1966; Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 345; Fricsons, Argods, 1987–1992, A9525, SIU PU74 Part 1 [hereafter, Fricsons SIU], NAA. 15 ‘Our History’, Heidelberg Volleyball Club, https://heidelbergvolleyballclub.com. au/about/. 16 Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 86, 249, 83. 17 Extract of I Dementyeva, Are the Executioners Really Alive? Yes, They Are! They Live in Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Adelaide, in Sovietskaya Rossia, 26 June 1963, translation, attached to ‘Filipp Kapitula: Possible Request for Extradition’, letter from HS North, Second Secretary, Australian Embassy, M ­ oscow, to Secretary, Department of External Affairs, 2 July 1963, War Crimes – Filipp K, 1963, A1838, Department of External Affairs, 1550/24, NAA. 18 ‘Nazis Hiding Here?’, Australian Jewish News, 4 June 1965. 19 Ernest Platz, ‘The Eichmann Trial – Its Lessons: Australian Point of View’, Century, 5 May 1961. 20 ‘Lithuanian War Crimes Suspects’, Letter from Alan Benjamin to LWB Engledow, Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, 5 September 1979, Arnaldas P SIU, PU 6 [hereafter, Arnaldas SIU], NAA.

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21 John Playford, The Truth Behind ‘Captive Nations Week’ and the Extremist Emigres – ABN (Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations) in Australia (Sydney: Outlook, 1968), 17–18. 22 Press release, Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations, 28 April 1966, Megay, Laszlo Dr, 1987–1992, A9525, SIU, PU34 [hereafter, Megay SIU], NAA. 23 Mark Aarons, War Criminals Welcome: Australia a Sanctuary for Fugitive War Criminals Since 1945 (Melbourne: Black Inc, 2001), 347. 24 ‘Deputies Welcome Official Action on Urbanchich’, The Australian Jewish News, 30 August 1979. 25 Aarons, Sanctuary! Nazi Fugitives in Australia (Melbourne: William Heinemann Australia, 1989), 32, 273, 275–276. 26 ‘Wiesenthal: Scourge of war criminals, Australia may hide 100’, Sunday Mail (Adelaide), 9 September 1979. 27 Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 278. 28 Eric Lichtblau, The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler’s Men (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014); Donald Bloxham and Jonathan Waterlow, ‘War Crimes Trials’, in The Cambridge History of the Second World War, Part I: Ideologies, eds. Richard Bosworth & Joseph Maiolo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 205; Richards Plavnieks, Nazi Collaborators on Trial During the Cold War: Victors Arājs and the Latvian Auxiliary Security Police (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 11, 226. 29 Alti Rodal, ‘How Perpetrators of Genocidal Crimes Evaded Justice: The Canadian Story’, in Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide, Volume 1: History, eds. John K Roth, Elisabeth Maxwell, Margot Levy and Wendy Whitworth (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 703; Lawrence Douglas, ‘Convicting the Cog: The Munich Trial of John Demjanjuk’, in Rethinking Holocaust Justice: Essays Across Disciplines, ed. Norman JW Goda (Oxford: Bergahn Books, 2017), 193. 30 Indeed, at least three of the 27 major investigations carried out by the SIU involved suspects living in Australia under an alias. Persian, ‘Displaced Persons and the Politics of International Categorisation(s)’, 486–487; Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 83, 94, 106. 31 AC Menzies, Review of Material relating to the Entry of Suspected War Criminals into Australia (Canberra: The Review, 1986), 29. 32 Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 135–136; see Marian Wilkinson, ‘Fraser Government Inaction Hampered Nazi War Crimes Investigation’, National Times, 3–9 May 1985. 33 Menzies, Review of Material, 133. 34 Suzanne Rutland, ‘Preface’; and Jeremy Jones, ‘Appendix I’, in The Road to the Menzies Inquiry: Suspected War Criminals in Australia, ed. Leslie Caplan ­(Darlington, NSW: Australian Jewish Historical Society, 2012), 103. 35 Blanche d’Alpuget, Hawke: The Early Years (Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing, 2010), 395. 36 Anna Murdoch, ‘Are We Harbouring War Criminals?’, The Age, 3 April 1986; Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 14. 37 The United Kingdom initiated a similar investigation in 1988. Rodal, ‘How Perpetrators of Genocidal Crimes Evaded Justice’, 702–725. 38 Eli M Rosenbaum, ‘The Investigation and Prosecution of Suspected Nazi War Criminals: A Comparative Overview’, Patterns of Prejudice 21, no. 2 (1987): 21.

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39 Charter of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal, 8 August 1945, https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.2_ Charter%20of%20IMT%201945.pdf. 40 Menzies, Review of Material, 12. 41 Dr HJW Stokes, secretary to the investigation, cited in Paul R Bartrop, The ­Holocaust and Australia: Refugees, Rejection, and Memory (London: Bloomsbury, 2022), 209. 42 My italics. Menzies, Review of Material, 21, 125. 43 Jewish Research Services, a local agent for the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, were ‘officially adopted’ by the Victorian Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women during the 1970s. Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 13, 20, 121; ‘P, Arnaldas’, Alan L. Benjamin, File Note P768, November 1976; ‘Visit by Mr Alan Benjamin’, file note, LR Luck, First Secretary, Australian Embassy, Vienna, 11 January 1978; and letter from Alan Benjamin to Simon Wiesenthal, 9 May 1978, Arnaldas SIU, NAA. 44 Menzies, Review of Material, 25, 120, 121. 45 Ibid., 180–182; Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 551–552. 46 Menzies, Review of Material, 168, 12. 47 My italics. ‘Government Response to Menzies Report on Nazi War Criminals’, Ministerial Statement, Senate Hansard, 24 February 1987, https://parlinfo. aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:%22chamber/hansards/ 1987-02-24/0035%22. 48 Peter Biskup, ‘Displacement: The Reflections of an Old New Australian’, 6, Papers of Peter Biskup, 1959–2015, MS10252, National Library of Australia [hereafter, NLA], 40. 49 For example, the Joint Baltic Committee of Victoria, the ACEN Australian Delegation, and the Committee of Nations from Behind the Iron Curtain, had held a ‘remembrance day for Baltic people’ at Melbourne Town Hall on Genocide Day, 1963. Letter from Giniunas & Loover to Bowen, 29 August 1988, Joint Baltic Committee Records, 1952–2000, MLMSS 7629 [hereafter, Joint Baltic], Box 12, SLNSW; David Fraser, Daviborshch’s Cart: Narrating the Holocaust in Australian War Crimes Trials (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011), 88; Arturs Berztiss, ‘The Communism which we do not know’, Joint Baltic Committee, Victoria, Baltic Council of Australia [hereafter, Baltic Council], Australian Lithuanian Archives [hereafter, ALA]; Letter from J Staciunas, President, Australian Lithuanian Community Adelaide, to Senators, June 1987, Baltic Council, ALA. 50 George Mencinsky, ‘Who is stirring ethnic hatreds in Australia and why?’, Captive Nations Council of NSW Records, 1953–1998, MLMSS 7171 [hereafter, CNC NSW], Box 24, SLNSW. 51 Fraser, Daviborshch’s Cart, 88. 52 Wendy Lower, Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields ­(London: Chatto & Windus, 2013), 157. 53 ‘The Latvian Connection, 22 Years Ago’, Herald (Melbourne), 3 October 1986. 54 Letter from Dr A Viliunas to Barry Cohen MHR, 7 October 1988; see also, statement by Dr A Viliunas, undated c. June 1988, Joint Baltic, Box 12, SLNSW. 55 Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, 1/2/89, 128, submission, 4, cited in Fraser, Daviborshch’s Cart, 82. 56 Somewhat ironically, EG was named in the Soviet Procurator’s List and interviewed by the SIU in 1989. Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 455.

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57 Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, 26 January 1995; see ‘The Questionable Figure of 6 Mill. Gassed Jews’, New Digest International, Dec 1987–Feb 1988; Jeremy Jones, ‘Media Watch’, Australian Jewish Times, 17 December 1987. 58 Letter from Antanas Kramilius, President, Lithuanian Catholic Association, to Barry Cohen MHR, 25 September 1988, Joint Baltic, Box 12, SLNSW. 59 Letter from A Giniunas and L Looveer to Mr L Bowen, Attorney-General, 29 August 1988, Joint Baltic, Box 12, SLNSW. 60 The letter by Giniunas and Looveer was, indeed, ‘strongly repudiated’ by the Baltic Council of Australia. Letter from Barry Cohen, Federal Member for Robertson to A Giniunas, President, Joint Baltic Committee, 15 September ­ 1988, Joint Baltic, Box 12, SLNSW; ‘Aussie War Crimes “Must Go On Trial Too”’, Sunday Telegraph, 25 September 1988. 61 Statement, Secretary Lia Looveer, 10 December 1986, CNC NSW, SLNSW. 62 Jones, ‘Appendix 1’, 104; Leslie Caplan, The Road to the Menzies Inquiry: Suspected War Criminals in Australia (Darlington, NSW: Australian Jewish Historical Society, 2012), 69. 63 Letter from the Australian Lithuanian Community of Adelaide to the Secretary, Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, Parliament House, 15 January 1988, War Crimes, ALA. 64 ‘The Latvian Connection, 22 Years Ago’, Herald (Melbourne), 3 October 1986. 65 J Staciunas, ‘Open Letter to Australian Senators’, 1987, The War Criminals Act, D6-51, Estonian Archives of Australia [hereafter, EAA]. 66 Letter from J Staciunas, President, and A Vitkunas, Secretary, Australian Lithuanian Community Adelaide, to MPs, 13 November 1987, Baltic Council, ALA. 67 Dr A Viliunas, undated, Joint Baltic, Box 12, SLNSW. 68 Anthony Endrey, ‘Bitter Harvest’ and ‘The Australian Scene: The War Crimes Hysteria: Hawke’s Bicentennial “Gift”’, Australian Ethnic Reporter, 1988. 69 Letter from Attorney-General Lionel Bowen to Lia Loover, 4 October 1988, CNC NSW, Box 24, SLNSW. 70 ‘War Crimes Legislation’, from Terezia M Kral, President, Captive Nations’ Council of Victoria, to Senators and Members of Parliament as addressed, 8 November 1988, Attorney General – War Crimes, 1987–1989, M880, Department of the House of Representatives – Member for Bennelong, 828 [hereafter, AG War Crimes], NAA. 71 Nikolai Tolstoy, ‘Foreword’, in Rick Brown, ed., The report on the Symposium on the proposed War Crimes legislation in Australia organised by the Captive Nations’ Council of Victoria, undated, 5, AG War Crimes, NAA. 72 ‘The Dark Side of the Hunt for Criminals’, Australian, 7 November 1989. 73 Letter from Algis P. Kabaila, Chairman-designate, Baltic Council of Australia, to Dr P Kabaila, Vice President, Federal Executive of the Australian Lithuanian Community, Victoria, 4 March 1987, Baltic Council, ALA. 74 Letter from Richard Ollino to Dana Baltutis, 1 December 1987, The War Criminals Act, D6-51, EAA. 75 ‘Basic Stance of the Baltic Council of Australia’, Joint Baltic, Box 12, SLNSW. 76 Statement by the Acting President of the Law Council of Australia, Mr Alex Chernov QC, 15 December 1988, AG War Crimes, NAA. 77 Michael Lawrisky, ‘Soviets give little help in Nazi hunt’, Age, 7 August 1986; Lev Havryliv, ‘A lesson for Australia’s Nazi Hunters’, Sydney Morning Herald, 8 August 1986. 78 ‘Australian Newspaper Articles Concerning OSI’, memorandum from Neal M Sher, Director, OSI, to Menzies, Chief, Australian War Crimes Inquiry, undated, Menzies, Review of Material, Attachment B, 221–226. 79 Captive Nations Association – SA Division, War Crimes Amendment Bill 1987 – Submission, War Crimes, ALA.

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80 ‘Backbencher names “Nazi Criminals”’, Australian, 27 November 1987; ­‘Urbanchich has “nothing to apologise or pay for”’, Weekend Australian, 6–7 December 1986. 81 Fraser, Daviborshch’s Cart, 87. 82 ‘Government Response to Menzies Report on Nazi War Criminals’, Ministerial Statement, Senate Hansard, 24 February 1987; Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 551. 83 War Crimes Amendment Act 1988 No. 3, 1989 – Sect 3, Substitution of Preamble, http://www9.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/num_act/wcaa1988201/ s3.html. 84 Letter from I Rubin-Zacks, Rabbi, Perth Hebrew Congregation to Ben Green, Executive Council of Australian Jewry, 7 February 1951, Series 1: Mark ­Aarons – General Australian War Crimes [hereafter, Mark Aarons – General Australian War Crimes], Box 8, SLNSW. 85 Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia (AGPS, 1993). 86 Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 23, 171, 401, 171. Another list was provided after the SIU was winding down. War Crimes, Special Investigation Unit Report, 1987–1988, M3466, Rev Fr The Hon Michael Carter TATE AO, 2 [hereafter, SIU Report], NAA; Letter from Efraim Zuroff, Director, Simon Wiesenthal Centre to Graham Blewitt, 12 May 1992, Vacys K, 1987–1992, A9525, SIU, PU823, NAA. 87 Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 171. 88 ‘Profiling of Priority Suspects’, memorandum from Bob Reid to Robert Greenwood, 22 August 1989, Wagner SIU, NAA; Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 284. 89 Feigin, The Office of Special Investigations, 489. 90 Andrijo Artukovic, Klaus Barbie, Martin Bormann, Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele and Yaroslav Stetsko. 91 In addition: 41 Byelorussians, 35 Germans, 30 Russians, 18 Serbians, 17 Dutch, 14 Estonians, nine Poles, five Austrians, four Czechs, three Slovakians and three ‘Yugoslavs’, two Bosnians and two Romanians, and one Australian, one Bulgarian, one Greek, one Montenegrin, one Norwegian and one Slovenian. This list is indicative rather than comprehensive as there are 67 files for which I have not yet been able to access the claimed nationality. 92 Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 172, 198, 250, 45, 49, 286; Arnaldas SIU, NAA. 93 Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 48, 204. 94 Martin Dean, ‘Soviet War Crimes Lists and their role in the Investigation of Nazi War Criminals in the West’, in NS-Gewaltherrschaft: Beiträge zur historischen Forschung und juristichen Aufarbeitung, eds. Alfred Gottwaldt, Norbert Kampe and Peter Klein (Berlin: Edition Hentrich, 2005), 456. 95 Ibid., 401, 402, 404. 96 Jurjević died in 1974. ‘Inquiries re Mirijan Jurjevic’, memorandum from John L Jansen, Senior Investigation, 18 August 1987, Lovokovic, Fabijan, 1987–1992, A9525, SIU, PU32, NAA; Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 250. 97 ‘Recommendations that P/U 260 be suspended under Category “H”’, memorandum from K Conwell, Deputy Director (Investigations) to the Director, 19 December 1991, Anton A, 1987–1992, A9525, SIU, PU260, NAA; Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in ­Australia, 462; Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations

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of War Criminals in Australia, 204, 251; Memorandum from HJ Blackburn to the Director, 29 September 1988, Untaru, Constantin (Dr), A9525, SIU, PU42, NAA; see also Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 522. 98 Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 357, 520, 525, 409. 99 See interview with Jonas A, 12 November 1990, A, Jonas, 1987–1992, A9525, SIU, PU197 [hereafter, Jonas A SIU], NAA. 100 See Borys M, 1987–1992, A9525, SIU, PU109, NAA; Zigmas P, 1987–1992, A9525, SIU, PU647, NAA. 101 Memorandum from L Potter, Senior Investigator, to K Conwell, Deputy Director, 22 August 1990, Franciszek S, 1987–1992, A9525, SIU, PU69, NAA. 102 See, for example, the two interviews conducted in English only with Jonas A in Jonas A, SIU, NAA. 103 Fraser, Daviborshch’s Cart, 248. 104 Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 50; see A, Nikolai, 1987–1992, A9525, SIU, PU70, NAA; M or M, Antanas, 1987–1992, A9525, SIU, PU538, NAA; B, Antanas, 1987–1992, A9525, SIU, PU139, NAA. 105 ‘Additional List of Suspected Soviet Nazi War Criminals’, undated, Fricsons SIU, NAA; Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, p. 106 Fraser, Daviborshch’s Cart, 98; ‘Dark Night Sunny Day’, Polyukhovich SIU, NAA. 107 ‘APPEAL to Parliament and Government of Australia from public gathering of the town of Vladimirets, Rovno region, Ukraine SSR, 27 May 1988’, and ‘Information on K Philip Ivanovich’, undated, Polyukhovich, Ivan, 1987–1992, A9525, SIU [hereafter, Polyukhovich SIU], NAA. 108 Kapitula died five years later, in 1994. Attorney-General’s Department, Special Investigations Unit. Kapitula, Filipp Ivanovich/Filipp, 1987–1992, SIU, PU104, NAA; billiongraves.com/grave/9120485. 109 Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 281–282. 110 Allegations against both Hryhorij and Borys W were unable to be substantiated. Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 284. 111 Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 282–283, 481–482. 112 Ibid., 23. 113 Konrad Kwiet, ‘A Historian’s View: The War Crimes Debate Down Under’, Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust 24, no. 1 (2010): 333; Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 23. 114 Letter from Graham Blewitt to Dr H Wilhelm, Germany, 8 August 1989, Fricsons SIU, NAA. 115 Similar agreements were subsequently effected with Hungary and Yugoslavia by the end of 1987. Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 402, 24; see Cabinet Submission 5554 – ­Government response to Senate Standing Committee’s report on War Crimes Amendment Bill 1987 – Decision 10797, 1988, A14039, Cabinet Office, 5554, NAA. 116 Konrad Kwiet, interviewed by Mark Aarons, 19 November 2000, Series 5: Mark Aarons – Interview & Translation Tapes, MLOH 626/29 [hereafter, Mark Aarons Tapes], SLNSW. 117 Memorandum from W Beale, Investigator, to Deputy Director, 4 July 1989, and file note, 28 February 1991, Arnaldas SIU, NAA.

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118 ‘Re Fricsons’, transcription of meeting held on 24 May 1989 at the SIU, with Prof. Richard Breitman, Fricsons SIU, NAA. 119 Konrad Kwiet, interviewed by Mark Aarons, 19 November 2000, Mark Aarons Tapes, SLNSW. 120 Konrad Kwiet, file note, undated, Juozas B, 1987–1992, A9525, SIU, PU152, NAA; Kwiet, ‘A Historian’s View’, 321. 121 See, for example, Jonas A SIU, NAA. 122 Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 107–170. 123 List from Efraim Zuroff, Director, Israel Office, to Robert Greenwood, 23 October 1989, Pranas A, 1987–1992, A9525, SIU, PU637 [hereafter, Pranas SIU], NAA. 124 Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 126. 125 Konrad Kwiet, interviewed by Mark Aarons, 19 November 2000, Mark Aarons Tapes, SLNSW. 126 Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 125, 134; List from Efraim Zuroff, Director, Israel Office, to Robert Greenwood, 23 October 1989, and memorandum from John H Ralston, Investigator, to Director, SIU, 30 June 1992, Pranas SIU, NAA. 127 Memorandum from John H Ralston, Investigator, to Director, SIU, 30 June 1992, Pranas SIU, NAA. 128 Richard Breitman, ‘Analysis of Case of Antanas Sabrinskas’, memorandum, November 1989, Sabrinskas, Antanas and others, 1987–1992, A9525, SIU, ­ PU510, NAA; Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 137. 129 Interview with Pranas A, 13 April 1992, Pranas, SIU, NAA. 130 Interview with Zigmas P, 13 August 1990, Zigmas P, 1987–1992, A9525, SIU, PU647, NAA. 131 Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 647. 132 Interview with Albinas L, 21 July 1989, Albinas L, 1987–1992, A9525, SIU, PU289, NAA. 133 Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 125. 134 Memorandum from John H Ralston, Investigator, to Director, SIU, 30 June 1992, Pranas, SIU, NAA; Konrad Kwiet, interviewed by Mark Aarons, 19 November 2000, Mark Aarons Tapes, SLNSW. 135 Letter from the Public Prosecutor, Central Office of the State Administration of Justice, Ludwigsburg, to Konrad Kwiet, SIU, undated, Juozas L, 1987–1992, A9525, SIU, PU645, NAA. 136 Konrad Kwiet, interviewed by Mark Aarons, 19 November 2000, Mark Aarons Tapes, SLNSW. 137 Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 108–110. 138 Ibid., 120, 117, 119. 139 The other OSI suspect who had resettled in the United States from Australia, Czeslaus Wojciechowski, was denaturalised in 1987 and voluntarily returned to West Germany. Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 288. Claire E Aubin, ‘From Treblinka to Trenton: Holocaust Perpetrators as Immigrants to the Post-War United States’, PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 2022, Appendix, https://edin.ac/3wcS846. 140 Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 111.

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141 Kalejs was ultimately deported to Australia in 1994; he was later deported by the Canadians and then deportation proceeding were brought against him by the British before he returned again to Australia. Latvia then requested his extradition in 2000; less than a year later, while this was still in process, he died. Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 111–112; Plavnieks, Nazi Collaborators on Trial During the Cold War, 269. 142 In 2000, filmmaker Rod Freedman located eyewitnesses in Lithuania. Antanas G died in 2001. See One Last Chance – A Nazi War Criminal in Australia, Ronin Films, 2000. 143 Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 122–124. 144 Ibid., 150, 151, 155. 145 Ibid., 151, 152–155, 157, 164. 146 Ibid., 107–170. 147 Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 104–105, 294. 148 Ignas T, 1987–1992, A9525, SIU, PU113, NAA; Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 100. 149 Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 231, 343–344. 150 Ibid., 41, 562, 94, 95; Polyukhovich SIU, NAA. 151 Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 95; Letter from Richard Breitman to Robert Greenwood, 3 June 1990, Aarons Papers, 30 (59), SLNSW. 152 ‘Professor Kwiet’s Comments’, Aarons Papers, 30 (59), SLNSW. 153 Graham Blewitt and Bob Greenwood, interviewed by Mark Aarons, 22 December 2000, Mark Aarons Tapes, SLNSW. 154 Richard Breitman, ‘The Fricsons Case: Killings of the Jews of Liepaja’, report, 12 January 1989, Fricsons SIU, NAA. 155 Konrad Kwiet, interviewed by Mark Aarons, 19 November 2000, Mark Aarons Tapes, SLNSW. 156 ‘Fricsons Allegations’, file note, undated, and file note, undated, Fricsons SIU, NAA. 157 See also: investigations into Leonas Pazuisis (Lithuanian). Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 68, 70. 158 SIU Report, NAA; Letter from RF Greenwood QC, Director, Special Investigations Unit, to G Dabb, First Assistant Secretary, Criminal Law and Law Enforcement Division, Attorney-General’s Department, 21 March 1990, Cabinet Submission 7166 – Review of Resources for Special Investigations Unit and for prosecutions under the War Crimes Act 1945 – Decisions 13897/ER and 13908, 1990, A14039, 7166, NAA. 159 Another two suspects died late in the investigation, in 1988 and 1990. AttorneyGeneral’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 552, 49. 160 In the United States, the work of the Office of Special Investigations continues; it has denaturalised 98 individuals. Graham Blewitt, interviewed by Mark Aarons, undated, and Bob Reid, interviewed by Mark Aarons, undated, Mark Aarons Tapes, SLNSW; Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 28; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, ‘Office of Special Investigations’, Holocaust Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia. ushmm.org/content/en/article/office-of-special-investigations. 161 Graham Blewitt, interviewed by Mark Aarons, undated c. 1993, Mark Aarons Tapes, SLNSW.

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162 For an analysis of the Wagner case, see Krzysztof Lada and Peter Monteath, ‘One Day in Israylovka: A Case Study of the Holocaust in Southeastern Ukraine’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies 31, no. 1 (2017): 61–86. For a comprehensive discussion of the Polyukhovich case, see Bevan, A Case to Answer. 163 Peggy O’Donnell, ‘“Gateway to Hell”: A Nazi Mass Grave, Forensic Scientists, and an Australian War Crimes Trial’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies 32, no. 3 (2018): 368. Some of these artefacts are now exhibited at the S­ ydney Jewish Museum, see https://sydneyjewishmuseum.com.au/online-excursion/ unearthing-the-holocaust-serniki-and-the-australian-war-crimes-trials/. 164 ‘Mikolay Berezowski’, letter from IR Bermingham, First Assistant Director to Graham Blewitt, 28 August 1992, and ‘Wagner and Berezovsky’, letter from M Weinberg QC to Graham Blewitt, Berezovsky, Mikolay, 1987–1992, A9525, SIU, PU691 Part 1 [hereafter, Berezovsky SIU], NAA; Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 58. 165 ‘War-Time Beating Killed Baby: Witness’, The Canberra Times, 2 July 1992. 166 Fraser, Daviborshch’s Cart, 154, 188, 160. 167 Berezovsky SIU, NAA. 168 Fraser, Daviborshch’s Cart, 111, 156–160. 169 Interview with Andrej Wojtenko, 27 September 1949, Wagner SIU, NAA. 170 Wagner SIU, NAA. 171 ‘Wild Animals Disguised as Human Beings: Traitors Shall Not Go Unpunished’, Trud, 20 April 1964, translation, memorandum, 12 May 1964, Wagner, SIU, NAA. 172 Lada and Monteath, ‘One Day in Israylovka’, 75; Fraser, Daviborshch’s Cart, 20; Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 60–61. 173 Lada and Monteath, ‘One Day in Israylovka’, 71, 74–75. 174 Fraser, Daviborshch’s Cart, 111; Ludmilla Stern, ‘Non-English Speaking Witnesses in the Australian Legal Context: The War Crimes Prosecution as a Case Study’, Law/Text/Culture 2 (1995): 6–31. 175 Fraser, Daviborshch’s Cart, 213, 224–225, 228, 235. 176 An ethnic German witness, Ernst Hering, after giving testimony for the Wagner case, was convicted himself, in Germany, for his role in the killing of the 19 children. Lada and Monteath, ‘One Day in Israylovka’, 75. 177 Cited in Fraser, Daviborshch’s Cart, 99. 178 ‘Dark Night Sunny Day’, Polyukhovich SIU, NAA. 179 Polyukhovich, SIU, NAA. 180 Allegations of War Criminal in Australia. 1986. TASS, 18 December, and file note, Polyukhovich SIU, NAA. 181 ‘On Behalf of the Living and the Dead’, News from Ukraine, 1987, Polyukhovich SIU, NAA. 182 Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 55. 183 ‘Major Delays in War Crimes Prosecution After Suspect Shot’, The Australian Jewish News, 3 August 1990; ‘Shooting of war crimes suspect raises ire, questions in Australia’, Ukrainian Weekly, 19 August 1990. 184 ‘Prosecution: “Could Be Suffering From Dementia”, Polyukhovich ‘May Never Face Trial’, The Australian Jewish News, 17 August 1990. 185 Attorney-General’s Department, Report of the Investigations of War Criminals in Australia, 55. 186 The hunting and killing of Jews in the forest was deemed not part of Nazi policy, as Polyukhovich was not authorised to kill Jews on his own initiative, and therefore not covered by the War Crimes Act. Fraser, Daviborshch’s Cart, 107, 119.

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187 Panel Discussion hosted by David Bevan with The Hon. Gregory James AM QC, The Hon Michael David QC, Emeritus Professor Dr Konrad Kwiet, ‘On Trial Series: The Ivan Polyukhovich Trial’, Melbourne Holocaust Museum, 21 October 2021 [hereafter, Panel Discussion 2021]. 188 Graham Blewitt & Bob Greenwood, interviewed by Mark Aarons, 22 December 2000, Mark Aarons Tapes, SLNSW. 189 Richard Wright, ‘Where are the Bodies? In the Ground’, The Public Historian 32, no. 1 (2010): 98–99; O’Donnell, “Gateway to Hell”, 371–72. 190 O’Donnell, “Gateway to Hell”, 370. 191 Fraser, Daviborshch’s Cart, 136. 192 Wright, ‘Where are the Bodies?’, 105. 193 O’Donnell, “Gateway to Hell”, 368–369, 376. 194 ‘Into the Sunshine of Freedom’, The Advertiser, 19 May 1993. 195 Kott, ‘The Portrayal of Soviet Atrocities in the Nazi-controlled Latvian-language Press’, 128; Plavnieks, Nazi Collaborators on Trial During the Cold War, 2; Graham Blewitt, interviewed by Mark Aarons, c. 1993, Mark Aarons Tapes, SLNSW. 196 ‘No more war crimes trials’, Sydney Morning Herald, 8 September 1992. 197 Letter from Leslie Caplan AM, ECAJ, to The Hon Michael Duffy, Attorney General of Australia, 11 September 1992, War Crimes, 468, NAA. 198 Kwiet, ‘A Historian’s View’, 330. 199 Panel Discussion 2021. 200 Wright, ‘Where are the Bodies?’, 99. 201 Plavnieks, Nazi Collaborators on Trial During the Cold War, 255, 268–270; Feigin, The Office of Special Investigations, 490. 202 Feigin, The Office of Special Investigations, 490. 203 See Ruth Balint, ‘The Ties That Bind: Australia, Hungary and the Case of Károly Zentai’, Patterns of Prejudice 44, no. 3 (2010): 281–303. 204 In a relevant postscript, one Serbian citizen of Australia, Dragan Vasiljković, who went back to fight in the war in the Balkans during the 1990s was extradited to Croatia in 2015. Gregory L Rose, ‘High Court was Wrong to Stop “War Crimes” Extradition’, Canberra Times, 27 August 2012; Paul Daley, ‘Very Last Hunt for War Criminals’, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 August 2012; JJ Wigney, ‘Snedden v Minister for Justice for the Commonwealth of Australia [2014] FCAFC 156’, Australian Year Book of International Law 33 (2015): 197–198. 205 This was Andrei (Anthony) Sawoniuk, convicted in 1999 of war crimes for the murder of 18 Jews while a member of the Belarusian auxiliary police. David Nasaw, The Last Million: Europe’s Displaced Persons from World War to Cold War (New York: Penguin Press, 2020), 529. 206 Graham Blewitt and Bob Greenwood, interviewed by Mark Aarons, 22 December 2000, Mark Aarons Tapes, SLNSW. 207 Panel Discussion 2021. 208 Bob Reid, interviewed by Mark Aarons, undated c. 1986–2000, Mark Aarons Tapes, SLNSW. 209 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin, 1977), 253; Douglas, ‘Convicting the Cog’, 192. 210 Plavnieks, Nazi Collaborators on Trial During the Cold War, 7, 12.

CONCLUSION

The mass of post-war displaced persons included both non-German perpetrators in military units and civilian collaborators fleeing west from the oncoming Soviet army. As a matter of political expediency, many of these war criminals and quislings were eventually categorised as political refugees from the Soviet system, and the International Refugee Organisation resettled them in any country that would take them. Between 1947 and 1952, and despite protests from Jewish groups, Australia welcomed 170,000 DPs; Nazi collaborators were transformed into fit workers and New Australians. While refusing all extradition requests, the Australian government did keep a watchful eye on groups, some of whom were violently fascist, ultranationalist and/or antisemitic. During the 1980s, along with other countries of resettlement, Australia finally moved to take allegations of war crimes seriously and amended legislation so that criminal charges could be brought against suspects. However, only three suspects were charged, with no convictions. Immediately after the war crimes trials and the attendant publicity given to various DP community viewpoints, a novel purporting to be based on the life story of a Ukrainian perpetrator burst onto the Australian literary scene.1 Twenty-three-year-old Helen Demidenko was, she claimed, a third-­ generation Ukrainian-Australian, who was using family oral histories to explain the motives of perpetrators in the wake of experiencing ‘a great deal of personal unpleasantness as a result of the war crimes trials.’2 The book rehashed the ‘narrative of justification’ that certain DP groups and individuals had been presenting to the world since the beginning of the Holocaust, that is, that they were the original victims of ‘Judeo-Bolshevism.’3 Demidenko’s ‘Uncle Vitaly’ was charged with war crimes in Australia, and he was now also a victim of Israelis who ‘pursued an old man under his kitchen table.’4 DOI: 10.4324/9780429276880-8

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Initially to be presented as non-fiction, the cautious publisher insisted on presenting the work as fiction and in changing the names of the protagonists from Demidenko to Kovalenko. The book was an immediate success, winning three literary awards, including the prestigious Miles Franklin Award, whose judges stated: Novels about the migrant experience seem to us to be seizing the high ground in contemporary Australian fiction, in contrast to fictions about the more vapid aspects of Australian life. In particular they are incorporating into the cultural memory first hand experience of the major historical events of the century … Helen Demidenko’s novel displays a powerful literary imagination coupled to a strong sense of history, and brings to light a hitherto unspeakable aspect of the Australian migrant experience … it resists monolithic assumptions about cultural and identity.5 Not everybody was happy with this ‘bringing to light’ of ‘unspeakable’ pasts. There was a public debate involving Stefan Romaniw, president of the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations (AFUO), as to whether Ukrainians were inherently antisemitic. Ukrainian-Australian historian Marko Pavlyshyn alleged that ‘no book did more to reinforce the stereotype of the pro-Nazi, antisemitic, drunken peasant savage than Demidenko’s.’6 People began asking their Ukrainian neighbours. ‘What were you really doing during the war?’7 To the great embarrassment of the Australian literati, Demidenko was soon unmasked as English-Australian Helen Darville, whose source was ‘a single person heavily influenced by Nazi propaganda.’8 Darville had apparently attended the Polyukhovich trial with a young man who was noticed to repeatedly mutter ‘Jews’ throughout the testimony of an Israeli witness.9 It perhaps says something about a settler colony heavily imbued with a White Australian consciousness that Anglo-Australia was so easily hoodwinked. Australia has, after all, a long history of excusing, and even welcoming, Holocaust perpetrators. A rather different story played out in 2022 when a long-deceased art benefactor was accused of complicity in Nazi war crimes. Lithuanian Bronius ‘Bob’ Šredersas resettled in working-class Wollongong in 1950, working as a labourer while also quietly building up an enviable collection of Australian art. Šredersas bequeathed this art collection to the city of Wollongong in 1976, six years before his death. In doing so, he ‘virtually gave the city an art gallery.’ Šredersas thus became a local hero: a ‘Bob Sredersas’ Gallery housed his collection, and there were celebratory dinners and historical lectures held in his honour. BHP steelworks enthused in 1985 that ‘Bob Sredersas’s story is probably the most gentle and beautiful of all the folklore that migrants have established in the steel town.’10 In 2018, an exhibition titled ‘The Gift’

Conclusion  171

was held to honour him on the 40th anniversary of the Wollongong Art Gallery. The attendant publicity mentioned that Šredersas had been a policeman for the Lithuanian Department of Security; one report cited the executor of Šredersas’s will saying ‘it’s pretty cloudy as to what his movements were in the war years.’11 This piqued the interest of leftist former local councillor, Michael Samaras. Samaras liaised with archivists in Lithuania who found that the Volksdeutsche Šredersas (born Shreders), while claiming in his migration documents to have been a ‘seaman’ and a ‘labourer’ during the war, had actually served in the Lithuanian State Security Department and had also applied to join the Waffen-SS.12 Samaras sent this archival information to Efraim Zuroff at the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem, who agreed that ‘any person who served in the SD (Sicherheitdienst) in Kaunas almost certainly was involved in the persecution and murder of Jews.’ He then took the information to the Gallery and to Wollongong City Council, who initially attempted to fob him off with the usual line of Australian officials that ‘given the clear lack of evidence,’ it would be inappropriate for Council to take on an ‘investigative role.’13 The Council did soon bow to media pressure, however, commissioning a report from Konrad Kwiet, now with the Sydney Jewish Museum. Kwiet acknowledged that Šredersas’s name did not appear on any lists before the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) between 1987 and 1992 and that he had never been investigated for war crimes anywhere. There was no documentary evidence that he had perpetrated war crimes. If this had been an SIU investigation, the file would have been closed with a brief note: ‘vague allegations’ and/or ‘not substantiated.’ However, in this case, Kwiet was not held to legal evidentiary thresholds, and so he concluded that Šredersas ‘might not have committed murder, but his wartime position within the SS and Police apparatus made him complicit to the Holocaust and other hideous crimes perpetrated.’14 In response to this report, the Council removed a plaque acknowledging Šredersas’s donation to the Gallery and updated the Gallery’s website with the new information.15 Instead of his work being ignored – as was that of many during the post-war decades, including Ernest Platz, Alan Benjamin and John Playford – Samaras was successful in his mission to tell ‘a new story that explains it all properly.’16 He also received congratulatory awards from both the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies and the Friends of Wollongong City Libraries. The Australian public is perhaps now – 70 years after the DPs first arrived in Australia and thirty years after the war crimes trials – willing to accept that, just as victims of the Holocaust resettled in Australia, ‘so did perpetrators.’17 For historians, this story is a reminder that there is much work to be done in setting the record straight. Many perpetrators never appeared on any list. Indeed, the Australian SBS television show ‘Every Family has a Secret’

172 Conclusion

has been approached by at least three separate families who suspected that a family member was a Holocaust perpetrator.18 The show has investigated these allegations, using overseas archival researchers, and in the two cases that have aired, both suspects were shown to have been complicit. Angela Hamilton suspected that her now-deceased Romanian father, Roszy Pál, was ‘helping the Nazis’ because he had been a violent man and a rabid antisemite. In fact, he had been convicted in absentia in post-war Romania of killing 31 elderly Jews, and the family had been watched in Perth up to the 1970s by the Romanian secret police.19 Peter Eden similarly suspected that his violent and antisemitic father, Asir Topčagić, had been a member of the Hungarian Arrow Cross; investigators proved that he had been a member from 1941 to 1945.20 The obverse can also occur. I was shocked when, towards the end of this project, I saw my husband’s maternal grandfather’s name on the SIU’s list: no. 618.21 Stanislaw was Ukrainian, from Polish Galicia, and had met his Ukrainian wife in December 1941 after both being sent to work as forced labourers on a farm in Germany. They resettled with their young daughter in Australia in 1949, via both Poland and Belgium, and had also returned to Ukraine to visit family in 1974. He was not on any war crimes list. The allegation came in the form of a denunciation as a result of the SIU’s public appeal for information. An anonymous letter provided Stanislaw’s name and address in western Sydney, with the words: ‘A[d]mitted Ukraine War Criminal. Many boasts of his underground work.’ Stanislaw was interviewed and ‘completely refuted the allegations.’ The investigators judged that the allegation was ‘vague and imprecise and after preliminary investigation further enquiries are unlikely to lead to proof of the commission of an offence.’ In 2023, the family was perplexed. There had been stories of Grandpa committing sabotage, but that had been in Germany and against the Nazis. He had been a Ukrainian nationalist, though, and admitted membership of the Ukrainian Youth Club in the Nordheim DP camp. There were also four or five months after the German invasion that were unaccounted for. The allegations of Stanislaw participating in some form of pro-Nazi ‘underground work’ were vague and unlikely. But it was not impossible that a 19-yearold Ukrainian nationalist in Galicia could have participated in the wave of anti-Jewish violence that claimed the lives of around 10,000 Jews in western Ukraine during June and July 1941.22 Australian families will continue to reckon with possible and established past acts of perpetration. Meanwhile, even long after the end of the Cold War and the war in the Balkans, which resulted in the longed-for national sovereignties, far-right and ultranationalist DP organisations continue apace, renewed by younger generations. Against continuing protests from Croatians and ‘Yugoslav veterans’, in 1982, the Returned Services League allowed Serbian Chetniks to march on Anzac Day, and this continues today.23 Croatian leader Ante Pavelic is

Conclusion  173

still venerated in clubs around the country, and sporting arenas are still a main site of conflict.24 Fascist activity is also now seen in iterations such as the vocal anti-vax/anti-lockdown movement that appeared in Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic.25 Second-generation Croatian-Australian John Ovčarić, founder of the ultranationalist Croatian Diasporan Voice, apparently has no problem with his followers associating with neo-Nazis, but suggested that it was inappropriate for Croatians to appear at such demonstrations alongside such natural enemies as the Serbian Chetniks and the Russian-aligned ‘Aussie Cossack,’ Simeon Boikov.26 It seems that not much has changed since Croatian Frank Megadja connected with the National Socialist Party of Australia during the 1960s. DP groups are thus continuing to contribute to an ongoing (and increasing) normalisation of fascist views in the public sphere. To return to Glenda Sluga’s exhortation, historians must be committed to discussing and analysing these previously ‘taboo’ subjects, both in order to interrogate the ‘aggressive emotions’ arising as part of – and in reaction to – perpetration and fascist ideation, and to showcase these former displaced persons as bearing problematic pasts and using their own agency to strategise reinvention.27 The resettlement of far-right DPs in the west challenges easy narratives of postwar justice. In Australia, they serve as a reminder of the shadow of White Australia’s assimilatory aim and a continuing absence of reconciliation, with both settler colonial and migrant pasts. Notes 1 Helen Demidenko, The Hand that Signed the Paper (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1995). 2 ‘Helen Demidenko’s book The Hand that Signed the Paper causes controversy’, 7.30 Report, ABC, 27 June 1995. 3 A similar perspective is presented in Thomas Keneally, A Family Madness (Sydney: Hodder and Stoughton,1985). Kirril Robert Shields, ‘Perpetrators, Bystanders, and Victims: Representations of the Third Reich in Australian Fiction’, PhD diss., University of Queensland, 2014, 194, 200. 4 David Fraser, Daviborshch’s Cart: Narrating the Holocaust in Australian War Crimes Trials (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011), 291–292. 5 Robert Manne, The Culture of Forgetting: Helen Demidenko and the Holocaust (Melbourne: Text Publishing Company, 1996), 64–65. 6 Manne, The Culture of Forgetting, 81–83, 87. 7 Kateryna Olijnyk Longley, ‘Fabricating Otherness: Demidenko and Exoticism’, Postmodern Studies 29 (2000): 27. 8 Charles Sowerwine, ‘Pieces of the Puzzle? The Demidenko Affair in Retrospect’, in Genocide, History and Fictions: Historians Respond to Helen Demidenko/ Darville’s ‘The Hand that Signed the Paper’, ed. Stephen Wheatcroft (Melbourne: History Department, University of Melbourne, 1997), 98. 9 Fraser, Daviborshch’s Cart, 296. 10 ‘Port Kembla: A Great Big Smelting Pot’, BHP: 100 Years of Growing with Australia (Personal Investment Monthly, 1985), 64.

174 Conclusion

11 Gavin Coote, ‘The Lithuanian secret service officer whose art collection changed an Australian city’, ABC Illawarra, 26 May 2018. 12 See Sredersas Bronius born 4 December 1910, A12027, Department of Immigration, 459, National Archives of Australia [hereafter, NAA]. 13 Paul Daley, ‘“I am Bob. Just Bob”: Could a Wollongong folk hero have had a Nazi past?’, Guardian, 21 May 2022. 14 Konrad Kwiet, ‘Preliminary Report: The Nazi Allegations Raised Against Bronius Sredersas’, 19 May 2022, https://wollongong.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_ file/0016/166300/Report-Wollongong-Art-Gallery-June-2022.pdf. 15 ‘Statement on Bronius ‘Bob’ Sredersas’, Wollongong Art Gallery, http://www. wollongongartgallery.com/gallery/Pages/default.aspx. 16 Connor Pearce, ‘Michael Samaras says Wollongong needs to rethink connection to Bob Sredersas,’ Illawarra Mercury, 11 November 2022. 17 ‘Angela Hamilton and David Field’, Every Family has a Secret, S1, SBS, 2020. 18 Email to author from Artemis Media, 15 September 2021. 19 ‘Angela Hamilton and David Field’, SBS; Daisy Dumas, ‘My father was a war criminal,’ SBS Life, 5 July 2019. 20 ‘Peter Eden and Derek Pedley,’ Every Family has a Secret, S3, SBS, 2022. 21 Stanislaw, A9525, Attorney-General’s Department, Special Investigations Unit, PU618, NAA. 22 Per A Rudling, ‘Ukrainians’, in European Fascist Movements: A Sourcebook, eds. Roland Clark and Tim Grady (London: Routledge, 2023), 366. 23 ‘Women Against Rape Will March on Anzac Day,’ Tribune, 21 April 1982. 24 See Ben Schneiders and Simone Fox Koob, ‘“Symbols of Hate”: The lingering afterlife of Croatian fascism in Australia,’ Age/Sydney Morning Herald, 11 June 2023; Andy Fleming, ‘Melbourne Croatia/Knights ultras still being d*ckheads’, slackbastard, 22 February 2015. 25 Leo Crnogorevic, ‘Ultranationalists are Seeing an Organising Boom in Australia,’ Jacobin, 20 November 2021; Zac Crellin, ‘From anti-vaxxers to ‘Sovereign Citizens’: A who’s who of the Convoy to Canberra protest,’ New Daily, 7 February 2022. 26 John Ovčarić, ‘The Manchurian Candidate – And the Croatian Vaccination Question’, Glas Hrvatske Dijaspore - Croatian Diasporan Voice, 18 January 2022. 27 Glenda Sluga, ‘Whose History?’ in The Historian’s Conscience: Australian Historians on the Ethics of History, ed. Stuart Macintyre (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2004), 137.

INDEX

Note: Page numbers followed by n and number represent endnote and note number. Aarons, Mark 136, 138, 139,156 Adolf Eichmann trial 134 Adorján, Ferenc (Frank) 96 Advertiser (Adelaide) 81 Age 73 Agency for Free Slovenia 90 Albinas L 149 Aleksejs D-M 151 Alferchik, Nikolai 59, 136 Allied military authorities, identification and classification for 23 American Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of the USSR 29 American Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) 25 American Hungarian Relief Organization 39 Andor, Gluck 99 Antanas S 149 Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) 28, 89, 92–94, 119n28 Anti-Bolshevik Network 5 Anti-Bolshevist Centre for the Liberation Movement of the Peoples of Russia (ATsODNR) 27–28 anti-fascist protests 72–73 anti-Jewish atrocities 11–12; Baltic states 15–16; Bulgaria 16; Einsatz Reinhard (Operation Reinhard) 9–10, 14; Hungary 16; Lithuania

15; Poland 12–14; Romania 11–12; Slovakia 16; Ukrainia 13 antisemitic fascist movements 11, 78; Lithuania 10–11; Poland 12; Romania 11–12; Yugoslavia 10 anti-Soviet nationalisms 10 Antonesc, Ion 12 Arājs Kommando 149 Arnolds K 147 Arrow Cross 11, 78, 95–96, 100; led pogroms 16 Association of Awakening Hungarians (Ébredö Magyarok Egyesülete) 97 Astapov, Tomofei (Tom Estago) 135 Australian Citizen Military Forces (CMF) 106 Australian Croatian Association 101 Australian Croatian Association (AHD) 102 Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations (AFUO) 136 Australian International News Review 110 Australian Jewish Herald 78 Australian Jewish News 77, 99 Australian migration selection policies and processes 51; anticommunist potential migrants 54; authenticity of identity

176 Index

documents 55; deportations 60–63; exclusion of Nazi collaborators 54; extradition requests 63–65; hurdles for war criminal or collaborator to jump 54; ignorance of IRO policy and procedure 55; national groups 52; naturalisation 59–60; political screening 53–54; racial policy 52–53; security officers 56–58; selection teams 55–57; Soviet-bloc defectors 58–59; verification checks 57 Australian National Socialist Journal 114 Australian National Socialist Party (ANSP) 89 Australian National Workers Party (ANWP) 113 Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) 59, 63, 84, 89, 95, 97; on ‘50 Club’ 91; dealing with Nazi allegations 83; on Hungarian migrants in Australia 99–100; jurisdictional limit 101; leadership of ABN and CNC 95; monitoring of NSPA 115; naturalisation checks 60, 64, 98–99; on NSPA 115–118; Operation Feniks 111–112; Operation Kangaroo 105–111; on Ustasha 102–103; watching brief 94 Australian Special Investigations Unit (SIU) 144–149, 158 Az Ember 98 Babi Yar allegation 152 Bagun-Bērzinš, Arnolds 134, 135 Bahrianyi, Ivan 28 Balodis, Jānis 63 Bangerskis, Rudolfs 41 Bartov, Omer 10 Barwick, Sir Garfield 2, 65, 139 Becsulettel (With Honour) 96, 98 Benjamin, Alan 136 Berezowsky, Mikolay 153–154 Betags, Janis 73 The Big Lie: Six Million Murdered Jews 114 Bijedić, Džemal 112 Bohumil, H 62 Bohumil H 62 Bokros-Botond, István 98 Boldyrev, Konstantin 26

Bor, Jëno (Eugen) 39 Bowen, Lionel 139, 142 Bowen, Nigel 115 Branislav I 63 Breitman, Richard 147 Brejanske, Bikolsy 73 Brenners, Eva 140, 142 Browning, Christopher 147 Bujanoviæ, Josip 145 Bujanovic, Josip 102 Bulgarian National Front (Bulgarski natsionalen front, BNF) 29 Butler, Eric 96, 113 Cairns, Jim 108, 145 Calwell, Arthur 51, 53–54, 60–61, 72–73, 107 Canberra-Queanbeyan Committee of the Hungarian Freedom Fight 115 Canberra Times 72 Captive Nations 140 Captive Nations Council (CNC) 89 Captive Nations movement 5 Captive Nations Week 94–95 Cardinal Joseph Mindszenty Society 96 Catholic Worker 105 Central Committee of Croatian Associations (SODHA) 104 Central Committee of the Liberated Jews in Germany 22 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 29; collaboration with OUN-M 29; covert operations 29 Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects (CROWCASS) 22, 30 Cerny, Karel 29 Cerulis, Jānis 134 Chapman, CD 24 Charles K 78 Chernov, Alex 143 Chetniks 10 Churchill, Winston 21 Clune, Frank 54 Cohen, Barry 140–141 Cohen, Daniel 31 Commissar Order 14 Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia 12 Commonwealth Investigation Service (CIS) 74–75, 83 Cossacks 4, 9

Index  177

Croatia Home (Hrvatski Dom) 105 Croatian Armed Forces (HOS) 104 Croatian Catholic Club 107 Croatian Clubs 101 Croatian Cultural Association 101 Croatian Cultural Society 101 Croatian Liberation Movement (Hrvatski Oslobodilacki Pokret, HOP) 101, 104–106; annual camps 106; hierarchy 104; membership 104; ‘U’ symbol 105 Croatian National Resistance (Hrvatski Narodni Odpor, HNO) 103–104 Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood (Hrvatsko Revolucionarno Bratstvo, HRB) 105–107, 109–110 Croatian Revolutionary Movement (Ustaše: Hrvatski revolucionarni pokret) 10 Croatian Ustasha (Ustaše) 2, 5, 10, 17n9, 91, 100–105, 117; action against 109; flag 117; genocidal acts 10; Home Guard 37; illicit operations 29; nature of 107–108; violence acts 106 Croatian Welfare Association (Caritas) 101–102 Csicsaky, Jen 97 Cukurs, Herberts 135 Daily Telegraph 73–74 Dankers, Oskar 39, 134 Dauvagis Vanagi (Latvian Welfare Fund) 29 Daviborshch, Nikolay 155 De Baer, Marcel 37, 41 deportations 83; administrative difficulties 62; from Australia 60–63; for character, health or security reasons 61; for criminality 61; for employment reasons 61; issue for Britain 60; offences 61; press reports on DPs 74; suspected of ‘communist sympathies’ 62 deportations of Jews 16 Deschenes Commission 138 Dezsol S 152 disguised extradition 60 displaced person (DP) 2, 22, 42, 72; in Australia 52; as bona fide refugees 31; categorization

25; deported from Australia 60–63; far-right 4; heterogenous DP cohort(s) 4–5; internal discord among 27; Jewish 75, 77–79; Latvian 30–31; migration trajectory to Australia 5; non-Jewish 25; performing nationalism 26; resettlement 4; status 24–25, 35; usefulness of 28–29 displaced person (DP) camps: creation of civic associations or political parties 29; factionalism in 26–27; as hiding places for war criminals 26; performing nationalism 26; power relations within 27; training grounds for leaders 28–29 Draganovic, Fr. Krunoslav 101, 104 Drina 102 Duker, Abraham G 32 Eichmann, Adolf 98 Eichner, Anton 27 Eižens P 150 Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) 9 Einsatz Reinhard (Operation Reinhard) 9 Eisenhower, General 30 émigré fascists 113–118 ‘Encounter’ (TV program) 114 Endrey, Anthony 140, 142 Estam, Juri 38 ethnic cleansing 9–10 Evintov, V 152 Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) 74, 76, 78–79 extradition: disguised 60; requests 63–65, 139 Extraordinary State Commission (ESC) of Reporting and Investigating the Atrocities of the German Fascist Occupiers and their Accomplices 21 fascist negations 5 Federal Council of Hungarian Associations 99 Felix M 75 Ferber, Helen 52, 54 Foreign Incursions and Recruitment Crimes Act 112 Fricsons, Argods 135 Fulbrook, Mary 41

178 Index

Galicia civil war 10 Galleghan, FG 56 Gang, Stern 108 Gatrell, Peter 4 Gelsen, Henrik 76 genocidal acts 10 genocidal antisemitic ideation 10–11 Georg A 63 German Atrocities: in Baltic states 15; ethnic ‘self-cleansing’ operations 15; Operation Reinhard 14; in Ukraine 14 German invasion of Soviet Union 12 German Nazism 11 German-Soviet joint invasion of Poland, 1939 22 Gilbert, Martin 147 Ginsburgs, George 14 Gjokmarković, Fr. Marko 109, 128n214 Goldbloom, Sam 76, 80 Golos Rodini 136 Goschen, DG 40 Grant, HJ 55 Gray, J 75 Green, Ben 74, 82–83 Greenhalgh, GV 56 Green Partisans 134 Greenwood, Ivor 112 Greenwood, Robert 144 Gregor L 62 Gromyko, Andrei A 30, 40 Gross, Jan 5 Grujièic, Radislav 150–151 Guardian 105 Hans D 63 Hanusiak, Michael 152 Harabaic, Ivan 101 Hatikva 98–99 Havryliv, Lev 143 Hawke, Bob 138 Herman W 63 Heydrich, Reinhard 15 Heyes, Tasman 56 A Híd 98 A Híd (The Bridge) 97 Hidverok 96 Hilberg, Raul 14, 137, 147 Himka, John-Paul 28 Hitler 12 ‘Hiwis’ (Hilfswilliger) 14 Hlinka Guard, Slovakia 11 Holborn, Louise 31

Holdinghausen, Hauptfuhrer 147 Holian, Anna 3, 26, 28 Holocaust 1, 5, 9–10 Holodomor 10 Holt, Harold 60, 82–83, 95 Hrvat (The Croat) 102 Hudal, Alois 40 Hungarian Community Centre of Freedom Fighters 95 Hungarian Gendarmes 16 Hungarian organisations, ultra-rightwing 95–100; Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) 28, 89, 92–94; Ferencvaros Football Club 100; Hungarian Cultural Association 100; Hungarian Cultural Home 100; Hungarian Ex-Servicemen’s Association 100; Hungarian Sportsclub 100; Mindszenty Association 100; St Stephen’s Society 100; Young Men’s Club 100 Hungarian Turanism 97 Hungarista Bulletin 113 Hungarista Mozgalom Ausztráliai Szórványának Tájékoztató Szolgálata (Information Service of the Australian Faction of the Hungarist Movement) 113 Hungarist Movement (Hungarista Mosgalom) 95–100 Ignas T 151 Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH) 10 International Committee of Political Refugees and Displaced Persons 27 International Peasant Union (IPU) 28 International Refugee Organisation (IRO) 2–5, 30–35, 52, 62, 134; ‘Cold War myopia’ of 35; eligibility 33–35; Manual for Eligibility Officers 32–33, 55; overall acceptance rate 41; responsibility of 31; screening process 33–34; Ukrainian representation 26 Irmgard G 58 Iron Guard, Romania 11–12 Iron Wolf (Geležinis Vilkas) 11 Istvan M 116

Index  179

James, Greg 157 Janković, Ilona 115 Jankovic, Adolf 106 Jantiis, Julijs 136 Jewish and Roma genocide in Kosovo 16 Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism (JCCF&A) 5, 76, 81–82, 108 Jewish deportation 16 Jewish Historical Documentation Centre 22, 82 Jewish survivors of Holocaust 2 Józef, K 62 Jurjevic, Marjan 105, 107–110, 134, 139 Kabaila, Algis 142 Kalfic, Kristina 101 Kalējs, Konrāds 138, 150, 158 Kantor, Béla 113 Kapitula, Filip 146–147 Kardoss, Béla 116 Kasic, Fr. Josip 105 Kazys S 137–138 Kent, Lewis 108, 143, 145 Kesar, Ernst 72 Kiddle, George 55 Killion, Father 40 Kingsley, John Donald 37 Klim, George 55 Knopfelmacher, Frank 95 Kokic, Ivica 104 Kósa, Barna 97 Král, Terézia 142, 142 Kramilius, Antanas 141 Krecak, Peter 101 Križanauskas, Balys 135 Križari network 103 Kroniká 99 Krpan, Dujo 101 Krīpens, Arvīds 134–135 Kryžanauskas, Balys 137 Kubaida, Anatoli 152 Kumanovic, Ognjan 39 Kwiet, Konrad 147–148, 152–153, 157–158 Labuts, Jānis 134 Ladomery, Stephen 96 László, Andrew 77, 79, 83, 96 Latvian Central Council 26 Latvian National Committee 26

Lawrisky, Michael 143 Lebed, Mykola 27 Lee, Alexander Mitchell 112 Lees, M 35–36 Lešić, Tomislav 111 Leonenko, V 152 Leonhard P 151 Lichtblau, Eric 137 Lipic, Ignac 41 Lithuanian Activist Front (Lietuviu Aktivistu Frontas, LAF) 11 Lithuanian American Council (LAC) 27 Lithuanian genocidal acts 11 Littay, Endre 73, 76, 96 Lloyd, Eric Longfield 75 Loew, Werner 150 Loftus, John 138 Lojos S 61–62 longue duree of ultranationalist atrocities 5 Lovokovic 108, 110 Lower, Wendy 140 Lukic, Milorad 64, 82 Maclean, Fitzroy 25 Maclean Mission 136 Madjeric, Luka 106 Magyar Élet (Hungarian Life) 95 Maric, Jure 105 Maritime Worker 74 Mayhew, Christopher 64 Mazpulki youth organisation 11 McBride, Sir Philip 99 McCarthyism 107 McCollum, Robert S 31 McMahon, William 107 Megadja, Ferenc (Frank) 116–118 Megay, Laszl 89, 116; naturalisation of 99; Nazi activities by 98–99 Mellins, Arvīds 135 Menart, Vladimir 90, 110 Mendes, Philip 80 Menzies, Andrew 62, 156 Menzies Inquiry 138–144; amendments to War Crimes Act 139–140, 143; arguments against war crimes convictions 138; extradition requests 139; list of probable suspects 139, 144; mass deportations 140 Michael, Archangel 11 Mick, Christoph 10 migration 4

180 Index

Mihailovi, Draža 37 Mikelsons, Juris 135 Miller, HW 56–59 Milte, Kerry 112 Mindszenty, Jószef 29 Mirchuk, Petro 30 Moger, Matija 115 Molnár, Ferenc K. (Frank) 114–116 Morgan, Sir Frederick 24 Mozaffari 72 Müller, Joseph 26 Murphy, Lionel 112 Mussolini, Benito 10 National Alliance of Russian Solidarists (Narodno-trudovoy soyuz rossiyskikh solidaristov, NTS) 12, 25 National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE) 29 National Front (Balli Kombetar) 16 National Socialist Bulletin 116 National Socialist Party of Australia (NSPA) 113–118; antisemitism 113, 115; Australian National Socialist Journal 114–115; fund raising for 117; logo 114; Perseverance 113–115 naturalisation 59–60 Naumenko 12 Nazi collaborators 24, 32, 54 Nazi-hunting 1, 3 Nedic, Milan 63 Néhány szó a zsidó katasztrófáról (Some Words on the Jewish Catastrophe) 97 Nerianin, AG 25 Nesz, Ferenc (Francis) 97 Nesz, Károly 97, 113 New Australian Liberal and Country Movement 97 News (Adelaide) 73 New South Wales Liberal Party’s Migrant Advisory Council 5 The New Times 96 Nuremberg trials 30, 138 Olins, Arvids 41 Operation Crossline 104 Operation Feniks 111–112 Operation Kangaroo 105–111 Operation Reinhard 9–10, 14

Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (Orhanizatsiya ukrayins’kykh natsionalistiv, OUN) 10, 26–27 Ozols, Kārlis 134, 157 Padányi, Victor 96, 98 Pašti, Geza 105 Pavelic, Anton 91 Payne, Stanley 5 Perseverance 113–114, 116–117 Petliura, Symon 13 Petro H 147 Piccini, Jon 74 Platz, Ernest 136 Plavnieks, Richards 158 Polgár, Lajos 97, 116 Polish-American Congress (PAC) 31 Political Refugees Unmasked 135 Poluchowicz, Jan 2 Polyukhovich, Ivan 1–2, 155–157 Potočnjak, Fr. Roque (Roch) Romac 104, 107 Poznanski, Adam 73 press reports on DPs: allegations against anti-communist migrants 78, 82; anti-fascist protests 72, 77–80; antisemitism in migrant camps 75–79, 81–82; campaigns against natural enemy 74; court appearances 73–74; deportations 74; divorce proceedings 74; efficacy of screening 82–83; extreme right-wing Hungarian organisations 95–100; German migration 80–81; on NSPA 117; SS tattoo scars 75–76 Prisoner of War status 25 Protocol for World Conquest 141 Pumphrey, John 23 Purs, Aldis 11 Radchenko, Yuri 13 Railway Security Militia (Ustasha Zebjeznicka Vojnica) 104 Rajkovic, Montenegrin Mihailo 64, 82 Rapaics, Dezsö 99 regional interethnic conflicts 10 Reject Index 58 repatriation 2, 4, 23, 25–26, 31, 135; Baltic prisoners of war 24–25; of Cossacks 4 resettlement scheme 2 right-wing displaced persons (DPs) 89

Index  181

Ritli, István 96 Rogozin, Anatoly 36 Roma genocide 16 Rover, Srećko 103–106, 143, 145 Rubin-Zacks, Rabbi Louis 81, 83, 144 Rungainis, Edgars 134 Runka, Vilis 134 Russian Free Corps 25 Russian Liberation Army (Russkaya osvoboditel’naya armiya, ROA) 9, 12 Russisches Schuzkorps (Russian Protective Corps) 12 Rutland, Suzanne 53 Rzedzieki, Stanislaw 74, 83 Saaghy, Deszö 97 Santamaria, B A 95 screening for war criminals: by Allied Commission for Austria 36; by Allied military authorities 25; American 25–26, 31; by American Hungarian Relief Organization 39; by anti-Soviet national groups 27–28; by Baltic Advisory Council 36; of Baltic ex-combatants 24; British 24–25, 30; of Chetniks 37; of collaborators 23–24, 32; by emigré groups 31; of Estonians 38; by groups 35–40; identification and classification for Allied military authorities 23; IRO’s role 30–35, 37; issue of false documentation 25, 40; by Latvian Central Committee 35; by nationalist groups 27–29; by quasi-political groups and committees 26–27; by Review Board 37–39; of Russian Nansen refugees 36–37; of Russian Schutzkorps 36; of Ukrainians 37; of Ukrainians and Yugoslavs 25 Selimi, Adam 41 Selter, Charles 38 Serb Volunteer Corp 25 Shishko, A 152 Silni, Dušan 75 Simon Wiesenthal Centre 139 Skorodumov, Mikhail 12 Slovene Revolution Committee 90 Slovensko Domobrantsvo 136

Sluga, Glenda 3 Slussaruk, Arsenius 74 Slussaruk, Hanna 74 Smith, Evan 74 Smits, Arnolds 135 Snedden, Billy 107 Sorsunk 98 Sorsunk (Our Fate) 96 Soviet-bloc defectors 58–59 Soviet Ukrainians 26 Special Investigations Unit (SIU) 3 Special Refugee Commission 25 Sporish, Drajutin 102 Spry, Charles 56, 59, 101, 139 Stačiūnas, J 142 Stahlecker, Franz 11 Stanislaw M 78 Stockeby, Hermann 38 St Stephen’s Society 96 Sun 73 Sunday Herald 79–80 Sunday Sun 79 The Sunday Times 72–73 Susemihl, Igor 73 Suziedelis, Saulius 11 Sydney Jewish News 80 Sydney Morning Herald 81 Szálasi, Ferenc 11 Szász, Ferenc 96 Szentesi, Béla 96 Tamas, FO 113 Tárogató 96 Temnomeorff, VA 36, 41 Teodors B 150 12th Lithuanian Police Battalion 148–149 Toki c, Mate Nikola 101 Tolstoy, Nikolai 142 Townley, Athol 99 Trawniki guards 9 Trevaks, Todd 108 trials: in Hungary 21; life sentences, death sentences and acquittals 30; military 22; Nuremberg 30; in post-war Latvia 21 Tribune 105, 117 Truth 73 Turanian Historical and Cultural Association 97 Turbayne, K G 56–59, 62

182 Index

Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrayins’ka Povstans’ka Armiia, UPA) 13 Ukrainian nationalism 13, 26–27 Ukrainian Nationalists (Orhanizatsiya ukrayins’kykh natsionalistiv, OUN) 10 Ukrainian Revolutionary Democratic Party (URDP) 27 UK War Crimes Act (1991) 148 Union for the Struggle of the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (SBONR) 28 United Council of Migrants from Communist-Dominated Europe (UCEM) 90–92 United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) 2, 31–32, 40, 52; screening for eligibility 23–24 United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) 22 Untaru, Constantin 39, 56, 89, 121n49, 145 Upmalis, Arvīds 135 Urbančič, Lyenko 90, 110, 136–137, 143, 145 US Immigration & Nationality Act 1952 137 Vaer, Waldemar 36 Valdmanis, Alfred 24, 35 Valentīns L 150 Valmiera Runa 136 Vanagi, Daugavas 135 Varga, OJ 115 Verner P 62–63 Victorian Jewish Board of Deputies (VJBD) 76 Viks, Ervin 65 Viliūnas, A 140, 142 Vitols, Hugo 24 Vlasov, General 12 Volendam 72 Volunteer Freedom Corps 29 Vuina, Ljubomir 101 Vyshinsky, Andrei 30 Waffen-SS units 9–10, 16 Wagner, Henrich 135, 153–154 Waite, Robert G 16 war crimes 1; charges laid and prosecutions undertaken by SIU

144–149, 158; debate 138–144; extradition requests 63–65; group investigation 148–151; individual investigation 151–153; Menzies Inquiry 138–144; Polyukhovich trial 157; trials 157–158 War Crimes Act 3 war crimes debate 140–144; accusation against Jews 140–141; Baltic DPs 142; ethnic groups as war criminals 140; evidences 142–143; eyewitnesses 143–144; lists of suspected war criminals and Nazi collaborators 141; Soviets as harbourers of war criminals 141–142; ‘Yugoslav’ migrants as war criminals 143 war criminals 22 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 1944 152 Wasil H 78 Wenberg, Eric 116–117 West Australian 73 Whitlam, Gough 112 Wiener, Alfred 82 Wiener Library 82 Wiesenthal, Simon 22, 41, 137, 146 Woods, Claude 114 Wooster Victory 74 Workers’ Star 74 World Jewish Congress 82 Woroni 114 Wright, Richard 154 Yalta Conference, 1945 22 Young, Cass 117 Yugoslav-Australian Journal 110 Yugoslav ethnic conflicts 10 Yugoslav Freedom Fighters Movement 90 Yugoslav Immigrants Association of Australia 102 Yugoslav UDBA (Uprava državne bezbednosti, State Security Administration) 109 Zentai, Charles 158 Zhilun, Ivan 155 Zhukov, Georgi 24 Zigmas P 149 Zubrickas, Juozas 40