Barry York gives an update from the Library’s Oral History Collection The Polish-Australian Oral History Project (PAOHP) is one of the Library’s success stories: an example of the national institution building bridges with an ethnic community located in various regions and cities of Australia. The project was initiated in 1996, in association with the Polish Historical Institute in Australia, and aims to record and preserve the memories of migration and settlement of people of Polish origin in Australia. The driving force behind the project in the Polish community was Andrew Kleeberg OAM who, seeing many of the Poles of his generation pass on, wanted to stop their stories being lost to posterity. The interviewees are all ethnic Poles, but not all were born in Poland. Some were born in Romania and Germany. Twenty-nine interviews have been recorded so far. The geographic spread of the subjects is impressive. Interviews have been completed in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Adelaide, Wollongong and Hobart. In each location the differing textures of the settlement story have been captured. In Tasmania, for example, the early Polish settlers were former members of the Polish Carpathian Brigade who fought alongside the Australian Ninth Division against the Germans at Tobruk, Africa, in 1942. These Polish ‘Rats of Tobruk’ initially worked as labourers for the Tasmanian Hydro-Electricity Commission. At Wollongong, the early post-war Poles mainly worked for the Australian Iron and Steel company.
Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveals that the Poles are the most aged of the overseas-born communities. The main wave—some 63 000—who arrived here as refugees after the Second World War are all elderly now. The community was replenished by the new arrivals who fled martial law during Poland’s Solidarity struggles in the early 1980s, but they are very different to the earlier generation. The first wave were mainly working class people with military experience; the 1980s group tended to be university-educated and, as is often remarked by the old-timers, they were ‘brought up under communism’ and have a different attitude to life. It is, of course, necessary for the National Library to record the broad range of Polish experience in Australia, but it is the 1947–1952 group—when the 63 000 arrived here—that has received the most attention. The paths that brought the Poles to Australia vary. Some came via camps in Germany, Austria, Italy and East Africa and others via London. However, the consistent, common and pivotal factor is the Second World War. The story of the early post-war Polish settlers invariably revolves around the upheavals caused by war. The interviews are frequently a useful, vivid, source on the conditions of wartime displacement, particularly the experience of deportation and forced labour in Germany. Among the interviewees are those who experienced imprisonment in concentration camps in Germany, including Auschwitz, and in labour camps in the Soviet Union, such as those at Siberia and Uzbekistan. There are also individual memories of work in the Polish Underground and of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1944. Such interviews, while recorded in Australia, are a unique source for historians of war and displacement around the world. The 29 interviews have all followed a broad plan. Consistency of approach makes them all the more useful, as comparisons can be made within the sample group. A flexible, structured ‘question guide’ covering five basic areas of inquiry is used for each interview. The areas of inquiry, which incidentally apply to any immigrant or refugee group, are: memories of the homeland; reasons for departure and reasons for choice of Australia as a destination; memories of the journey to Australia; settlement experiences; and sense of ethnic identity today. The question of ‘settlement experiences’ covers a wide range of issues, such as accommodation, employment, family and social life, community formation and cultural adjustment. Researchers with an interest in the Bonegilla migrant camp will especially find the recordings a useful source, as many of the Poles were accommodated there.
The duration of each interview varies, but averages out about two hours. The content is of high standard, as the majority of interviewees have understood and appreciated the significance of the project and been fairly eloquent in their recollections. Mention of ‘eloquence’ raises the issue of language. The interviews are conducted in English; though encouragement is given to each interviewee to speak in Polish when expressing phrases that cannot be adequately expressed in English, as some occasionally do. Over the past few years, each interviewee has been asked to say a concluding word in the Polish language; something which will no doubt be of interest to linguists in the decades ahead. One of the benefits of recording elderly immigrants speaking in their native tongue is that it can provide an example of forms of the language no longer common in the homeland. Many of the interviewees speak in a heavily-accented English and this too is part of the value of the preserved oral history recording. The story lies not only in what is said, but how it is said, and this is why the Library has a Sound Preservation and Technical Services Unit to ensure that the recordings are available to future generations. The Library’s Oral History Program focuses on both the ‘common folk’ and more eminent people. The PAOHP has thus far achieved a good balance between both groups. Among the eminent Poles interviewed are Anna Wierzbicka (Professor of Linguistics, Australian National University), Jerzy Smolicz (Professor of Education, Adelaide University) and Jan Pakulski (Professor of Sociology, University of Tasmania), who have made notable contributions in the academic world. Historian Lech Paszkowski was interviewed earlier, in 1997. Other interviewees have made contributions to engineering, teaching, the public service and the arts.
The majority of Poles in Australia have been working class people, and about a third of the interviews are with people in that category. In 1998, interviews were recorded with those who had settled in the predominantly migrant working-class western suburbs of Melbourne, and who worked in factories and other jobs typically taken by new arrivals back then. Also enlightening were interviews in the western suburbs, with Polish doctor Halina Bobinska, and school teacher Anna Piotrowski. Such recordings are useful in terms of the story of the region and are complemented by interviews in the Library’s Collection with other ethnic groups and individuals from the same location. The range of birth dates of interviewees spans the first half of the twentieth century, but most were born in the 1920s and 30s. One of the oldest is Gwidon Gottlieb Borucki, who was born in Krakow, Poland, in 1912. As an actor/singer, he served in the Army Theatre of the Polish Military Forces between 1941 and 1947, and in the Middle East. In England after the war, he worked in theatre for more than 15 years, appearing in 45 films before migrating to Sydney in 1959. He settled in Melbourne and worked in theatre and television for a few years before joining a finance company, and then establishing a real estate business.
The Library also holds interviews with Polish–Australians who were not part of the PAOHP. These were mainly recorded prior to 1996, and usually did not place the same central emphasis on questions relating to migration and settlement. In the 1960s and 1970s, for instance, Hazel de Berg recorded interviews with a number of Poles as part of her interest in Australian artists and writers. These included Stanislaw Ostoja-Kotkowski, Richard Stankiewicz, Stanislaw Rapotec, Ludwick Dutkiewicz, Wladyslaw Dutkiewicz, Michael Kmit and Hyam Brezniak. De Berg also recorded one of Australia’s few female architects at the time, Irene Selecki, who was of Polish background. Non-PAOHP interviews recorded in the 1980s and 1990s were more substantial, and usually discussed the migration, refugee, and settlement experience as part of a ‘life story’ approach that focused on the eminent individual’s professional achievements. Examples include: Peter Biskup’s interviews with Professor Jerzy Zubrzycki and Amirah Inglis; Gwenda Davey’s and Wendy Lowenstein’s interviews with June Factor; Frank Heiman’s interviews with Sam Lipski and George Wlodzimierz Wojak; and J.D.B. Miller’s interview with Richard Krygier. (Wojak was also interviewed by E.J. Boncza-Tomaszewski, and Inglis by Sarah Dowse.) The New South Wales Bicentennial Oral History Collection also holds an interview by Brenda Factor with Ernest Morris (born 1901), whose parents were Polish. The PAOHP is one example of the National Library’s pro-active work among Australia’s ethnic communities, and as such is also an example of how the Library’s process of collection building connects it to the world, and the world to it. BARRY YORK writes regularly for NLA News. He previously reported on the PAOHP in the August 1998 issue, and has conducted all but one of the 26 new interviews described here. His email address is: garocon@pcug.org.au
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