The Admission of European Refugees from East and South Asia in 1947: Antecedents of Australia’s International Refugee Organization Mass Resettlement Scheme

Abstract

A retrospective view which conceives of the past primarily as a pre-present tends to focus on the arrival in Australia of 843 displaced persons (DPs) aboard the General Heintzelman in November 1947 as a paradigmatic starting point of mass immigration, refugee resettlement and the end of monoculturalism. Here, I focus on two seemingly inconsequential episodes from 1947 — the admission of Polish refugees from India in August, and the arrival of hundreds of Jewish survivors aboard the Hwa Lien, in January—which could further our understanding of the immigration of International Refugee Organization (IRO)-sponsored DPs, and unsettle genealogies that shore up the present.This article has been peer reviewed.