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16 - The United Nations and Refugees

from Part II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 June 2018

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Summary

When the war in Europe ended in 1945, and the United Nations was founded at San Francisco, it was faced with three major problems: the fate of the Jewish population that had survived mass extermination (Bartrop 1994; Blakeney 1985); the presence in Central Europe of several million displaced persons, forcibly removed or voluntarily escaping from the Nazi concentration and labour camp systems; and the need to de-Nazify or put on trial those responsible for this massive chaos. These issues were complicated by the occupation of the most devastated areas by the Soviet Red Army. By a miracle of organization these problems were roughly solved within four years, with Australia playing a major role through the influence of its foreign minister, Herbert Evatt, and its Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell (Calwell 1972). Calwell and his officials took an active part in recruiting 181,000 displaced persons to Australia through the International Refugee Organization (Martin 1989). The unavoidable origins of current refugee policy were established in this major crisis in the hope that peace would prevail. It did not, but current refugees are from a different world.

Jews were not included in this scheme, but had separate arrangements negotiated with Calwell and based initially on family reunion (Benjamin 1998; Neumann 2015). These were met with fierce criticism from Australia's incredibly biased print media. The public identification of refugees with Jews, while inaccurate, forced modifications, like the registration as Jews of intending passengers and a quota of 25 per cent maximum for Jewish passengers.

Germans were barred from Australia altogether, as they had been in 1918. Austrians and Volksdeutsche were not. No non-Europeans were allowed. Subsequent research shows that many collaborators with the Nazis, including war criminals, used the International Organization for Migration (IOM) system to slip through to Australia, Canada and the United States (Aarons 2001). Escape routes to Latin America had already been organized before the war ended (Aarons 1989; Cesarani 2001; Neumann 2015).

Refugee labour was essential in the rebuilding process and in Australian industrialization. Citizenship was taken up by the great majority selected. This provided security. Communist states did not recognize changes of nationality and often called for the repatriation of their subjects. The displaced persons were to become citizens, not guest workers or temporary residents. This objective was largely achieved and laid the foundations for official multiculturalism.

Type
Chapter
Information
Immigrant Nation Seeks Cohesion
Australia from 1788
, pp. 139 - 150
Publisher: Anthem Press
Print publication year: 2018

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