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| My mother,
Alise Buss (pronounced Bush), my elder sister, Anita, and I, Inara, were
evacuated from Riga by ship in July 1944. The Soviet Army re-occupied
Latvia in October 1944. My father, Arvids, a soldier in the Latvian Army,
remained in Latvia. He tracked us down in the hamlet of Hermannsried
some weeks after the war ended on May 8, 1945. We lived in DP camps in
Windischbergerdorf, Bamberg, Wildflecken and Delmenhorst until we boarded
an IRO ship at Bremerhaven in 1950, bound for Australia under its DPs
Immigration Scheme. |
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| Delmenhorst
Augut 1950 -Inara, age 9, in front of European Reception Center and 603
IRO |
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Front entrance |
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| Anita, Alise and Inara in
front of the dining
room. |
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Canteen |
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| Alise, Anita and Inara at the building
housing Australian Immigration Dept. offices. The building was named
Canberra after Australia's capital city and seat of its Federal Government.
Delmenhorst 1950. |
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Departure hall at Delmenhorst 1950 |
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| A friend with Alise, Anita and Inara.
The billy can I am holding was a life-saving gift from a friend in
Dresden. It was the only container we had to receive Red Cross soup
at railway stations and bomb shelters at the height of the bombing
of Germany in 1944/45. |
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DPs arriving at the train for Bremerhaven. |
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Buying ice cream during
a train stop on the way to Bremerhaven. Anita
3rd from left. |
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| Anita on right (wearing dark scarf). |
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Anita and friend in front of Inara
and Alise. |
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| Bremerhaven Columbusbahnhof (train station) |
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First sight of "Nelly,"
the former troopship which would take us to Australia. |
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Trainloads of DPs boarding the Nelly, August 22, 1950 |
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| During the 35-day
voyage, DPs were not permitted below deck during the day except at mealtimes,
irrespective of the weather. "Cabins" consisted of rows of
bunks sleeping about 50 people. Men and women were segregated. Anita
and Inara. |
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The Australian
government paid IRO a fee of 10 pounds for each adult to provide passage
for healthy DPs who agreed to work for two years wherever they were directed
by the government. Alise, Arvids,
Inara and Anita. |
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| DPs were not permitted to disembark at refuelling ports of
call. During the slow passage through the Suez canal, traders sold souvenirs
from boats alongside the ship. We bought small carved ebony elephants. |
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| On board the Nelly
after docking at Station Pier, Melbourne Sept 1950. We disembarked on
the folloing day to a train which took us to the Bonegilla Migrant Reception
and Training Centre. Anita, Alise,
Arvids and Inara. |
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Inara on right outside one of the corrugated iron huts housing DP immigrants
at Mildura Holding Camp in Australia, 1951. |
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| Arvids on left at his workplace on an asparagus farm near
Melbourne, the first work he was assigned in Australia. No European qualifications
were recognized at the time. My father was a radio technician. My mother,
Anita and I were sent to a holding camp in Mildura, over 500km away. We
joined him in Melbourne six months later when he was able to guarantee
housing for us after being permitted to move to a job in a radio electronics
factory in Melbourne. |
