The General Langfitt Story
Notes
1. While the report in the West Australian noted the date of arrival of the USAT General W. C. Langfitt as 15 February 1950, the 'Certificates of Registration' issued to passengers who disembarked at Fremantle were stamped on 14 February 1950.
2. Estimates of the inter-war ethnic composition of Poland vary slightly. Norman Davies (1983, p. 406) maintains that Poles made up 22 010 000 (69 per cent), Czechs 30 000 (0.09 per cent), Germans 700 000 (2.2 per cent), Jews 2 700 000 (8.5 per cent), Byelorussians 1500 000 (4.7 per cent), Ukrainians 4 800 000 (15 per cent), Russians 80 000 (0.25 per cent) and Lithuanians 80 000 (0.25 per cent).
3. The spelling of place names within quotations is the preferred spelling of the speaker and may appear in different forms in the text and maps.
5. Estimates of the number of people at Valivade vary. Most participants in the project estimated 5000.
6. Stanislaw Harasymow. Personal communication, December 1994.
7. Abercorn, Bwana M. Kubwa, Digglefold, Fort Jameson, Ifunda, Kidugala, Kigoma, Koja, Kondoa, Livingstone, Lusaka, Makindu, Manira, Marandellas, Masindi, Morogoro, Nairobi, Nyali, Oudtshoorn, Rongai, Rusape, Tengeru (Królikowski, 1983, map). Two participants also mention a camp at Gatooma, in Rhodesia, although this is not mentioned by Królikowski. This may have been because Gatooma had been used as a camp for Italian prisoners of war during the war and was only used briefly as a holding camp for Poles as UNRRA and the IRO tried to encourage them to return to Poland.
8. All the documentation pertaining to the Australian Selection Commission comes from Department of Immigration files lodged in the Australian Archives in Canberra, Series A 445/1 Item 225/1/3. The date and type of document has been included in brackets in the text.
9. The Selection Mission consisted of Mr A. Joynes as Officer in Charge, Mr J. B. Kemp as Welfare and Information Officer, Dr J. B. Mathieson as Medical Officer, Mr J. Wilcox, Department of Information Representative in Cairo, and a Military Intelligence Officer, Capt. I.G. Shapley, 'to attend to security aspects'. Letter to Secretary of Public Service Board from T. H. E. Heyes, Secretary of Immigration Department, dated 23 September 1949.
10. In Cairo, 36 people were accepted (cablegram from Joynes, dated 31 October 1949), while in Lebanon 228 out of 312 applicants were accepted (letter from Wilcox to Heyes, dated 30 October 1949). This selection team also diverted to Greece once they had finished in East Africa to assess 600 Greek applicants who had become refugees after they returned to Greece from bordering nations after changes of regime (cablegram to Joynes dated 3 November 1949).
11. In Joynes Report on Tengeru (dated 3 December 1949) he gave the following figures for those who had been accepted for immigration: 17 unaccompanied single men; 19 unaccompanied single women; 6 married couples without children; 75 married couples with children; 278 children under 16 years of age; 50 over-age parents for whom a maintenance guarantee was furnished; 181 unmarried women or widows under 50 years of age with one or more children; and 209 children over 16 years of age accompanying parents. He also noted that among those accepted there were 'only approximately 30 people of Jewish faith'. A total of 835, which does not tally with Mathieson's figure of 895. This may be accounted for by last-minute decisions to accept a few families who had previously been rejected because of an unfit family member and some with over-age parents whose children were too young to sign the maintenance guarantees. (See Memorandums dated 5, 22, 23, 28, 29 December 1949.) Final figures of 913 accepted and 843 rejected from Tengeru were supplied in a letter from Joynes to Heyes (dated 23 December 1949).
12. Again, these figures do not tally with the breakdown supplied by Joynes in a letter dated 15 December. Here he noted that those accepted included: 8 unaccompanied single men; 21 unaccompanied single women; 4 married couples without children; 29 married couples with children; 101 children under 16 years; 20 over-age parents, for whom a maintenance guarantee had been furnished; and 39 children over 16 years accompanying parents. A total of 222. He did note here that families ineligible because of one family member had been fully documented for 'future possible use'.
13. This and subsequent documentation on the Australian Selection Commission can be found in the Australian Archives Department of Immigration Files, Series A 445/1 Item 255/1/3. A copy of an IRO letter dated 27 July 1950 notes that four families who had been accepted decided to remain in the East African camps at the last moment.
14. This was according to the report in the West Australian, 16 February 1950. It seems more likely that the passengers on the General Langfitt disembarked on the South Wharf where the passenger terminal was, as several participants remember. The West Australian also recorded the date of arrival as 15 February 1950 while disembarkation documents were clearly stamped 14 February 1950.
15. The idea of the 'Polana' youth centre came from 'three selfless bachelors, Messrs W. Czarkowski, A. Gruszka and H. Pienkos' who purchased the land in 1960. Immprint, DILGEA Staff Newsletter, Melbourne 203, 30 July 1993, p.6.