Beautiful Balts

From Displaced Persons to New Australians

By: Dr Jayne Persian

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Paperback | 1 June 2017

At a Glance

Paperback
240 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
21 x 13.6 x 2

Paperback

RRP $39.99

$37.25

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Booktopia Comments

This book is featured in our Refugees and Displaced People page, a collection of the best books to understand the courage and plight of forced migration, including books for children of stories and issues

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Product Description

170,000 Displaced Persons arrived in Australia between 1947 and 1952 – the first non-Anglo-Celtic mass migrants.

Australia’s first immigration minister, Arthur Calwell, scoured post-war Europe for refugees, Displaced Persons he characterised as ‘Beautiful Balts’. Amid the hierarchies of the White Australia Policy, the tensions of the Cold War and the national need for labour, these people would transform not only Australia’s immigration policy, but the country itself.

Beautiful Balts tells the extraordinary story of these Displaced Persons. It traces their journey from the chaotic camps of Europe after World War II to a new life in a land of opportunity where prejudice, parochialism, and strident anti-communism were rife. Drawing from archives, oral history interviews and literature generated by the Displaced Persons themselves, Persian investigates who they really were, why Australia wanted them and what they experienced.

Industry Reviews

Shortlisted for the Australian Historical Association's W. K. Hancock Prize 2018, the Prime Minister's Literary Awards Prize for Australian History 2018, and the Queensland Literary Awards USQ History Book Award 2018

"They were often called " Bloody Balts" and told to go back to where they came from; yet this group of post-World War II immigrants from Eastern Europe helped shape modern Australia with their culture and through peaceful assimilation. Life was a hard journey but it was also a song of hope. Jayne Persian's Beautiful Balts celebrates both." - Peter Skrzynecki OAM

"A lively, well-grounded history of postwar refugees and resettlement that makes sense of the historical and political context while offering vivid glimpses of individual lives in upheaval." - Professor Sheila Fitzpatrick, University of Sydney

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