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Inside the DP camps

An erudite account of postwar immigration
by
April 2025, no. 474

Lost Souls: Soviet displaced persons and the birth of the Cold War by Sheila Fitzpatrick

Princeton University Press, $59.99 hb, 351 pp

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Inside the DP camps

An erudite account of postwar immigration
by
April 2025, no. 474

Many students of Australian history are aware of a particularly ugly cartoon published in the Bulletin in December 1946. ‘The Pied Harper’ depicted a hook-nosed Arthur Calwell playing a Jew’s harp welcoming a shipload of ‘imports’ (Jews) into Australia. This was the stereotypical image: bearded, unattractive, and similarly hook-nosed. The analogy with the legendary Pied Piper of Hamelin was clear. In contrast – and to assuage such public anxieties about mass migration – were the published photographs in January 1948 of Calwell, the immigration minister, celebrating Nordic-looking ‘beautiful Balts’, as he termed them, on their arrival to Australia.

Lost Souls: Soviet displaced persons and the birth of the Cold War

Lost Souls: Soviet displaced persons and the birth of the Cold War

by Sheila Fitzpatrick

Princeton University Press, $59.99 hb, 351 pp

Buy this book

ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.

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