Loss, trials and compassion: music of Australia’s Jewish refugees

After the Nazi invasion of Austria in 1938, Jewish refugee applications to Australia soared to over 10,000. Australia's immigration policy at the time was very clear, writes Dr Joseph Toltz. In 1937 the Prime Minister Joe Lyons wrote that "our population is 99.1% of British nationality and we wish to keep it so." At the Evian conference in France, convened to discuss the refugee crisis, the Australian delegate and Minister for Trade, Colonel Thomas White , declared that as we have no real racial problem we are not desirous of importing one by encouraging any scheme of large-scale foreign migration . In order to restrict the flow of migrants, Australia introduced an obstructive "suitability" requirement on the visa application. Musicians were ruled "unsuitable". Nevertheless, between 1933 to 1943, approximately 10,000 Jewish refugees from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia arrived in Australia. Many were musicians, and they contributed in profoundly significant ways to cultural and social life.