 In 1947 Australian immigration officials, often with meager resources, worked hard to secure migrants in war-ravaged Europe. Migration officer George Kittle was posted to Germany, where his task was to find and select suitable immigrants from post-war displaced persons camps. So my first job was to organise what we were going to do. First of all I had to draw up a pamphlet explaining what the conditions were going to be for migrants going to Australia, what their obligations were going to be and what benefits they would get in Australia. The obligations were that they would work as directed for two years when they got to Australia. They would be accommodated in hostels which hadn't been set up at that time, I might say. And of course our obligations were to give them a job and accommodate them in Australia. Our selection, all we were told to do was to select initially people from the Baltic states, that is Latvia, Australia and Lithuania. Nobody else, only the Baltes as they were called, that's why they became the Baltes as they were known in Australia when they arrived. And I also had to draw up application forms and procedures for the documentation that would be given when they were approved and so on to get on board. That took about ten days. We had to fill the ship with about 850 people and by this time we had about five weeks to do it. And we were starting from scratch. We were going to interview at Displaced Persons camps, three of them in the British zone and one in the American zone. We did the British zone first because the British were doing our security checking and they needed 14 days' notification. So we started off at a place called Buchholz, which is near Hanover. And we decided that it was fairly close to our headquarters in Bad Piemont that we'd commute each day, which meant going through Hanover. And that had been belted by the war as well. Very historic sort of a city Hanover and a lot of, you know, lovely old buildings that had it. We had worked out what our selection procedures were going to be, ourselves if you like. We knew that we had to pick unskilled workers, farm workers or laborers on railways and females, domestics and typists. The typists were going to be coming from the American zone. That was our brief. And we decided because in London, of course, we were well organized on migration matters and selection officers would make a recommendation that the doctor would make a recommendation medically and then there would be an internal system in the Australian High Commission that would check all these documents. They were all locally engaged staff would do that and then issue formal approvals. In London, we had no backup like that. So we decided that the three of us would sit as a panel and we'd get a uniform agreement on whether a person should be approved or not. Then we'd reach a conclusion whether they were A, that is, suitable in all respects for the first ship. The next one down would have been suitable for the second or subsequent ships for a little time. And the third one was suitable for, you know, any ship that might turn up. In other words, we're trying to get the best ones on the first ship, you see. Down in the American zone, we're supposed to get a lot of women, English speaking women. And there was a most uncooperative fellow running that cab. There were nothing like enough and we were going to be desperate to fill up our ships. So we got hold of the American part of IRA which was at Heidelberg and got them up and, you know, addressed him down and said, now this is what we were told we were getting. We're not getting them. What are you going to do about it? And he said, well, I don't think I can get a lot of women, but there is a camp of male Estonians nearby. I can bring them in. So we had them and they were quite good types really. But we were so fed up with this fellow that was not helping us in any way. He had, of course, a lot of bilingual stuff. People that were eligible for us to select. So we put the heat on all of them that we possibly could to join the first ship and denude him of his stuff. And he might realize that we were serious if we ever came back. That was our view. Anyway, we didn't get enough. But fortunately the fellow in Buchholz, who had this other list of people, he didn't quite know what to do with them, you see. So he said, well, we said we'll send them up and we'll take another look at them up there because they look better when we're short of people that fill the ship. So we eventually got 844 of them at Deepholz. The conditions in Deepholz were worse than any ordinary DP camp I went into. I might say the food was hardly any better. They were from a week though in there, and they did not get very much food. And we had selected 50 English speakers to join the ship on the eve of the embarkation, just to liaise with the American crew and so on. So we were able to do that. On the eve of the embarkation, just to liaise with the American crew and so on. And the first thing that happened to them, they were given something to eat, you see. They were given an American Army K ration, a piece of fruit and coffee, proper coffee this time. And we went down to have a chat with them, you know, see how they were going. And some female looked at me and she really had tears in her eyes. And she said, this is more food than we got in a week at Deepholz. And that was an American Army emergency ration. So we felt very, very sorry for them.