Finding my absent father

O'Neill, Betty Maria

Finding my absent father

O'Neill, Betty Maria

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Publication Type:: Thesis
Issue Date:: 2018

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	O'Neill, Betty Maria
dc.date.accessioned	2018-10-05T03:57:30Z
dc.date.available	2018-10-05T03:57:30Z
dc.date.issued	2018
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/127963
dc.description	University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.	en_AU
dc.description.abstract	This thesis explores aspects of post-war Polish migration that have largely been ignored to date through a hybrid memoir-biography-history and exegesis to tell the story of the reconstruction of the life of my absent father, Antoni Jagielski - a Roman Catholic, Polish resistance fighter and World War II concentration camp survivor. From documents, letters and photographs found in an unexpectedly inherited family flat on a research trip to Poland and additional information about my father’s life gathered from archives in Auschwitz, Gusen, Mauthausen, the Polish Underground Movement Study Trust and the Polish Institute in London, I developed a chronology of his secret life and concluded that he was a reluctant migrant to Australia in 1955. My father’s story provides a counter balance to the existing weight of migration memory in mainstream Australian culture and highlights facets of Polish immigration and the often-forgotten stories of migrants who were to leave Australia and return ‘home’. This memory work of constructing and documenting the life of my father, brings together intergenerational memory and transnational historical discourse within a broader narrative of war, exile and migration. It is the story of one family amongst millions whose lives were fractured by World War II.	en_AU
dc.format	Thesis (DCA)
dc.language.iso	en_AU	en_AU
dc.relation	https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/bitstream/10453/127963/2/02whole.pdf
dc.rights	The author owns the copyright in this thesis including all reproduction and reuse rights for the work. The work may not be altered without the permission of the copyright owner. Attribution is essential when quoting or paraphrasing from this thesis.
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.rights	au.edu.uts.lib/ppc
dc.title	Finding my absent father	en_AU
dc.type	Thesis	en_AU
utslib.copyright.status	open_access

Abstract:

This thesis explores aspects of post-war Polish migration that have largely been ignored to date through a hybrid memoir-biography-history and exegesis to tell the story of the reconstruction of the life of my absent father, Antoni Jagielski - a Roman Catholic, Polish resistance fighter and World War II concentration camp survivor. From documents, letters and photographs found in an unexpectedly inherited family flat on a research trip to Poland and additional information about my father’s life gathered from archives in Auschwitz, Gusen, Mauthausen, the Polish Underground Movement Study Trust and the Polish Institute in London, I developed a chronology of his secret life and concluded that he was a reluctant migrant to Australia in 1955. My father’s story provides a counter balance to the existing weight of migration memory in mainstream Australian culture and highlights facets of Polish immigration and the often-forgotten stories of migrants who were to leave Australia and return ‘home’. This memory work of constructing and documenting the life of my father, brings together intergenerational memory and transnational historical discourse within a broader narrative of war, exile and migration. It is the story of one family amongst millions whose lives were fractured by World War II.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/127963