Biography

• It turned out Hunka had fought against the Allies as a voluntary member of the Nazi German Waffen-SS Galizien division.
• As I discuss in my new book, Fascists in Exile, Canada isn’t the only country where former Nazis fled after the second world war.

• Last year, however, his secret history was revealed: he was found to be a member of Nazi intelligence in occupied Lithuania during the second world war.
• He was almost certainly involved in the persecution and murders of Jews.

Denial, then investigations

• This group included soldiers who had fought in German military units, as well as civilian collaborators.
• But their resettlement in any country that would take them was a matter of political expediency in the fraught post-war and early Cold War period.

• The then immigration minister, Arthur Calwell, dismissed their claims as a “farrago of nonsense”.
• The migrants were used as labourers under a two-year indentured labour scheme and transformed into what the government called “New Australians”.
• Australia received at least eight extradition requests between 1950 and the mid-1960s for individuals suspected of WWII-era crimes from Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union.
• As a result, there would be no further official discussions about any alleged perpetrators residing in Australia.

Family histories unearthed

• Many alleged perpetrators of crimes never appeared on any official, or unofficial, list, either before or after the Australian investigation.
• My own research, for example, has resulted in the compiling of hundreds of such names by painstakingly piecing together various archival fragments.
• For example, a colleague and I were alerted to some suspicious phrasing when the family of Hungarian migrant Ferenc Molnar, now deceased, placed a commemorative biography on the website Immigration Place Australia.
• The SBS television show Every Family Has a Secret has been approached by at least four people who have suspected a deceased family member was a Holocaust perpetrator or collaborator.

Dr Jayne Persian receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

• Fifty years ago, on New Year’s Day in 1974, Wiradjuri woman Evonne Goolagong delighted spectators at Melbourne’s Kooyong Tennis Club by defeating American Chris Evert to win the women’s singles Australian Open championship.
• The overflow crowd of 12,000 people leapt to their feet for a tremendously long and emotional ovation.
• The Sydney Morning Herald reminded readers that no Aboriginal person had ever won an Australian tennis title.

From stamps to theatre productions

• Yorta Yorta/Gunaikurnai playwright Andrea James brought Goolagong Cawley’s life story to the stage several years ago and Australia Post has honoured her twice with her own stamps.
• She has been inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame, the International Tennis Hall of Fame and the Australian Tennis Hall of Fame.
• Read more:
  Sydney Festival review: Sunshine Super Girl is destined to become a legacy piece of Australian theatre

Contending with racism

Evonne Goolagong was born in 1951, which was a fraught period for First Nations people in this country. On the day she was born (July 31), a quick glance of the national media reflects the widespread racism, discrimination, ignorance and suspicion that many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people faced. There were stories about:
protests in a NSW town over the decision to give “liquor freedom” to Aboriginal people
misgivings about the ability of Aboriginal people to accept Christianity
assertions that Aboriginal people didn’t actually live in North Queensland
a requirement for half-caste (sic) people in the Northern Territory to carry certificates of exemption
and an actress’s black-face make-up tips.

• In an interview in 2015, she recalled her mother being worried the “welfare man” might steal her children.
• In a biography in 1993, she also said her father feared that “whatever he tried to accomplish, the white man would take away”.
• First Nations people had been granted the right to vote in all states and territories, though full equality wasn’t reached until enrolment was compulsory in 1984.
• But what it can tell us about 2023 is complicated

  Yet, terrible racism remained.

Gary Osmond does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• The digital representation of Luigi Einaudi is designed to be made available on the Fondazione Einaudi website and accessible from any device.
• Together with the Einaudi Foundation, Reply worked on the definition of the artificial intelligence model, the creation of the digital human and the design of the experience.
• Ensuring coherence with Luigi Einaudi's original thought was a crucial aspect of the project, and this was achieved through a generative artificial intelligence (AI) model trained specifically on his ideas.
• "What strikes me about Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the speed of its spread and the depth of the recent debate.

• Thunderbird Entertainment Group Inc. (TSXV:TBRD, OTC – THBRF) (“Thunderbird” or the “Company”) announced today that it has entered into an amended and restated cooperation agreement (the “A&R Cooperation Agreement”) with Voss Capital LLC and certain of its affiliates (collectively, “Voss”), which together own approximately 13.1% of the outstanding common shares of Thunderbird.
• The A&R Cooperation Agreement amends and replaces the existing cooperation agreement between the Company and Voss, dated as of January 19, 2023, as amended January 27, 2023, in its entirety.
• The A&R Cooperation Agreement also provides for the appointment of one additional independent director to be mutually agreed by the Company and Voss following the 2023 Annual Meeting.
• Mr. Henderson has served as an analyst at Voss Capital, LLC, a fundamental research-driven, value-oriented hedge fund focused on special situations since 2015.