I Can’t Call Australia Home: Finding My Father in the Archives

O’Neill, BM

I Can’t Call Australia Home: Finding My Father in the Archives

O’Neill, BM

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Publisher:: Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
Publication Type:: Journal Article
Citation:: Life Writing, 2017, 14 (4), pp. 505 - 518
Issue Date:: 2017-10-02

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	O’Neill, BM	en_US
dc.date.issued	2017-10-02	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	Life Writing, 2017, 14 (4), pp. 505 - 518	en_US
dc.identifier.issn	1751-2964	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/125735
dc.description.abstract	Through a hybrid memoir and non-fiction writing format, this essay explores the research and reconstruction of my father’s life: a patremoir project examining an encounter with a rescued family archive that revealed my father’s secret other life and a longing for‘home’unquenched by immigrant life in the‘land of opportunities’. After twenty years of living in Australia, my Polish father, Antoni Jagielski, a WWII concentration camp survivor, decided to return‘home’to Poland, to his culture and to his other family. This work uses the lens of my father’s story and mine, to examine fractured families, separation, displacement, the transmission of intergenerational memory and the transnational history of post-1945 Australia. My research intervention, a field trip to Poland in 2013, unexpectedly uncovered a family archive consisting of letters, postcards, official documents and certificates, photos and material artefacts. Additional information about my father’s life has been gathered from archives in Auschwitz, Mauthausen/Gusen, the Polish Underground Movement Study Trust and the Polish Institute in London. This diversity of sources, typical for scholars in this part of the world researching immigrant family stories, has provided the fragments to make meaning of a life and the difficulties of post-war immigration to Australia.	en_US
dc.publisher	Taylor & Francis (Routledge)	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	Life Writing	en_US
dc.relation.isbasedon	10.1080/14484528.2017.1364177	en_US
dc.title	I Can’t Call Australia Home: Finding My Father in the Archives	en_US
dc.type	Journal Article
utslib.citation.volume	4	en_US
utslib.citation.volume	14	en_US
utslib.for	2005 Literary Studies	en_US
utslib.for	1699 Other Studies in Human Society	en_US
utslib.for	2099 Other Language, Communication and Culture	en_US
pubs.embargo.period	Not known	en_US
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Students
utslib.copyright.status	closed_access
pubs.consider-herdc	true	en_US
pubs.issue	4	en_US
pubs.publication-status	Published	en_US
pubs.volume	14	en_US

Abstract:

Through a hybrid memoir and non-fiction writing format, this essay explores the research and reconstruction of my father’s life: a patremoir project examining an encounter with a rescued family archive that revealed my father’s secret other life and a longing for‘home’unquenched by immigrant life in the‘land of opportunities’. After twenty years of living in Australia, my Polish father, Antoni Jagielski, a WWII concentration camp survivor, decided to return‘home’to Poland, to his culture and to his other family. This work uses the lens of my father’s story and mine, to examine fractured families, separation, displacement, the transmission of intergenerational memory and the transnational history of post-1945 Australia. My research intervention, a field trip to Poland in 2013, unexpectedly uncovered a family archive consisting of letters, postcards, official documents and certificates, photos and material artefacts. Additional information about my father’s life has been gathered from archives in Auschwitz, Mauthausen/Gusen, the Polish Underground Movement Study Trust and the Polish Institute in London. This diversity of sources, typical for scholars in this part of the world researching immigrant family stories, has provided the fragments to make meaning of a life and the difficulties of post-war immigration to Australia.

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:

http://hdl.handle.net/10453/125735