It all started in 1933, when a Polish writer, journalist and poet called Melech Ravitch realised the threat to the Jews and wondered what he could do about that. His idea, shared by millions of other Jews, was a homeland, where they could be safe. The question was: where? Of course, most attractive to lots of people was the land where Israel is now. The Promised Land. But it was also the most dangerous, surrounded by countries that weren’t necessarily warm-hearted towards Jews. And time was of the essence. So, Ravitch asked himself: was there an alternative?
When he looked at the map, he saw a large, almost empty island on the other side of the world. There seemed to be enough space, for one. And it was very far away from the misery that was spreading over the rest of the world, Europe most of all. Ravitch did some research and realised that the White Australia Policy could work for Jews that were refused everywhere else. According to its rules, Jews, mostly from Europe, where white. And so, he contacted the Australian government and asked if he could come and travel around the country. After he received his permission, he got on a plane. He was carrying a camera, his notebook, a letter of recommendation by Albert Einstein and enough money to tie him over for a while. Once he arrived, he hired an Indigenous assistant and an Italian driver and left for the Kimberley. To him, it looked like the emptiest part of Australia that could be lived in.
Albert Einstein wrote a letter of recommendation Credit: Wikipedia
More water and less beer
When he got back, Ravitch wrote a book about his journey, and articles in newspapers and a magazine called Frayland. It was published by the Freeland League for Jewish Territorial Colonisation. Like Ravitch, they too were looking for a safe place for Jews. On their list were countries like Ecuador, Suriname and Australia. The League had been founded by Isaac Nachman Steinberg. He was a lawyer, who had been Lenin’s first justice minister until he realised that justice was lower on the Russian leader’s list of priorities than he thought advisable. The moment the killing got to him, Steinberg fled. First to Berlin and then to London, where he set up the Freeland League.
The only problem with the Kimberley, is that the place could use more water and less beer.
Steinberg read Ravitch’ book and was very interested. The only problem with the Kimberley, Ravitch had written, was that the place could use ‘more water and less beer’. That was both very funny and very perceptive. And it spurred Steinberg on to write some letters. In 1938, in response to one of those, he received an offer, made by J.B. Cramsie, the chairman of the Australian Meat council. Cramsie suggested that 6,500 square kilometres in the Kimberley, or alternatively Melville Island, would be ideal to house 25,000 young, Jewish families. It would be easy for them to set up an independent society there, maybe later leading to an independent state.
Steinberg published the plan all over the European media that same year. And you can imagine that the League was inundated with requests by people who were desperate to become part of the Australian experiment. And it seemed to become reality when Steinberg received an offer of land not long after. The firm of Connor, Doherty and Durack offered them 7 million hectares. There was cattle on the land at the moment and it didn’t have the best reputation but if they wanted it, they could buy it ‘for a reasonable price’. Of course, the fact that Indigenous people lived here too was never mentioned.
Steinberg and his Freeland League passed the hat around and soon, the money was made available. 180,000 pounds, the equivalent of 12 million dollar today. The League would also take on the organising and made itself responsible for the project. And Steinberg told the Australian government that he would make sure that it would not be a political settlement. That it would remain part of Australia and not only produce enough food for itself but also for the rest of the country. If you give your permission, we can be useful, he said. And you will also do be on the side of the angels.
Parts of he Kimberley region of Western Australia. Original from NASA. Credit: NASA Image Library (public domain)
Selling the Kimberley Plan
In principle, the Australian government was not against the idea. No white person was using the Kimberley, really, anyway. And it fit an agreement the country had signed during the 1938 Evian Conference, where Australia had promised to take 15,000 Jewish refugees. Because of bureaucracy and the White Australia Policy, that wasn’t working very well. Only a few thousand had been admitted. Steinberg’s plan would solve that problem, and without any Australian investment too.
So, early 1940, Steinberg travelled to Australia to look at the country under discussion. He was shown around by Elizabeth Durack, the daughter of one of the owners. She would later become a very famous painter and writer. Time was ticking by now, of course, because the war had started. Nevertheless, Steinberg was excited. He even wrote poetry about the place, that spoke about Jewish kangaroos. And soon, he was travelling the length and breadth of the country to sell the Kimberley Plan, as it was called by now. His arguments were deftly chosen. The new settlement, he said, would bring the three things that Australia needed most: ‘money, men and inspiration’. By selling it not as good for the Jews but good for Australia, he had turned it into a profitable proposition.
He set up a petition, that was signed by the great and good: church leaders, academics, state premiers, judges, mayors, writers, activists and most unions. Of course, there were also people who thought it all rather scary. One of the large newspapers wrote that Jews were to blame for their own persecution. They had never adapted or been loyal to any country, the journalist wrote, and so they deserved everything they got. Not even all Jewish organisations were happy. Some preferred Palestine, the Promised Land. Others were afraid that a large group of Jewish people would lead to a flare-up of antisemitism.
Enemy Aliens
The HMT Dunera Credit: Die HMT Dunera
Millions of men, women and children are being murdered everywhere in the world right now. They are innocent and nobody is stepping in to protect them.
The Dunera Affair had attracted a lot of attention and as a result, the Kimberley Plan lost part of its attraction. Besides, the war was so far gone now, that bringing people safely here was almost impossible. In 1942, Steinberg left Australia, disillusioned and scared. From the US, he wrote letters to Prime Minister John Curtin: ‘Millions of men, women and children are being murdered everywhere in the world right now. They are innocent and nobody is stepping in to protect them. I know you to be a good man and know you will help them’. It was faint hope. Curtin ignored Steinberg. In 1944, he even officially refused to implement the Kimberley plan. An opinion poll had shown that almost half of the Australian people didn’t want to have anything to do with Jewish people. They didn’t trust them, and the fact that Steinberg was Russian proved that ‘his’ Jews were all communists, they thought. At the end of the war that would kill 6 million Jews, Australian newspapers and politicians spoke about Jewish people as a ‘cancer’ that should be kept out of the country.
The start of the Tasmania Plan
So, that was the end of the Kimberley Plan. But the start of the Tasmania Plan. Let me explain. During the 1930s, the population in Tasmania was declining rapidly. The Premier, Albert Ogilvie, was worried, and had applied to the Federal government to take European refugees to solve his problem. It seemed a win-win. But in 1939, Ogilvie died and was replaced by Robert Cosgrove. Cosgrove was a good friend of a man called Critchley Parker senior, a journalist and writer from Melbourne. But this story is not about senior but about his son, also Critchley Parker. This was a sickly young man, who had never managed to hold a job or do anything of real value. But at the end of the 1930s, he had fallen in love with Caroline Isaacson, a married journalist who worked for The Age. That would change his life.
Was it not strange and wonderful that a gentile, an Australian, approached us with such a proposal of his own accord?
Isaacson was very active in Jewish circles in Melbourne and had told Parker about the Kimberley Plan. Parker, of course, wanted to do something for the object of his adoration and when they started talking about the plight of the Jews, he was reminded of his father’s friend, the Premier of Tasmania, who was still trying to populate his island. The Kimberley Plan hadn’t failed yet but was about to, and Isaacson introduced Parker to Steinberg, who was still in the country. Parker’s interest confused Steinberg. He thought the plan rather utopian, for one. But he also wasn’t used to non-Jews volunteering their time and energy to help the Jewish cause. ‘Was it not strange and wonderful that a gentile, an Australian, approached us with such a proposal of his own accord?’, he wrote in his book Australia – an unpromised land. ‘How often had we Jews dreamed of such an event, when ‘they’ would of themselves come to us with an offer, an invitation?’
Bathurst Range near Melaleuca, Southwest Conservation Area, Tasmania, Australia 13/11/2011 Credit: JJ Harrison / CCASA 3.0
Before he left, he had made a pact with a local fisherman that he would send distress signals if he needed help, but because of the mist, smoke from his little fire went unnoticed. Then he accidentally burnt his only other box of matches. As time went by, Critchley Parker realised that he would probably die where he was. So he retreated to his sleeping bag and started writing. In his journal he described his vision for Poynduk. The new community would be based on ‘principles of racial tolerance and international brotherhood’. To strengthen ties with the outside world, Parker envisaged a great university, with scholarships given to all colours and creeds.
I desire, that their whole life will so amaze the people of Australia, that the little settlement of Tasmania will be the leaven which will completely change the economic and financial system of Australia.
The economy would run like the five-year plans of the Soviet Union, with thirty-five-hour weeks, a month’s leave on full pay and lots of recreational facilities for the workers. The plan was to become self-sufficient as soon as possible. There would be the finest medical facilities, schools, hydro-electric plants for power. Jews from everywhere in the world would contribute to their strength: Germans would build roads, the Dutch dykes. Every year Poynduk would host the Tasmanian Games, not just for sports but also for readings of plays and poetry, music, art, weaving and pottery. A shipyard would be built for steamers to take passengers on cruises to the Antarctic. ‘I desire,’ Parker wrote, ‘that their whole life will so amaze the people of Australia that the little settlement of Tasmania will be the leaven which will completely change the economic and financial system of Australia.’
Chritchley Parker Jr. Credit: State Library of Victoria
The dream of a Jewish homeland in Australia was over
In September of 1942, fishermen sheltering from a storm in Tasmania’s Bathurst Channel noticed a stick in the ground, just a few metres away from the beach. It had a white bag attached to it, with the word ‘help’ written in pencil. A little further away lay a body in a green sleeping bag, surrounded by the remnants of a small tent and some bits of shrub, ‘apparently gathered to make a bed’. Next to the remains was a journal, a camera, a wallet with some banknotes in it, a few papers, and a compass with the name Critchley Parker engraved on the back. A few days later, the dead man’s parents were flown in from Melbourne, and taken to the place where their son had died. In a grim ceremony, he was buried on the spot. During an inquest held in Hobart at the end of October, the coroner pronounced that the young man had died from ‘starvation and exposure’, a process that had probably taken a little under two months.
After Critchley Parker’s death, the dream of a Jewish homeland in Australia was over.
Isaac Steinberg got the message that his mother had perished in Auschwitz while he was living in America. Melech Ravitch moved to Canada, where he died in 1976. His children stayed in Australia, where they became important artists. Caroline Isaacson dedicated the rest of her life to the Jewish cause. Although she believed in Zionism as a humanitarian and cultural movement, Isaacson was not a fan of the ‘blind alley’ of the establishment of Israel, afraid this would ‘have a disturbing effect on the relationship between Jew and non-Jew in the democratic countries’. Nevertheless, in 1961 she went on a world trip including to Israel but died of a heart attack on her way back home.
A martyr for the cause of human dignity and for the Jewish people
Critchley Parker had a reserve and a park named after him in Beaconsfield, Victoria. Steinberg proclaimed him ‘a martyr for the cause of human dignity and for the Jewish people’. What he had done had come from ‘ahavath hinam’: altruistic love. But in 1975, Parker got the best epitaph of all when two Tasmanian historians wrote of Poynduk that ‘[f]antastic as the idea sounds now, there is little doubt that it would have been highly successful if implemented. When one considers how the Jews have made a far worse wilderness blossom like a rose, it does not seem unreal at all’. For a moment there, Australia could have been Israel.
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17/05/202319:00
