The Kimberley Plan was a failed plan by the Freeland League to resettle Jewish refugees from Europe in northern Australia before and during the Holocaust.
The Kimberley Plan was a failed plan by the Freeland League to resettle Jewish refugees from Europe in northern Australia before and during the Holocaust.
With rampant anti-Semitism in Europe, the Freeland League for Jewish Territorial Colonization was formed in London in July 1935, [1] to search for a potential Jewish homeland and haven. The League was a non-Zionist organisation and was led by Isaac Nachman Steinberg.
In late 1938 or early 1939, the pastoral firm of Michael Durack in Australia offered the League about 16,500 square kilometres (6,400 sq mi) in the Kimberley region in Australia, stretching from the north of Western Australia into the Northern Territory. The League sent a Yiddish poet and essayist Melech Ravitch to the Northern Territory in the 1930s to investigate the region and to collect data on topography and climate.
The League investigated the proposal, hoping to buy an area of 28,000 square kilometres (11,000 sq mi) of agricultural land for 75,000 Jews fleeing Europe. [2] The tract in question was that of Connor, Doherty and Durack Limited, including Auvergne Station, Newry Station, and Argyle Downs, and extending between the Ord and Victoria Rivers. Under the plan, an initial 500-600 pioneers would arrive to construct basic necessities for the settlement such as homes, irrigation works, and a power station, followed by the arrival of the main body of immigrants. [3] Ravitch in his report to the League promoted a bigger number than Steinberg, suggesting the area could accommodate a million Jewish refugees.
Steinberg (1888–1957) was sent out from London to further investigate the scheme's feasibility and to enlist governmental and communal endorsement. He arrived in Perth on 23 May 1939. Steinberg was a skilled emissary, and based his campaign on the officially declared need by Australia to populate northern Australia. [4]
By early 1940, he won the support of churches, [5] leading newspapers, many prominent political and public figures (including Western Australian Premier John Willcock) and a number of Jewish leaders, [3] but he also encountered opposition. Steinberg left Australia in June 1943 to rejoin his family in Canada.
A 1944 opinion poll found that only 53% of Australians supported the scheme, with 47% against the plan. Opposition was primarily based on concerns that the settlers would inevitably drift away from Kimberley and begin migrating to the cities in large numbers. [3] On 15 July 1944 the scheme was vetoed by the Australian government and Labor Prime Minister John Curtin (with bipartisan support [3] ) informed Steinberg that the Australian government would not "depart from the long-established policy in regard to alien settlement in Australia" and could not "entertain the proposal for a group settlement of the exclusive type contemplated by the Freeland League". [2] [6]
In 1948 Steinberg published a book on his experience, titled Australia – the Unpromised Land: in search of a home. [7] [8]
However, even after Israel was created in 1949, Steinberg tried once more – unsuccessfully – approaching the newly re-elected Robert Menzies in 1950. But Menzies replied that the idea ran contrary to his government's policy of assimilation aimed at achieving "the ideal of one Australian family of peoples, devoid of foreign communities." [9]
Sir Robert Gordon Menzies was an Australian politician and lawyer who served as the 12th prime minister of Australia from 1939 to 1941 and 1949 to 1966. He held office as the leader of the United Australia Party (UAP) in his first term, and subsequently as the inaugural leader of the Liberal Party of Australia, which he was responsible for establishing and defining in policy and political outreach. He is the longest-serving prime minister in Australian history.
John Curtin was an Australian politician who served as the 14th prime minister of Australia from 1941 until his death in 1945. He held office as the leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), having been most notable for leading the country through the majority of World War II, including all but the last few weeks of the war in the Pacific. Curtin's leadership skills and personal character were acclaimed by his political contemporaries and he is frequently ranked as one of Australia's greatest prime ministers and political leaders.
Kununurra is a town in far northern Western Australia located at the eastern extremity of the Kimberley approximately 45 kilometres (28 mi) from the border with the Northern Territory. Kununurra was initiated to service the Ord River Irrigation Scheme. It is located on the traditional lands of the Miriwoong, an Aboriginal Australian people.
Great Northern Highway is an Australian highway that links Western Australia's capital city Perth with its northernmost port, Wyndham. With a length of almost 3,200 kilometres (2,000 mi), it is the longest highway in Australia, with the majority included as part of the Perth Darwin National Highway. The highway is constructed as a sealed, predominantly two-lane single carriageway, but with some single-lane bridges in the Kimberley. The Great Northern Highway travels through remote areas of the state, and is the only sealed road link between the Northern Territory and northern Western Australia. Economically, it provides vital access through the Wheatbelt and Mid West to the resource-rich regions of the Pilbara and Kimberley. In these areas, the key industries of mining, agriculture and pastoral stations, and tourism are all dependent on the highway.
The Ord River is a 651-kilometre long (405 mi) river in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. The river's catchment covers 55,100 square kilometres (21,274 sq mi).
South Western Highway is a highway in the South West region of Western Australia connecting Perth's southeast with Walpole. It is a part of the Highway 1 network for most of its length. It is about 406 kilometres (252 mi) long.
The Wunaamin Miliwundi Ranges are a range of hills in the western Kimberley region of Western Australia.
Elizabeth Durack Clancy CMG, OBE was a Western Australian artist and writer.
There were several proposals for a Jewish state in the course of Jewish history between the destruction of ancient Israel and the founding of the modern State of Israel. While some of those have come into existence, others were never implemented. The Jewish national homeland usually refers to the State of Israel or the Land of Israel, depending on political and religious beliefs. Jews and their supporters, as well as their detractors and anti-Semites have put forth plans for Jewish states.
The Jewish Territorial Organisation, known as the ITO, was a Jewish political movement which first arose in 1903 in response to the British Uganda Scheme, but only institutionalized in 1905. Its main goal was to find an alternative territory to that of Palestine, which was preferred by the Zionist movement, for the creation of a Jewish homeland. The organization embraced what became known as Jewish Territorialism also known as Jewish Statism. The ITO was dissolved in 1925.
Isaac Nachman Steinberg was a lawyer, Socialist Revolutionary, politician, a leader of the Jewish Territorialist movement and writer in Soviet Russia and in exile.
Port Davey is an oceanic inlet located in the south west region of Tasmania, Australia.
Michael Patrick Durack, was a pastoralist and Western Australian pioneer, known as "M.P." or to the family as "Miguel". He was the son of Patrick Durack and Mary Costello, both Irish-Australians.
Yosl Bergner, also known as Josl, was an Israeli painter. He was born in Vienna, Austria, grew up in Warsaw, Poland, lived in Melbourne, Australia from 1937 until 1948, when he moved to Israel.
The Division of Durack is an Australian Electoral Division in the state of Western Australia.
The Menzies government (1949–1966) refers to the second period of federal executive government of Australia led by Prime Minister Robert Menzies. It was made up of members of a Liberal–Country Party coalition in the Australian Parliament from 1949 to 1966. Menzies led the Liberal–Country Coalition to election victories in 1949, 1951, 1954, 1955, 1958, 1961 and 1963. Robert Menzies was Australia's longest serving prime minister. He had served a previous term as prime minister as leader of the United Australia Party from 1939 to 1941. Although he would retire in 1966, his party would remain in office until 1972, an unprecedented 23 years of government from nine consecutive election victories.
Argyle Downs is a pastoral lease and cattle station located about 120 kilometres (75 mi) south east of Kununurra in the Kimberley region near the border of Western Australia and Northern Territory. It is operated by the Consolidated Pastoral Company.
The Logan Northern Australia Water Scheme, designed and proposed by John Logan, Chairman of Western Agricultural Industries (WAI), consists of two major projects:
Denis Joseph Doherty was an Irish-Australian businessman, pastoralist and politician who served as a member of the Legislative Assembly of Western Australia from 1897 to 1903, representing the seat of North Fremantle.
Frank Critchley Parker, commonly referred to as Critchley Parker, was an Australian journalist and newspaper publisher.
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