Episodes

Coming October 1st - This podcast explores the extraordinary stories of European refugees who escaped Nazi persecution, only to confront new forms of exclusion through Australia’s legal and bureaucratic systems.

In the aftermath of World War II, a charismatic Estonian man named Ilmar Tammelo arrived in Australia as one of more than 170,000 in the Displaced Persons Scheme. Trained as a lawyer and shaped by the upheavals of Soviet and Nazi occupation, Tammelo was assigned to manual labour in regional Australia, a condition of his participation in the DP scheme. A chance encounter brought him into the company of the leading legal theorist, Julius Stone, and Tammelo entered a small but influential circle o...

The Nazi rise to power looms over Europe in the 1930s, causing an exodus of emigrants seeking refuge from persecution. But fleeing fascism involves contending with the arcane - and often arbitrary - immigration systems of other countries who turn a blind eye to the unfolding crisis. Some escape; most do not. In Australia, a woman named Camilla Wedgwood works tirelessly, trying to help refugees navigate the requirements for would-be immigrants. Through her letters, archival records and personal ...

Leonhard Adam’s life was twice transformed by bureaucratic categories. Declared a “non-Aryan” by Nazi rules, he was forced out of his career and from his home in Germany. He fled to England in search of safety, only to be classified as an “enemy alien”, a category formed in panicked haste as Europe descended into war. Adam was swept up in a wave of mass internment that made little distinction between refugees and real threats. From there, his world shrank to barbed wire and bureaucracy. Arreste...