Jan Lencznarowicz

Australian immigration policy, particularly regarding refugees, along with multicultural policies were often hailed in Europe as a positive model, especially by advocates of mass immigration and the integration of newcomers in receiving societies. However, in recent years Canberra’s position on asylum seekers trying to reach the Australian territory without visas has provoked criticism in the world as well as in Australia. At the same time, when the European Union faces uncontrolled migration from Africa and Asia, there is no shortage of calls for an adoption of Australian solutions. On cannot but notice how much these polemics reflect the clash between different political and ideological perspectives, while voices on the topic which reach Polish-language readers are usually taken out of context. Therefore the text has two aims: to outline the history of Australian refugee policy and to show that the changes at the turn of the century are its evolutionary continuation rather than any radical change.

Among the Poles who after the Second World War remained beyond reach of Stalin’s power and decided not to return to their homeland military veterans were a particularly numerous and active group. It is they who played a huge role in organizing that wave of emigration in their countries of settlement and called the tune in the social and, especially, political life of war refugees. The memory of fight and loses suffered in war formed the basis of the myth of heroic Polish soldier that emerged in emigration. It became one of the pillars of the collective political identity of post-Yalta emigration. Not only did it contribute to shaping its ideological coherence, but also set out the goals of further fight, this time only political and not military one. Using a variety of primary sources, the author of the present article tries to answer the question about the role which the motif of blood sacrificed by the Polish soldier played in the symbolic representations of post-Yalta emigration, as well as about the political function those representations had.