Book Review – Fascists in Exile: Post-War Displaced Persons in Australia

[Extract] One of the most remarkable feats accomplished by Jayne Persian in Fascists in Exile, her account of the ‘war criminals, collaborators and fascist ultranationalists . . . resettled in Australia by the IRO [International Refugee Organisation] between 1947 and 1952’ (Persian 3), is her marked degree of impartiality, even by the standards of academic history writing. Persian makes it clear from the outset that her intention with this book is ‘to move away from both ignorance and polemic’ (4). This book is neither a Nazi-hunting expedition nor an apologia for the ideological shortcomings of a few bad apples. Persian is quick to point out that ‘the problematic politics of post-war migrants to Australia has largely been ignored by non-Jewish academics and deliberately omitted by DP ethnic historians’ (3). Nevertheless, the degree to which she succeeds in her task of providing an objective assessment of Australia’s post-war resettlement policies can, at times, be unnerving for an ideologically engaged reader. Persian’s is an account of moral and political failures which manages to restrain itself from levelling obvious—and justified—condemnations.