Belarusian Australians

Belarusian Australians refers to Australians of full or partial Belarusian national background or descent, or Belarusian citizens living in Australia.

History

It is believed that the first Belarusian immigrants who arrived in Australia likely settled in the early 1800s in New South Wales, together with other European people. It is known that mass emigration from Belarus did not begin until slowly during the final decades of the 19th century, extending until World War I. They emigrated to Australia from Libava and northern Germany. When they arrived, most settled in Sydney and Melbourne. However, most of these first Belarusians were registered as Russians, except those who were Roman Catholics, registered as Poles.

Most Belarusians that immigrated to Australia after World War I were political immigrants, mainly from western Europe and Poland. These immigrants numbered thousands of people, among whom were counted some Jews between the late 1930s and the end of 1941.

After of the post-World War II period, from 1948 to the early 1950s, about 3,000 Belarusians immigrated to Australia, most of them having left Europe for political reasons. Not all of them came from Belarus; they also came from many countries where they had settled after World War II. In fact, the majority of them from West Germany and Austria, but many Belarusians also came from Great Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, and other countries in South America and North Africa. These immigrants were former prisoners of war of the Polish and Soviet armies, persons who had worked in Germany as Ostarbeiters during the World War II, former émigrés who left Belarus shortly after the war or in 1939 when the Soviets attacked Poland, refugees who had fled Belarus in 1943 or 1944, and defectors and dissidents after World War II. During the 1980s and 1990s the waves of Belarusians who emigrated to Australia are relatively smaller compared with previous waves.