TEMPLARS MIGRATE TO AUSTRALIA: A GERMAN BODY

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 September 1949, Page 6

TEMPLARS MIGRATE TO AUSTRALIA: A GERMAN BODY

CANBERRA, September 23.—Some hundreds of members of the Temple Society, a Getrman religious group who come.from Palestine, have settled in Australia, as migrants, on the express condition that they do not form large alien colonies. Announcing this, Mr A. 11. Calwell introduced a Bill to administer and distribute a fund, of at least £3,500000, representing the Temple Society’s assets, which have been transferred from Palestine. Mr Calwell added, that these Templars were a religio-economic society, the original members of which migrated from Germany to Palestine between the year 1860 and the year 1870, and, by means of communal funds, they there established town and rural colonies. Because they had remained predominantly of the German race, and retained their German nationality, they were deported from Palestine, when it became an important strategic area during the war. The Commonwealth Government had accepted 574 of them as internees. After the war, the Templars, he said, were not able to return to Palestine, and they did not wish to go back to Germany. They applied to settle in Australia, and, after an inquiry, Mr Justice Hutchins, of Tasmania, had recommended that 504 of them should be allowed to remain, and that 70 shpuld be deported, or else repatriated to Germany. This report, the Minister said, had been acted on. Mr Calwell said that another 270 of the Templars, who had been interned in the island of Cyprus during the war, had also been allowed to migrate to Australia. A great deal more valuable property, he added, remained to be liquidated in Palestine. Mr Calwell said that the farming skill and the experience of the Templars would be of great value to the Australian economy.