Elvira Salnajs diary and family papers, approximately 1900-2020

MLMSS 11839

fonds

approximately 1900-2020

Textual Records, Graphic Materials, Photographs, Drawings

9669891

0.16 metres of textual material (1 box), includes photographs

Elvira Salnajs (née Freimanis, 1920-2016) left Latvia in 1944 after the Russian invasion of the capital Riga. Elvira, her husband Otto Herbert Salnajs (1907-1992) and their daughter Venita Sarmite Salnajs (b. 1945) travelled through Prague, Vienna, various towns in Germany and Italy before boarding the S.S. Wooster Victory to Australia in 1949, where the Salnajs family eventually settled in Sydney.

Reference:
Compiled from the Library’s acquisition file and from the collection.

By descent; donor is the creator's daughter.

This collection contains a handwritten diary in Latvian by Elvira Salnajs, Salnajs family papers including photographs, and a typescript translation of the diary in English, approximately 1900-2020.

Folder 1
Diary by Elvira Salnajs in Latvian, covering the period from 1944 to 1952. The diary details the migration journey of the Salnajs family from Latvia to Australia. Written in ink in A5 notebooks, covers missing.

Folder 2
Papers relating to the Salnajs family, assembled by Venita Sarmite Salnajs-Zusters, approximately 1900-2020. Includes family trees, portrait photographs of various Salnajs family members, photographs of Elvira, Otto (husband) and Venita Sarmite (daughter) on their journey from Latvia to Australia, postcards of German towns, and a pen and ink drawing depicting Zwickau, Germany (undated, artist unknown). Also includes four photocopies of pencil drawings of German towns by Reinis Zusters (1946), 'Crossing the Equator' certificates (1945), and correspondence and documents by Parramatta City Council relating to the naturalisation ceremony of Elvira and Otto Salnajs (1960).

Folder 3
‘The Flight of a Refugee 1944-1952, Elvira Salnajs’. Binder containing a typescript translation in English of Elvira Salnajs’s diary. Includes an introduction by Venita Salnajs-Zusters, and photocopies of the photographs and drawings presented in folder 2.

Latvian, English

Copyright restrictions may apply:
Please acknowledge:: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales and Courtesy copyright holder