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Hungarian Australians

There were only a few Hungary-born people in Australia until the middle of the nineteenth century. Some arrived during the 1851 gold rush, and in the following decades others followed fleeing cholera outbreaks, anti-Semitism and persecution as a result of Hungary’s unsuccessful uprising of 1848-49 against Austria.

A rural depression in Hungary in the 1890s and early 1900s saw over 1.5 million Hungarians emigrate. While the overwhelming majority went to the United States of America, several hundred came to Australia.

In 1939, Hungarian Jews came to Australia fleeing the Nazi regime. Some Hungarian Jewish Holocaust survivors arrived between 1945 and 1947, as well as some anti-Communists who foresaw the likelihood of Hungary being occupied by Russian troops.

In the next five years, many thousands more ‘border jumpers’ fled to the West as refugees and spent some time in ‘Displaced Persons' Camps before migrating. About 17,000 Hungarians arrived in Australia as a result of this process. The Hungary-born population rose from 1,227 in 1947 to 14,602 in 1954.

The last significant group to migrate included people fleeing the aftermath of the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. Australia provided sanctuary to about 14,000 Hungarian refugees by the end of 1957, bringing the total of first-generation Hungarians in Australia to just over 30,000.

Whereas the earlier waves of Hungarian migration had included many people of rural or village background, the post-1956 refugees included a considerable proportion of tradesmen and factory workers, many of them quite young.

This was the peak of Hungarian settlement in Australia. Since then the Hungary-born population of Australia has declined due to the death of older migrants, the re-emigration of some Hungarians to other countries, and non-replenishment by new immigrants from Hungary.

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Jointly produced by Multicultural Affairs Branch and the Economic and Demographic Analysis Section of DIMIA. For more information see
http://www.immi.gov.au/statistics/
stat_info/comm_summ/textversion/summarytext.htm