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An Exhibition in Bonegilla –Memories in my LuggageIn 2015 the AGWS celebrates the contribution of the German migrants and expatriates to the Australian Society with a Travelling Exhibition. The Exhibition Launch is on 19 December at the former Bonegilla Migrant Reception Centre and in February at the Goethe Institut Melbourne. After that we will be at different venues around Melbourne. What motivates people to pack their cases and bags – pack up their lives even, and move to a foreign country? Why do we leave behind all that is known to us – our home, our families and friends, to start anew . . . and what happens then?How does the new country welcome us, how do we integrate and get used to a new set of rules, a different political and judicial system, a country where the cars drive on the “wrong” side of the road and where they speak a different language?And what is our contribution to this “multicultural” society, how much of our culture and our traditions do we introduce to our host nation – and how does it all fit together and become our experience?It started with a book: Ein bisschen Heimat im Gepäck (ihleo verlag, Husum, 2014) by Sabine Nielsen, telling the life stories of migrants who arrived here between 1935 and 1956 – refugees, displaced or persecuted people, adventurers and those who sought to start a new life. Even today, their stories resonate in the minds of those recently arrived – or they help those, who feel overwhelmed by a tide of refugees, asylum seekers and new migrants, to a better understanding. The book will be published in English at the end of November: Memories in my Luggage .

via News.