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The article is focused on the Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe in the years between the first world war and the Thirties. In this context, the conflict and the rise of Nazism contributed to foster a substantial flow of Jewish refugees and migrants, who left their places of residence and moved to Europe, America or even to Australia. In these localities, anyway, the emigrants would find difficult conditions and their arrival would cause tensions and discriminations. Under this perspective, the Australian case is very meaningful in order to understand the stereotypes and bias that have always accompanied the history of migrations, also in some very special cases such as the Jewish one.

This article aims at analysing the Australian immigration policy towards the Jews who were leaving Eastern Europe owing to the violence that began with World War 1 and continued with Russian Civil War, the Russo-Polish War and the establishment of a legal discriminatory framework – even though not violent as the previous conflicts – in countries such as Romania and Poland. Through a careful research in the Australian National Archives the author has tried to understand the different responses to this grave humanitarian emergency and to see how a country like Australia – which was geographically extra-European but culturally and politically connected to Great Britain – reacted after such an increase of applications by new settlers, refugees and displaced people.