During WWI Croatian and Yugoslav men residing in Australia were wrongly interned as “enemy aliens” as the former Croatia and Yugoslavia was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, considered an enemy of the allied forces. Even though these men protested they were not politically aligned with the Austro-Hungarians, and Australia had intelligence confirming this, the men were still interned for the duration of WWI. Those who survived were forcibly repatriated to their home countries at the end of the war. 36 innocent men died during their internment.

This poem was created by taking a list of names of the 36 “Austrian” or Slav internees (as they were called at the time) who died in internment during World War I (from the reference below), cutting up the names and details into strips and then physically weaving this paper into a poem.

Reference: Stenning, M. (1995). Austrian Slavs internment camps of Australia World War I. M. Stenning. pp. 28-29.