Lewis Kent

Kent was born on 8 September 1927 in Subotica, Yugoslavia, in present-day Serbia.^[1] His birth name was Lajco Kapolnai, which he later anglicised.^[2] Of Jewish origin, he grew up in the town of Sombor, where all but five of his high school classmates were killed when the Axis powers invaded in 1941. He recalled seeing "Hungarian troops blow a retired teacher's brains out with a grenade as the teacher answered a call at his front door".^[3] He later narrowly escaped being captured by the SS, and due to curfews and bombings was unable to continue assisting an elderly relative, who starved to death.^[4]

Kent and his cousin escaped to Hungary towards the end of the war, where they received false identity papers that listed them as Hungarian nationals. They were treated as such by the Soviet Army, which made them participate in an 11-day forced march to a prison camp. His cousin died of typhoid in the camp, but he was able to escape after a few months and made his way to Belgrade. He had difficulties in post-war Yugoslavia and eventually left for Israel in 1948, shortly after the country's proclamation, where he joined the Israeli Communist Party and stood unsuccessfully for public office.^[4]

After moving to Australia in 1954, Kent worked on the railways for 26 years and attained the rank of stationmaster.^[4] He joined the Victorian Labor Party and in the late 1960s served as president of the party's New Australian Committee. He expressed concerns that the party's platform was still sympathetic to the White Australia policy and called for non-discriminatory immigration to be made an explicit policy plank.^[5][6]

Kent also served as chairman of the Yugoslav Welfare Society. In December 1977, he attributed the bombing of the Jat Airways offices in Melbourne to Croatian separatists in the Ustaše. He warned of possible inter-ethnic violence if the police did not intervene, stating "ninety percent of Croats are good citizens but a small percentage are terrorist types".^[7]