A tragic bureaucratic bungle delivers a rich historical trove

A massive exhibition at the State Library of New South Wales offers a rare eyewitness glimpse into a unique moment in the annals of Australia’s Jewish community.

Dunera: Stories of Internment tells the story of the transportation to Australia, and subsequent internment in Victoria and New South Wales, of 2546 men and teenage boys, two thirds of them Jewish.

Mostly from Germany, Austria and various other European countries, the migrants came via Britain seeking refuge from Nazi persecution.

In a case of massive bureaucratic bungling — and despite the fact that some of the German-speaking men had been imprisoned by the Nazis at Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen — they were regarded by British authorities as “enemy aliens,” a potential fifth column who could pose a danger to Britain in the event of a German military invasion. Thousands were arrested, interned in camps in England and despatched to Canada or Australia.

In July 1940 the Dunera sailed from the British port of Liverpool and docked in West Africa, Cape Town and Fremantle before reaching Melbourne and Sydney. Described by some as "a hellish voyage", the 57-day sojourn was marked by over-crowding, shortage of necessities, poor nutrition, insufficient toilets and cruel treatment at the hands of the British guards. Belongings were frequently slashed with bayonets and confiscated, destroyed or thrown overboard. Illnesses such as diarrhoea were rife. And among those on board were Nazi sympathisers.

The ship was fired on twice in the Irish Sea by a German U-boat. One torpedo missed its target, while the other reportedly struck the ship’s hull, but failed to explode.

The Dunera docked at Port Melbourne on September 3, 1940, where 545 internees disembarked and were sent to camps at Tatura, Victoria. These mainly included those regarded as “proper Germans” or Nazi sympathisers. Three days later, the remaining internees disembarked at Pyrmont in Sydney, from where they travelled to camps in Hay, New South Wales. But Hay was emptied in mid-1941 and its inmates relocated to Tatura. Commented internee Karl John Joseph: The fact “that the authorities in Tatura do not differentiate between us and the Nazi prisoners … makes us feel so humiliated”. All internees were subject to the same rules and regulations.

Most were released by late 1942 and the camps were progressively closed, with the buildings and infrastructure sold or demolished. Some internees returned to Britain, others made their way to what was then Palestine, while some, tragically, took their own lives, wracked with guilt over family members who had remained in Europe and perished in the Holocaust.

Among the remarkable features of the so-called Dunera Boys were the exceptional levels to which many rose in later life, most notably in the artistic arena. Portraying the harsh surroundings, depressing isolation, gnarled trees and guard-towers with water-colours, chalk, charcoal, coloured pencil, ink and even boot polish, they included Ernst Kitzinger, who became an art historian at Harvard University; Franz Philipp, who became an art academic at the University of Melbourne; Hein Heckroth, who won an Academy Award for his art direction of the film The Red Shoes; and Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack, appointed to a teaching position at the prestigious Geelong Grammar School.

Intern Georg Teltscher designed a camp currency, and three banknotes – denominations of two shillings, one shilling and sixpence – were printed by a local newspaper, the Riverine Grazier. The design included a barbed-wire border, incorporating such messages as “We’re here because we’re here because we’re here”.

“I’ve always been interested in the Dunera story,” exhibition lead curator Louise Anemaat tells The Jewish Independent. “What struck me is that it has always been told as a collective. But this is not one story; it’s 2546 different stories. The exhibition is but a fraction of what the library holds, and that is a fraction of the whole. The internees had incredible output and many of the items on display were in the possession of Dunera children - in London, the US and here in Australia.

“We wanted to tell a very human story - how peoples’ lives were impacted by this bureaucratic bungle. Some remained deeply traumatised. Some died by suicide after the war, unable to reconcile with the knowledge that they were in a much safer position than those who were left behind. Survivor guilt.

“The other remarkable aspect which emerges is the lifetime friendships which happened between many of the internees. The last Australian internee, Bern Brent, died a year ago, and we think there is one surviving internee, living in France.”

The history has been dramatised in Ben Lewin's 1985 film Dunera Boys film, although Anemaat says the film “is not overly accurate, with some mythologising at work".

"The claim that one of the internees was shot and killed on the ship is wrong; it did not happen. The claim that internees were ordered to run barefoot over broken glass on deck is also an exaggeration. That said, they were poorly treated by British guards to the point that many guards were court-martialled and some internees were paid compensation. And the internees were pleasantly surprised at the friendliness of the Australian guards.”

“The Dunera: Stories of Internment” is on display until May 4, 2025.