AT HOME IN EXILE A Memoir AT HOME IN EXILE A Memoir Helga M. Griffin Because they ask me questions about my life and family, and because some of them may also one day face an uncertain future, I dedicate this book to my grandchildren: Julian, Laura, Patrick, Priscilla, Alexis, Sam and Giovanna Published by ANU Press The Australian National University Acton ACT 2601, Australia Email: [email protected] Available to download for free at press.anu.edu.au ISBN (print): 9781760464264 ISBN (online): 9781760464271 WorldCat (print): 1232435948 WorldCat (online): 1232438554 DOI: 10.22459/AHE.2021 This title is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). The full licence terms are available at creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode Cover design and layout by ANU Press. Cover photograph: The recently released Girschik family with Konrad Pick (ex-internee engineer from Iran) outside Melbourne’s Botanical Gardens on 5 January 1947. First edition © 2006 Pandanus Books This edition © 2021 ANU Press Contents Author’s Note to the 2021 Edition ................................. ix Foreword to the 2021 Edition .................................... xi Foreword and Acknowledgements .................................xv 1. A Fountain in the Square ....................................1 2. The Lost Homeland ........................................5 3. Steinkirche ..............................................13 4. A Jewel in the Austrian Crown ...............................19 5. Meeting the Relatives ......................................37 6. For the Love of Iran. 41 7. To the Bottom of the World .................................53 8. Das Lager ...............................................65 9. His Majesty’s Guests .......................................79 10. The Imaginary Homeland ...................................91 11. Shadows and Flames ......................................119 12. After the War ...........................................123 13. Stranded in Exile .........................................127 14. Swimming for the Eucharist ................................139 15. Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam ...................................155 16. Mirror Without Identity. 173 17. The Wreck of the Deutschland ................................191 18. Intelligence Testing .......................................209 19. A Banquet of Life ........................................223 20. Marriage in Rome ........................................249 21. Integration .............................................257 Author’s Note to the 2021 Edition This book is a minimally amended, reprinted version ofSing me that lovely song again (Pandanus Press, 2006). The title was chosen by Ian Templeman, the publisher, because he was more interested in its literary merits than in academic history. For that reason, many of my dates were removed from the original manuscript during editing. My original intention was to get my parents and the elder of my two brothers to write their own memories of how they experienced their internment in Persia and five years behind barbed wire in Australia during World War II, focusing on individual memory by gender and age. It seemed a remarkable opportunity to make this anecdotal and analytical contribution to social science: they had each lived in the same space with the same people for the same period. It was to be an experiment made in heaven, that is, within an impeccable laboratory. But my parents had been too distressed by their loss of freedom and the congested and pressured atmosphere of life in camp to collaborate. Because I wanted to keep the focus on my own memories, and the tone of voice my own, I wrote my own book with only minimal research in various archives in Australia and abroad. I did some research as a check on some important facts. Asked to speak about my book at an academic conference at the University of Queensland in 2006, I did some further research to validate my contribution. My speech was then published in National Socialism in Oceania (edited by Emily Turner-Graham and Christine Winter, Peter Lang, 2010) with the title I had originally suggested to Pandanus Press, ‘At Home in Exile: Ambiguities of wartime patriotism’. When in 2015 I was asked by Japanese scholars to speak at Cowra, NSW, at a conference on internment, I suggested that my younger brother, Peter, also be invited ix At Home in Exile to speak, using half my allocated 20 minutes because he had a different memory of our internment. As a young boy he had a wonderful time in camp, getting up to mischief, playing games, feeling adventurous. Girls are more vulnerable. Puberty can be a greater problem for them. Another interesting matter associated with this book is that the Iranian- born anthropologist Dr Pedram Khosronejad contacted me in 2019 after reading my book in the house of a friend. Pandanus Press having ceased to exist, Pedram took considerable trouble to locate and invite me to join a small group for a project he was devising. Their parents had also been interned from Persia during the period covered by my book. The group is now aged between 64 and 85 years of age – the ‘children of internees from Persia’. The group works collectively and individually in association with Dr Khosronejad’s experiment of a reciprocal anthropology of the aged. Outcomes of their work will include a publication as well as documentary film. This book remains one of several unique contributions within the development of the project. With the literary title used in its initial hard copy, this book has not been part of bibliographies on civilian or refugee internment in Australia, although it is unusual as an account of a female’s personal experiences. x Foreword to the 2021 Edition After World War I, at the time of the period of the great depression in Europe and also of the national infrastructure development projects by Reza Shah (1878–1944), the King of Persia (1925–1941), between 1930 and 1941 many young and talented civilian Germans considered Persia as their land of opportunity. After moving there, they established a large expatriate community, settled down and became friends with Persian communities in cities, rural areas and also the territories of pastoral nomads. The majority of the civilian German expatriates of Persia came to the country as young, first-rate scholars, engineers, technicians, architects and trader-salesmen. The British Government, and especially the prime minister, Winston Churchill (1874–1965), were against the residency of this specific group of civilian Germans in Persia, and since their arrival in the country put pressure on Reza Shah to expel them. Churchill strongly believed and propagated the fallacious theory that all civilian Germans were fifth columnists and secret members of the Gestapo who would help Hitler invade Asia and South Asia through Persia in the event of another world war conflict. Under this excuse, and after the outbreak of World War II, in a joint intervention on 25 August 1941, the Russian and British armies invaded neutral Persia and captured the majority of the civilian Germans in the country. German women and children under the age of sixteen were brutally separated from their husbands and fathers and expelled by force to their countries of origin. The men, after a few weeks of interrogation in temporary military tented camps in Basra (Iraq), were transferred to the war internment camps of Australia where they spent the rest of their captivity until 1946. There were six family groups including four children among those 494 civilian German internees of Persia who were brought to the Australian war internment camps. After the end of the war, many of the civilian German internees from Persia, including families and their children, were xi At Home in Exile granted leave to stay in Australia, while some of them were deported or repatriated to European countries, and a few of them decided to return to Iran, probably to continue their professional activities. Until today there has been no academic contribution or public news regarding this specific group of civilian Germans of Persia and their lives before, during and after World War II. Helga was six years old when she and her family were captured in Persia in 1941 and brought with other German families as prisoners of war to the Tatura war internment camp. Her family was released in 1946 and decided to stay in Australia. Helga was born in Çankiri Village in Turkey on 27 June 1935 and moved to Persia with her family in early 1936 because her father was assigned to pioneer parts of the Trans-Iranian Railway system. During their sojourn in Iran, Helga’s family became friends with many Persians and her parents adored the country and its people. But with the outbreak of World War II, like other civilian Germans of Persia, their beautiful life became a nightmare. They were captured by the British Army in their home in the west of Persia, and after weeks of interrogation sent to the Australian internment camps. This book, which comprises the memoirs of Helga since her childhood in Persia, her life experiences as a child prisoner in the Tatura internment camp in Australia and her life after the war, should be considered the only book written by one of the few survivors of the civilian Germans of Persia. Beside her personal memories and hard life experiences, to write this book Helga used her superb talents in history and anthropology, two major fields that she admired during her academic