Internment in Australia
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VOLUME 13 NO.7 JULY 2013 journal The Association of Jewish Refugees Internment in Australia ost of our readers in Britain 4,400 ‘enemy aliens’, all men, had been Australia; the influx of a group of highly will be broadly familiar with the transported to Canada. Frederick G. cultured, skilled and educated immigrants Mtopography of the internment Cohn’s novel A Lucid Interval (1999), a had a disproportionately large effect on camps on the Isle of Man, where ‘enemy work of fiction based on actual experience, Australian society, which was in 1940 still aliens’, including many thousands of tells the story of two young brothers, developing a sense of its own independent, Jewish refugees from Hitler, were Jews from Germany, who made a perilous post-colonial culture. detained by the British government in escape to Britain via Lithuania and were In Canada, there are few reminders of 1940. The names of camps such as Central reunited with their parents in 1940, only the deportees. By contrast, the prominent Promenade, Hutchinson, Sefton, Onchan, to be arrested and deported to Canada. It Australian writer and journalist Cyril Pearl, Ramsey (Mooragh), Rushen (the women’s is one of a number of books that convey a Jew, wrote a book about the deportees, camp comprising Port Erin and Port The Dunera Scandal (1983), and St Mary) and Peveril have passed into in 1985 the film The Dunera Boys, the collective memory of the refugee starring the big-name actor Bob community. Apart from Peveril, Hoskins, was broadcast on Australian which was in Peel on the west coast of television. Though the disaster that the island, Rushen in the south-west struck the Canada-bound Arandora and Ramsey in the north, they were Star has ensured that its name has situated in or near Douglas, on the remained alive in the memory of the east coast, and still conjure up images community of Jewish refugees from of groups of boarding houses hastily Hitler in Britain and beyond – the requisitioned for wartime duties. The Austrian author Norbert Gstrein family camp, set up later within the used it in his novel Die englischen women’s camp, was located in Port St Jahre (The English Years) (1999) – it Erin and included the resplendently is the Dunera whose name is most named Ballaqueeny, the largest commonly associated with the depor- single boarding house on the island. tations of 1940. That is probably on Not content with interning Jewish account of the appalling conditions refugees as potential German agents, that prevailed on board ship and the the British government also deported scandalous mistreatment to which several thousand entirely blameless the refugee deportees were subjected refugees overseas. The largest by the British troops guarding them. contingent was sent to Canada. Anton Walter Freud, a grandson of Four ships carrying them left Britain Sigmund Freud who later joined the for Canada: the Duchess of York, Cover of An Illustrated Diary of Australian Internment by Special Operations Executive (SOE) which sailed from Liverpool on Edmond Samuels (NAA: A1336, 7597) and was dropped by parachute into 21 June 1940, the Arandora Star, Austria in the last phase of the war, which left on 1 July and achieved a sad vividly the conditions prevailing in the and Ken Ambrose, founder of the AJR’s fame when it was sunk the next day by a Canadian camps and the emotional and South London group, left vivid accounts German submarine with the loss of several psychological effects on the inmates of of their time on the Dunera for the Conti- hundred lives, the Ettrick, which left a confinement under harsh conditions at nental Britons exhibition (2002, funded few days later, carrying internees who a remote location in an unfamiliar land. by the AJR). ended up in Sherbrooke Camp in southern Though there was only one ship that Less well known in Britain are the Quebec, and the Sobieski, whose internees took internees from Britain to Australia, details of the internment camps to which were accommodated at Fredericton in the notorious troopship Dunera, which the deportees on the Dunera were sent New Brunswick. left Liverpool on 10 July 1940 with some after their bedraggled arrival in Australia The sinking of the Arandora Star 2,500 men on board, the story of those following eight long weeks at sea. sparked a public revulsion against the deported to Australia has attracted more However, since the 1970s the Melbourne- internment of refugees from Nazism and attention than its Canadian counterpart. based Dunera Association has been contributed to a change in government The wartime deportees arguably made dedicated to preserving the memory of the policy towards the refugees and the less of an impact on the existing Jewish deportees, to researching and recording ending of both their internment and their community in Canada and on Canadian their history and to maintaining contact deportation overseas. By then, some society in general than was the case in continued overleaf AJR JOURNAL JULY 2013 Internment in Australia cont Claims Conference reaches agreement with German Government between the surviving former deportees he Claims Conference has successfully funding through 2017 underscores as well as their descendants. Since 1984 negotiated an agreement with the the German Government’s ongoing the Association has published the Dunera German Government which, taken commitment to Holocaust survivors. It News, which in March 2013 reached T together with the amount previously is all the more impressive as it comes at its 87th number and which contains a agreed upon, will provide approximately a time of budget austerity in Germany. great deal of information about the two $1 billion over the four-year-period 2014- As well as these successes, the Claims principal camps to which the deportees 17 for homecare for Jewish Nazi victims, Conference reached several other were sent. I am indebted for much of the with the annual amount increasing each significant agreements with the German following detail to this publication and to year through 2017. Government. Resulting from the the Austrian scholar Professor Elisabeth The amount the German Government negotiations, the German Government Lebensaft, who recently visited Australia will provide in 2015 – €205 million ($266 agreed to expand the eligibility criteria of to research the Austrians among the million) – is an increase of 45 per cent over the Article 2 Fund as of 1 January 2014 for ‘Dunera Boys’; the resulting paper, written 2014. It will also provide €210 million those Jews who lived under the conditions with Christine Kanzler, is entitled ‘“It’s a ($273 million) for 2016 and €215 million noted above. A list of 300 ‘open ghettos’ Story You Will Never Forget”: Auf den ($280 million) for 2017. The previously was agreed upon. The Claims Conference Spuren österreichischer Dunera Boys agreed amount for 2014 is approximately estimates that, as result, an additional in Australien’ (On the Trail of Austrian €142 million ($185 million), an increase 2,000-3,000 Holocaust survivors will Dunera Boys in Australia). of €12 million ($15 million) over 2013 become eligible for a compensation The Dunera reached Sydney on 6 funding. Thus, taken together, this historic pension. This will mean increased funding September 1940. From there, most of the agreement is a commitment of €772 by the German Government of some 7 to deportees were taken by train to Hay, in million or approximately $1 billion for the 11 million Euros per year. Applicants for the Riverina district of New South Wales, years 2014-17. The German Government monthly pensions from the Article 2 deep in the remote Australian outback, also committed to review annually the Fund are allowed a higher annual income where they were housed in two camps (the adequacy of these funding levels. ($25,000, previously $16,000) as of 1 third held Italian internees). Conditions This unprecedented amount of funding July 2013 to meet the income eligibility in the isolated, semi-desert location means that victims of the Nazis around the requirement. This figure had not been were primitive and debilitating and the world can obtain the aid they desperately changed since 1995 and will make many detainees suffered from heat, insect need as they grow more frail. Further, the more people eligible for Article 2 Fund pensions. parasites and the sand that was continually fact that the agreement encompasses blown into the huts accommodating them. at Hay were transferred to the more were dismayed by the basic nature of The artist Johannes Matthäus Koelz, a comfortable surroundings of Tatura, the facilities at Tatura. (They would have political refugee from Hitler, recorded encountered far worse conditions had their arrival at Hay station: about 100 miles north of Melbourne, in A cloud of dust appeared on the horizon, the Goulburn Valley region of Victoria, they remained in Singapore and endured approaching at some speed. As it came where they joined a smaller group that internment by the Japanese.) nearer, it turned out to be a cloud of flies had been taken there after disembarking The Tatura camps, writes Rebecca enveloping half a dozen skinny horses and from the Dunera at Melbourne. The Silk, President of the Dunera Association, their riders – our escort to camp. We took refugees were held in Camp 2, one of ‘operated as communities and incor- up whatever luggage was left to us, and porated canteens, hospitals, dental and trudging over sandy soil in a landscape two camps erected some 15 kilometres much flatter than a pancake could ever be south of Tatura, and in Camps 3 and 4, recreational facilities, schools, music, we quickly reached a double line of huge known as the Rushworth Camps, some theatre and artistic activities’; one hut posts of fantastic shape and enormous 11 kilometres to the west.