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The Dunera Boys

2000 refugees from central Europe were shipped to internment camps in Australia from Britain in 1940 on the British ship HMT (Hired Military Transport) Dunera. Even though they had fled to Britain in order to escape from persecution in Hitler’s Third Reich, it was thought that some of them might be agents to assist a German invasion of Britain. Britain’s internment camps for “enemy” aliens (citizens of enemy countries) were overcrowded in 1940 and the British government decided to send some of them to internment in Canada and Australia.

The deportees on the Dunera included 450 German and Italian prisoners of war and a few dozen fascist sympathisers, but the vast majority of the deportees were anti-fascist and two-thirds were Jewish refugees from German-speaking central Europe.[5] The total of 2546 men, ranging in age from 16 to 66, were on a ship whose maximum capacity was 1600 people (including crew). They were treated badly by the 309 poorly trained and led British guard soldiers on the ship.[6] Apart from overcrowding on the ship, the voyage was also made unpleasant by the fear of torpedo attack, the uncertainty of their destination, and by tensions onboard between genuine refugees and other German citizens (caught in England at the start of the war) with whom they were forced to share the trip.

The Dunera arriving in Australia

Photo source: National Archives of Australia, A11666

When the internees were herded onto the Dunera at Liverpool on 10th July 1940 the British guards forced open their suitcases and stole any valuables they had and threw the rest of the contents into the water.[7] There were far too few toilets on board for the number of passengers so buckets were provided as well, and these and the toilets frequently overflowed, so that sewage flowed across the floors. Some British guards abused and beat the passengers, and at least once the guard soldiers enjoyed breaking their empty beer bottles on the deck and creating an ‘obstacle course’ of glass shards that the internees had to walk barefoot through. “On the voyage to Australia, British guards treated the internees with calculated brutality in a gross, and in some cases criminal, dereliction of duty.”[8]

For weeks all hatches were battened down, and neither daylight nor fresh air ever reached the decks below, where the internees were kept. Long lines of men, many suffering from violent diarrhoea or sea sickness, queued outside the toilet seats that worked. In rough seas, the latrine floors were a hideous lake of sewage. There was a constant shortage of toilet paper. The usual daily quota was two sheets per person.[9]

Some deportees on the Dunera during the short time they had each day for a walk in fresh air (still photo from the TV mini-series)

Photo source: this photo appears here by kind permission of Weis Films, and with the cooperation of the NFSA.

When the Dunera docked at Pyrmont in Sydney on the 6th September 1940 an Australian medical army officer called Alan Frost went aboard. Frost was shocked by the conditions that he found on the ship. His report led to the court martial of the British officer-in-charge, Lt. Colonel William Scott.

The photo is an extract from an Australian newsreel. "Enemy prisoners arrive". Newsreels were short films shown in theaters, providing news and information about public events.

Photo source: this photo, from the documentary When Friends Were Enemies (copyright 1991 Special Broadcasting Service Corporation) appears here by kind permission of SBS and with the cooperation of the NFSA.

The photo is an extract from an Australian newsreel. "'Tommies' bring enemy internees". 'Tommies' was a slang word referring to British soldiers.

Photo source: this photo, from the documentary When Friends Were Enemies (copyright 1991 Special Broadcasting Service Corporation) appears here by kind permission of SBS and with the cooperation of the NFSA.

Read poems (in German) by Dunera-passengers, about the journey and their internment:
Wer sind wir? (Oswald Volkmann)
Good-bye Australia (Max Zimmering)
They sang on the "Dunera" (anonymous)

Deportees from the Dunera boarding a train to their internment camp (still photo from the TV mini-series)

Photo source: this photo appears here by kind permission of Weis Films, and with the cooperation of the NFSA.

Most of the Dunera passengers were interned in Tatura (Victoria) or in Hay (750 kilometres west of Sydney in NSW). The location of the internment camp in Hay was particularly dry, hot and dusty in summer. Internees there experienced extreme heat or cold, dust storms and occasional torrential downpours.[10] Tatura had a milder climate.

Hay internment camp, NSW. Although the Dunera internees were no longer in this camp when the photo was taken in 1944, the view shows no. 7 compound and was taken from the south guard tower of no. 8 compound. The Dunera internees lived in no.7 and no.8 compounds.

Photo source: Australian War Memorial photograph, accession number: 063213.

At both camps the internees set up a camp university, with over 100 subjects and courses taught by internees – this variety reflected the range of professional backgrounds of the internees.[11] The language classes were the busiest. They taught English, Chinese, classical Hebrew, Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, Czech, Portuguese, Latin, classical Greek, modern Greek and Japanese.[12] Many internees were surprised at the friendliness of the Australian guards who seemed determined to put them at ease.[13] Some internees at Hay, under guard, were given permission to swim in the nearby Murrumbidgee River.[14] Nevertheless, for the majority of the Dunera Boys (they came to be known by this nickname after the war) boredom and depression were a feature of their time in internment.[15]

An elderly Dunera deportee named Herr Baum (played by Warren Mitchell) in front of a guard tower at the Hay camp (still photo from the TV mini-series)

Photo source: this photo appears here by kind permission of Weis Films, and with the cooperation of the NFSA.

Later in the war policies towards the internees changed and the British government regretted the experience that the Dunera internees had been through. The Australian Government gave the Dunera people the option of either staying in Australia or being taken back to England; about 900 stayed. Many of those chose to join the Australian Army's 8th Employment Company, which consisted largely of 'enemy aliens' who were considered reliable. They were soldiers without guns - they did important manual labour for the army, loading and unloading military supplies, including foodstuffs and armaments, working on the wharves, repairing roads etc.

Many Dunera Boys chose to stay in Australia after the war and later became notable contributors to the nation's scientific, business, academic and cultural communities. At first glance one might gain the impression that the Dunera Boys were mainly academics and artists, however the internees had a wide range of professional backgrounds. "Among them were artists and designers, authors, musicians and composers, tradesmen, doctors, teachers, scientists, curators and academics, students and schoolboys, religious brethren and at least two judges, representing diverse nationalities, political opinions and religious beliefs."[16] Most of them settled in Melbourne, where many married Australian girls.[17]

Franz Stampfl, the athletics coach (best known for his work with the world's first four-minute-mile runner, Roger Bannister, and with Australia's world champion marathon runner Rob de Castella) left Austria in 1936 but arrived on the Dunera. Also on the ship was Felix Werder, who later became a leading classical music critic, composed many pieces and lectured for many years at the Council of Adult Education. Another refugee was the artist and teacher Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack, who also stayed in Australia. The German actor Sigurd Lohde was forced onto the Dunera at Liverpool by mistake[18] and played a German rebel in the movie Eureka Stockade in 1949. The film was made in Australia by a British film studio and was based on a famous historical tragedy on the goldfields of Victoria.

The composer and music critic Felix Werder looked back on his Dunera experience later with these words: “It was all very unpleasant, unjust, even unethical, but by comparison not half as bad as being in a concentration camp, bombed out, or dying on the Stalingrad front of frost-bite.”[19]

Extract from a promotional image for the 1985 TV mini-series

In 1985 a two-part TV series based on the experiences of the Dunera Boys was produced by Weis Films. The Dunera Boys starred Bob Hoskins, Warren Mitchell and John Meillon.

The Dunera Boys - this documentary at YouTube (see below) tells about some of the Dunera Boys; it was created as part of the exhibition 'The Perfect Migrant', at the Sir Louis Matheson Library at Monash University in 2021.

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