JEWISH WWII REFUGEES WERE SENT TO AUSTRALIAN EXILE

Film shows suffering of Jews Britain sent to Outback exile By Kate Connolly in Berlin (UK Telegraph)

The horror experienced by Jewish and anti-Nazi outcasts shipped to the Australian Outback by the British Government during the war has been documented in a new film that highlights the darker side of Britain's fight against Nazi Germany. The men, mainly scientists, academics and artists who had fled to Britain from Nazi Austria and Germany at the outbreak of the war, were considered a security threat after the fall of France. On the orders of Winston Churchill, they were dispatched from Liverpool on the Hired Military Transport (HMT) ship Dunera in July 1940.

Their arrival in Australia - after a 57-day journey in appalling conditions - was seen as the greatest injection of talent to enter Australia on a single vessel. They were taken to a detention camp in the Outback, where they set up an impromptu university to pass the time. Among the passengers were Franz Stampfl, the athletics coach to the four-minute-mile runner Roger Bannister, Wolf Klaphake, the inventor of synthetic camphor, and the photographer Henry Talbot....

Watched over by 309 poorly trained British soldiers, the men endured horrendous conditions. They were stripped of their personal possessions, including documents and false teeth, many of which were thrown overboard. They were beaten and insulted as "Jewish swine" and forced to sleep below deck on floors awash with human waste. The hatches and portholes were battened shut. "There was so little air that to get the job of peeling potatoes on deck was seen as a life-saver," said Walter Kaufmann, 82, a Jewish refugee now living in Berlin whose book Touching Time details the Dunera experience. Klaus Wilcynski, 86, author of The Prison Ship, recalled being told to walk on the deck in bare feet. "Soldiers had smashed beer bottles so people cut their feet."

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour, the men were reclassified as "friendly aliens", and hundreds were recruited into the Australian army. After the war most stayed in Australia. Only a handful returned to Britain and several to East Germany.