No one knows their destiny
Inside the Dunera story A book Review by Dr Anne Sarzin
There is an understandable plurality about our thinking and analysis of those Jewish refugees who left Liverpool to embark on 10 July 1940 on the HMT Dunera, the ship bound for Australia, where its human cargo was transported to internment camps in rural areas. They are generally thought of as a community and, in the literature, in popular culture and among themselves, they are generally referred to collectively as ‘The Dunera Boys’.
It is, therefore, salutary to switch from the collective characterisation of this group and, instead, to home in on the lives of individuals, as art professor and historian at Melbourne University, Tonia Eckfeld has done successfully in her book No One Knows their Destiny. The sub-title of the book, The Eckfeld records: Inside the Dunera story, highlights the singularity of the author’s focus, because this is specifically the story of two Dunera lives, those of her father Reinhold Eckfeld, and her uncle, Waldemar Eckfeld. However, through the prism of these two lives, we also begin to understand a range of contextual issues and experiences—historic, psychological and social—shaping them and their fellow internees. The narrative of the Eckfeld brothers, while personalised with a trove of detailed sources from a substantial family archive of documents and reminiscences, become our window into a much wider world, encompassing the lives of those who shared their fate and many of their experiences.
The Dunera, the ship from hell, sailed with 2546 men and boys aged 16 to 66, including 250 who were Nazis. The majority, however, were Jewish—Reinhold and Waldemar had a Jewish father, Wilhelm, and a Catholic mother, Eugenie, who later converted to Judaism—and had sought refuge in Britain before or after the outbreak of war in 1939, and were subsequently arrested and detained as civilian internees, a betrayal of Britain’s undertaking to protect them as refugees. According to the authors of an earlier book, Dunera Lives: A Visual History, they were neither prisoners of war nor refugees, an ambiguous status that placed them in a very vulnerable position. On board the Dunera, their British guards treated them with barbaric cruelty, abusing them physically and mentally.
The brutality meted out to these men impacted severely on their mental health. In particular, the beating British guards inflicted on Waldemar was so severe that his younger brother, Reinhold, could only identify him by his hair. This traumatised Waldemar, affected his slow and painful recovery and badly compromised his future prospects in Australia. He had endured many upheavals, including expulsion from the University of Vienna after completing successfully three years of medical study, a bitter blow for a young man committed to becoming a doctor. Reduced to an extremely fragile state, on arrival in Sydney he was sent to Parramatta Mental Hospital, and 31 others from the Dunera were also hospitalised. This was his first separation from his brother who was his support and confidante. Waldemar’s situation was bleak and recovery slow and protracted. The author notes, ‘After the war ended, Waldemar’s inner war continued.’ Tragically, on 7 December 1959, he committed suicide, his second attempt to do so.
The divergence of the brothers’ paths presents the reader with a compelling portrait of different destinies. Reinhold, although deprived of ‘normality’, showed an adaptability, resilience and desire to structure a positive future for himself, enrolling in a variety of courses taught by the brilliant men incarcerated alongside him at the internment camps in Hay in New South Wales and, later, at Tatura in Victoria. One cannot gloss over his many challenges, but there were character traits in the younger brother that undoubtedly aided his progress through trials and tribulations. As a skilled draughtsman, who later qualified as an architect, he documented with great skill the monotonous landscape of the camps, as well as sketching numerous portraits of scholarly interest, as cameras were forbidden.
I found of particular interest the author’s delineation in this moving book of the Quakers’ role (among other agencies), in aiding the escape of Jews and those imperilled by Nazi laws, supporting them financially as best they could in challenging times. Also of significance was the remarkable role of Colonel Josiah Wedgwood, a member of the United Kingdom House of Commons, who courageously took up the cause of the Dunera survivors. ‘They cannot be compensated for the inhumanity,’ he said, ‘but they can be compensated for the injustice.’
The author concludes that her book, ‘acknowledges the suffering of all refugees, brought about by leaders and ordinary people alike.’ She has drawn on a wide range of historical sources in documenting her father and uncle’s history. In so doing, she has brought home to the reader the complexity of their lives and the obstacles they overcame in their desperate search for peace and stability. She never shies away from the tyranny and brutality that scarred their psyches. Tonia Eckfeld has crafted a worthwhile addition to the Dunera literature, which is especially welcome at a time when general interest is growing in this troubling chapter in British history, with its official obfuscation and erasure of records, and its consequences for their resolution in Australia. The book is lavishly illustrated with artworks, portraits and documents. I would have appreciated an index.
It is worth noting that the brilliant Sydney exhibition, Dunera Stories of Internment, is currently on view at the State Library of New South Wales, which has collected Dunera material for the past five years. In words that can be applied equally to Tonia Eckfeld’s book, the catalogue states, ‘traumatic experiences, oppressive social and political situations, grief, uncertainty, and physical or political dislocation can push some people into incredibly creative ways of first surviving, then adapting, and push others to their limits.’
No One Knows Their Destiny. The Eckfeld Records: Inside the Dunera story
Monash University Publishing, 2024
