Biographies & Novels
New release
During research for the articles on dunera.de, a reference library was created containing biographies and autobiographies as well as several novels dealing with the Dunera’s journey and the internees.
For older publications, an online search—e.g., at antiquarian bookshops or platforms for second-hand items—is recommended.
Ernst Kitzinger (1912-2003) was an art historian and highly respected specialist in Byzantine and early medieval art. He came from a Jewish family in Munich, left Germany in 1934, and was employed by the British Museum. The government thanked him for his professionally recognized work by interning him in Australia, from where he was released in 1941. He then found work at institutes in the USA.
Voices of the Dunera is the first publication to feature texts from the literary works of the internees. According to the authors, Kitzinger “motivated his fellow internees to describe their particular circumstances. In impressive and often very moving prose and poetry, they reflected on their fate and the misfortune of the refugees. Their previously unpublished words are still astonishingly relevant today.”
The volume will be published in English in April 2026.
Seumas Spark, Andrew McNamara, Kate Garrett Voices of the Dunera. Ernst Kitzinger, Exile and Essays on Internment, Oxford/New York 2026, 130 pages. ISBN 978-1-83695-443-9.
Biographies and novels in English
A group of historians from Monash University in Melbourne is overseeing the book project Dunera Lives as the result of their many years of work on the history of internment in Australia, the artists among the Dunera Boys, and the internees of the Queen Mary. The first volume, subtitled A Visual History, was published in 2018. Here, internment, the voyage of the Dunera, and the self-organized camp life of the internees form the backdrop against which an extensive body of visual art is presented. The second book, Dunera Lives – Profiles, tells the stories of 19 former internees. These are introduced by biographical contributions about Edward Broughton, the commander of the 8th Australian Employment Company, who was highly respected by his soldiers, and Major Julian Layton, who ran the Australian camps on behalf of the British government. Both volumes are extensive and largely illustrated with color images.
Ken Inglis, Seumas Spark, Jay Winter, et al. Dunera Lives – A Visual History. Melbourne 2018. ISBN 978-1-925495-49-2. Dunera Lives – Profiles. Melbourne 2020. ISBN 9781925835656.
Dunera Boy Richard W. Sonnenfeldt (1923–2009) titled his autobiography Witness to Nuremberg in reference to his work as chief interpreter for the US during the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders.
He and 12 of his comrades were sent back after only a few days—on the Dunera, of all ships. During a stopover in Bombay, the group was disembarked and “forgotten” by the British authorities. It took months before Sonnenfeldt was able to travel to the US. He returned to Germany as a US soldier. After his military service, he worked as an electrical engineer and was involved in the development of color television and NASA’s preparations for the moon landing, among other things.
Richard Sonnenfeldt Witness to Nuremberg. Arcade Publishing, New York 2002-2011. ISBN 978-1-61145-030-9.
Erica Fischer, the German-Austrian author who became world famous for her novel Aimée & Jaguar and its film adaptation, tells the true story of her parents Erich and Irka in the English edition of Königskinder. As Austrian Jews, they were brutally torn apart in exile in Britain shortly after their wedding: Erich endured the hellish journey of the Dunera to Australia and the Hay desert camp. Irka survived the war in London. It took a long time before they were able to contact each other by letter, and years before Irka and Erich were reunited. Erica Fischer tells her parents’ love story based on the letters they left behind.
Over the Ocean, was published in 2014 by Hesperus Press, London, is the English edition of her book Königskinder.
In No One Knows Their Destiny, Tonia Eckfeld goes far beyond the experiences of her father Reinhold and her uncle Waldemar from the “Reichskristallnacht” in Vienna to the end of World War II in Melbourne. Both had to leave their homeland Austria at the ages of 17 and 24, respectively, were unjustly imprisoned in England as “enemies” and deported to Australia.
Waldemar was the victim of a brutal and unpunished assault by guards on the HMT Dunera. This shaped the rest of his life.
Tonia Eckfeld, No One Knows Their Destiny. The Eckfeld Records: Inside the Dunera Story. Monash University Publishing, Melbourne 9/2024, ISBN 9781922979780.
Australian art historian Prof. Tonia Eckfeld begins the book with an excerpt (available in English for the first time) from Reinhold’s memoirs, Last Months in Vienna, published in Austria in 2002.
She supplements the life stories of her father and uncle with previously unpublished artwork, photographs, and documents. She invites her readers to look at the Dunera Boys with new perspectives, recognizing and considering the effects of war, trauma, and legacy on families.
It was a long journey for meteorologist and glaciologist Uwe Radok (1916–2009) before a lake in Antarctica was named after him. He and his brothers Jobst and Rainer had left the East Prussian city of Königsberg and were deported from England on the Arandora Star, which was sunk but they survived. Ten days later, they found themselves on the Dunera with 450 other survivors, en route to Australia.
Uwe Radok’s daughter Jacquie Houlden and Melbourne historian Seumas Spark are publishing excerpts from Uwe’s diaries written during his internment and army service between June 1940 and February 1943. These excerpts reveal his attempts not only to process and come to terms with his experience of exile, but also to overcome an identity crisis – a Shadow Line.
Jacquie Houlden, Seumas Spark (translated by Kate Garret), Shadowline. Monash University Publishing, Melbourne 2022: ISBN 978-1-92263-362-0.
As a teenager, Lutz Eichenbaum (1923–2010) escaped the persecution of Jews in Nuremberg on a Kindertransport to England, seeing his parents for the last time in his life. This was followed by deportation on the Dunera, years behind Australian barbed wire, and “voluntary” service in the 8th Australian Employment Company. After the war, he changed his name to Leslie Ernest Everett and became an Australian citizen. Not Welcome combines Lutz’s diaries, files from the Australian National Archives, and other materials to create a biography that is as exciting as it is authentic.
Sue Everett, Not Welcome: A Dunera Boy’s escape from Nazi oppression to eventual freedom in Australia, 2011, 272 pages (e-book only).
Gerd Bernstein, born in Berlin in 1922, was saved from persecution by the Nazis by a Kindertransport. Two years later, he was sent to Australia by the British, where he served in an army work unit after being interned and subsequently took Australian citizenship and the name Bern Brent. He was one of the most active Dunera Boys, who worked to come to terms with the internment.
In My Berlin Suitcase, he opens his proverbial suitcase and shares with his readers his memories of his childhood in Berlin during the Jewish star era—until his parents saw the war coming and were able to send him to England.
Bern Brent, My Berlin Suitcase. Memories of a childhood. USA 2000, ISBN 9780646393698.
Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack (1893-1965) trained as a printer at the Bauhaus in Weimar, then taught at schools and universities before fleeing to Great Britain in 1936. Deported to Australia, he remained there after his release, became an Australian citizen, and headed an art school. During his internment, he produced numerous works dealing with camp life.
Resi Schwarzbauer, Chris Bell. Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack. More than a Bauhaus Artist. Australia 2021, 392 pages with 200 illustrations, some in color, ISBN 978-0648957416.
This captivating biography of the “teacher, musician, inventor, performer, and pacifist—a man full of compassion and resilience” is based on research in family archives and oral traditions, among other sources. It reveals many details of his extraordinary life. “Ultimately, his story is a plea for creativity and entrepreneurial spirit and a moving testimony to our shared humanity.”
‘The authors: Resi Schwarzbauer was born in the Tatura internment camp and has received numerous awards for her work as a German teacher. Chris Bell is Hirschfeld-Mack’s grandson and manages his grandfather’s artistic estate.
Kurt Hans Winkler (1902-1992) was one of the survivors of the Arandora Star, whom Great Britain deported to Australia on the Dunera just a few days later. He was Protestant and “half-Jewish.” As early as 1933, he feared political persecution because of some caricatures of Hitler and his consistently democratic worldview. He went to England via France, where he drew celebrities and members of the royal family, among others. Nevertheless, Britain denied him refugee status and classified him as a Nazi (!), with whom he was interned in the Australian camp Tatura 2.
Kurt Winkler My Vagabond Life. London 1987, 238 pages with 86 reproductions of works and photos, ISBN 0 7212 0708 1.
He became an Australian citizen, but left the country in 1951 and commuted between England, continental Europe, the USA, Hawaii, and Australia—always searching for a livelihood through his artistic work as a painter, draftsman, sculptor, and designer. In his autobiography, published for the first time in English, he describes countless encounters with celebrities and wealthy patrons. It is also a report on the 20th century from a very personal perspective.
The brothers Jobst, Rainer, and Uwe Radok managed to flee East Prussia. Rainer, the youngest of the trio, begins his life story with the history of his Jewish family in Königsberg (East Prussia). He recounts their exile and describes how mundane childhood events led to the British authorities incompetently and incorrectly classifying them as Nazis, how the brothers survived the sinking of the Arandora Star, and how they were deported to Australia on the Dunera.
Survival is a moving and authentic account of the history of a Jewish family against the backdrop of the Holocaust, flight, and exile.
Rainer Radok, Survival, published in Bangkok in 1992.
At the end of 1938, businessman Otto Silbermann experiences the unsubtle everyday reality of Jewish persecution in Berlin. His business and apartment are taken away from him. The Passenger is the deeply moving story, written in 1939 by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz (*1915), of a disillusioned German Jew who has nothing left but to observe the indifference of people on trains and in train stations. The People on the Margins of Life in Boschwitz’s debut are victims of the economic crisis of the 1920s who meet every evening in a Berlin pub and try to preserve their dignity. Both books were first published in Sweden in 1937 and 1939, respectively. It was not until 2018 that Der Reisende was printed in Germany for the first time.
The young man died on October 29, 1942, when the unaccompanied MS Abosso was sunk by a German submarine on its way to Liverpool.
Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, The Passenger. USA 2021, 288 pages. ISBN 9789781782275404.
In her native Australia, children’s book author Claire Saxby is known for her picture books on historical themes. However, she felt that a novel was the most appropriate form for her book on the Dunera. In Haywire, Tom, the son of a baker’s family from the Australian internment camp Hay, meets Max, a deported German Jew of the same age. Different roots and shared experiences make the 14-year-olds friends. Saxby uses both the historical context of the “distant” war and authentic events in the Australian province to tell the story.
Claire Saxby, Haywire, Australia 2020, 240 pages, ISBN 9781942769196.
Biographies and novels in German
In Letzte Monate in Wien (Last Months in Vienna) Reinhold Eckfeld describes his last months in Vienna in a small but all the more gripping book. The then 16-year-old Viennese Jew recounts his experiences and the everyday life of Jewish people from Kristallnacht to his escape at the end of 1938. They were subjected to attacks by their compatriots, who, after the invasion of Hitler’s army, distinguished themselves as loyal Hitlerites and terrible anti-Semites. Reinhold Eckfeld describes many encounters and the bureaucratic harassment associated with obtaining the documents necessary for departure. He describes with extraordinary and frightening accuracy the addresses, the appearance of government buildings, the moods prevailing there, etc. Finally, Reinhold was able to escape to Switzerland, which was no less anti-Semitic, as his first refuge. Reinhold and his older brother Waldemar’s journey then took them to Great Britain. There they were imprisoned as “enemy aliens” and deported to Australia on the HMT Dunera in July 1940. In the internment camp, Reinhold wrote down his memories in German. Editor Martin Kirst supplemented the text with numerous photos and explanatory footnotes.
For the 2024 reprint (cover on the right), Martin Krist expanded the book with new information and documents.
Reinhold Eckfeld, Martin Krist (Hrg.), Reinhold Eckfelds Bericht – Vom Novemberpogrom bis zur Flucht aus Wien. Theodor-Kramer-Gesellschaft, Vienna, 2024, 108 pages, ISBN 978-3-903522-24-4.
Reinhold Eckfeld, Letzte Monate in Wien, Hrg. Martin Krist. Turia+Kant, Wien 2002, ISBN 3-85132-312-2.
Austria’s National Fund supports research into the life stories of Nazi victims. The three-volume box set Exile in Australia was published as volume 5 of the book series Memories. It contains 21 biographical accounts across 1,000 pages. Among them is a text by Heinz Altschul, one of the Dunera boys, who is pictured on one of the cover photos as a soldier in the 8th Employment Company.
Artist families such as the Duldigs, who came from Vienna via Singapore and the Queen Mary to Australia, are also reported on in detail in stories and personal accounts. The book is written entirely in German and English and contains extensive photographic material.
More about the book series.
Renate S. Meissner/National Fund (ed.), Memoirs Volume 5 – Exile in Australia. Vienna 1918. ISBN 978-3-9504794-8-5. 3 books in a slipcase.
Dunera Boy Richard W. Sonnenfeldt (1923–2009) titled his German-language autobiography Mehr als ein Leben (More Than One Life). The son of a doctor, he was born in Berlin in 1923 and managed to escape to England with his younger brother Helmut in 1938. Richard’s deportation separated them. While Helmut was able to travel to the US, Richard’s journey took him to Australia on the Dunera. But after only a few days, he was sent back to England. He and 12 fellow exiles embarked on this journey on the Dunera, of all ships. However, they were sent ashore in Bombay, from where it took Sonnenfeldt months to reach the US.
Richard W. Sonnenfeldt, Mehr als ein Leben. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt/M 2005. ISBN 3-596-16415-X.
He returned to Germany as a US soldier and was appointed chief interpreter for the US prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials. As an electrical engineer, he was later involved in the development of color television and NASA’s preparations for the moon landing, among other things.
A biography in English was published under the title Witness to Nuremberg.
Based on the estate of his father Paul, born in 1921, Thomas Friedländer writes about Paul’s life from his childhood in a Jewish orphanage, his escape to England on a Kindertransport, his deportation to Australia, and his military service there. A “typical Dunera biography,” it would seem, but nevertheless atypical. Paul—known in Dunera circles as “Bonzo”—had contact with the Jewish-Communist resistance group Herbert Baum in Berlin as a teenager. This shaped his life. Returning to East Berlin in 1947, he came under the scrutiny of the SED hardliners in the GDR – first as a suspicious returnee from exile in the West, later as a critical analyst of Western policy on Africa. An eye disease made his work and everyday life increasingly difficult. Depressed and blind, “Bonzo” took his own life in 1980.
Thomas Friedländer, Bonzos Auge (Bonzo’s Eye), Edition Schwarzdruck, Gransee 2023, 400 pages, ISBN 978-3-96611-027-3, 27.00 €.
Thomas Friedländer combines the report with memories of shared experiences that shaped him, writing about his own experiences in the GDR and after reunification. In another extensive section, he works his way from the history of his grandparents to the family trees and finds a family scattered all over the world as a result of Nazi persecution.
After Thomas learned that Arthur West was closely associated with Edition Schwarzdruck, it became his publisher of choice. For the Austrian, born Arthur Rosenthal, was a Dunera Boy …
Dunera Boy Klaus Wilczynski (1920–2008) recounts his experiences in detail in his autobiographical book Das Gefangenenschiff (The Prison Ship), from his internment by the British to his service in the Australian army. The title refers to what is known to be the most detailed account of the Dunera‘s 57-day voyage of terror from Liverpool to Sydney.
In his second autobiographical book, Auf einmal sollst du ein Fremder sein (Suddenly You Are a Stranger), Wilczynski, the son of a Jewish doctor in Berlin-Charlottenburg, focuses on his childhood and his experiences of Nazi persecution and resistance as a Jewish teenager. He also recounts the fates of his relatives.
Klaus Wilczynski, Das Gefangenenschiff. Mit der „Dunera” über vier Weltmeere (The Prison Ship: Crossing Four Oceans on the Dunera). Verlag am Park, Berlin 2001. eBook: ISBN 978-3-89793-312-5. Suddenly you are supposed to be a stranger. A Berlin family history. Verlag am Park, Berlin 1998. eBook: ISBN 978-3-89793-311-8.
In Königskinder, Erica Fischer, the German-Austrian author known worldwide for her novel Aimée & Jaguar and its film adaptation, tells the true story of her parents Erich and Irka. As Austrian Jews, they were torn apart in exile in Britain shortly after their wedding: Erich endured the hellish journey of the Dunera to Australia and the Hay desert camp. Irka survived the war in London. It took a long time before they were able to contact each other by letter, and years before Irka and Erich were reunited. Using the letters they left behind, Erica Fischer tells the story of her parents’ love and separation during the war.
Erica Fischer, Königskinder. Rowohlt, Berlin 2012. ISBN 978-3871347412. The English edition, Over the Ocean, was published in 2014 by Hesperus Press, London.
Kurt Hans Winkler (1902-1992) was one of the survivors of the Arandora Star, whom Great Britain deported to Australia on the Dunera just a few days later. He was Protestant and “half-Jewish.” As early as 1933, he feared political persecution because of some caricatures of Hitler and his consistently democratic worldview. He went to England via France, where he drew celebrities and members of the royal family, among others. Nevertheless, Britain denied him refugee status and classified him as a Nazi (!), with whom he was interned in the Australian camp Tatura 2.
Kurt Winkler Mein Vagabundenleben wider Willen (My Life as a Vagabond Against My Will). Berlin, self-published), 240 pages. With numerous illustrations of works and photos. ISBN 3-926520-28-0. German edition of his autobiography My Vagabond Life.
He became an Australian citizen, but left the country in 1951 and commuted between England, continental Europe, the USA, Hawaii, and Australia—always searching for a livelihood through his artistic work as a painter, draftsman, sculptor, and designer. In his autobiography, he describes countless encounters with celebrities and wealthy patrons. It is also a report on the 20th century from a very personal perspective.
The brothers Jobst, Rainer, and Uwe Radok were able to flee from East Prussia. Rainer, the youngest of the trio, begins his life story with the history of his Jewish family in Königsberg (East Prussia). He recounts their exile and describes how trivial reasons led to their being wrongly classified as Nazis by the British authorities, how the brothers survived the sinking of the Arandora Star and were deported to Australia on the Dunera.
Rainer Radok, From Königsberg to Melbourne, Institut Nordd. Kulturwerk, Lüneburg 1998, 185 pages, ISBN 393226715X. This the German edition of Survival.
Von Königsberg nach Melbourne (From Königsberg to Melbourne) is an authentic and moving account of the history of a Jewish family against the backdrop of the Holocaust and exile.
The English edition, Survival, was published in Bangkok in 1992.
In Die unfreiwillige Weltreise (The Involuntary World Trip), author Max Zimmering (1909–1973) tells the story of his young hero Manfred, who comes from a communist family in Dresden and flees political and racist persecution by the fascists. He searches for his older brother, who is fighting for the Spanish Republic. Manfred travels via Prague and England to Australia, finally returning to his hometown of Dresden after the war to help build an anti-fascist Germany. The book is influenced by Zimmering’s own experiences as a refugee from Nazi Germany and as a Dunera Boy.
Max Zimmering, Die unfreiwillige Weltreise. Kinderbuchverlag, Berlin 1956 (first edition, reprints in the GDR).
Walter Kaufmann (1924–2021) was one of the youngest Dunera Boys. Like around 900 of his comrades, he was released in 1945/46 after internment and military service and became an Australian citizen. He worked as a sailor and dockworker, among other things. Trade unionists encouraged his literary ambitions. In 1953, he published his first novel, Voices In the Storm, in which he combined his own experiences in Nazi Germany with a story of resistance. He later moved to the GDR, where he lived as a writer. In his German-language short stories and narratives, he repeatedly revisits his experiences in British and Australian exile and recounts his encounters with contemporary witnesses. Here are just two examples.
Walter Kaufmann, Scahdem dass du Jude bist (Too bad you’re Jewish). Dittrich, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3943941890. Die meine Wege kreuzten. Begegnungen aus neu Jahrzehnten. (Those who crossed my path. Encounters from nine decades). Quintus, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-947215-24-9.
At the end of 1938, businessman Otto Silbermann experiences the unsubtle everyday reality of Jewish persecution in Berlin. His business and apartment are taken away from him. Der Reisende (The Traveler) is a deeply moving story written in 1939 by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz (*1915) about a disillusioned German Jew who has nothing left but to observe the indifference of people on trains and in train stations. The People on the margins of life in Boschwitz’s debut are victims of the economic crisis of the 1920s who meet every evening in a Berlin pub and try to preserve their dignity.
Both books were first published in Sweden in 1937 and 1939, respectively. It was not until 2018 that Der Reisende was first printed in Germany and subsequently became the subject of numerous theater productions.
Fleeing the Nazis, Boschwitz and his mother came to England. There, he was interned as an enemy alien in 1940 and deported to Australia on the Dunera. On the return journey, the unescorted MS Abosso was sunk by a German submarine on October 29, 1942. Among the 361 fatalities was Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, who was only 27 years old.
Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, Der Reisende. Clett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2019. ISBN 978-3-608-98123-0. Menschen neben dem Leben, Clett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2019. ISBN 978-3-608-96409-7.4-9.
“The racing reporter” Egon Erwin Kisch (1885-1948), journalist and communist, traveled to Australia at the end of 1934 to speak at an anti-war congress for Europe’s opponents of Nazism. Australia’s racist and Nazi-friendly United Australia Party (UAP) government wanted to prevent his entry at all costs, fearing a resurgence of the left-wing opposition and trade unions. Kisch jumped off the ship in Melbourne, broke his leg, and ultimately won his right to stay in court. Persecuted by the government and protected by political friends, he traveled around Australia and reported on the situation in the Nazi Reich. The collection of reports Landung in Australien (Australian Landfall) was first published in 1937. It also contains texts in which Kisch combines his experiences of traveling through Australia with historical facts. He does so in captivating literary reports, always from a trade union perspective. Even after around 90 years, Kisch’s ambiguous “Landung” is still worth reading and timeless.
Egon Erwin Kisch, Landung in Australien. On the left is the first West German edition, published in 1975 under license from the GDR. On the right is an English-language edition from 1937.
