Numerous documentaries and feature films produced for cinema and/or television deal with the British deportations of 1940 and related topics. Over time, event recordings, interviews with contemporary witnesses, etc. have also been produced. The selection on this page is intended to encourage the use of these media.
For copyright reasons, dunera.de cannot offer downloads, and direct links to sources are not always possible. Availability and distribution are subject to change, and we therefore refrain from providing information on this. dunera.de also cannot guarantee that online sources will be accessible outside the regions specified by the rights holders, e.g., due to geoblocking.
The productions presented here are a selection. Many other films of varying quality can be found on the internet, e.g. on YouTube. Anyone interested in information about individual people should also refer to the collection of audio interviews at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
“Small forgotten truths”
When Friends Were Enemies
The first eunion of the Dunera Boys in 1990 received widespread media coverage in Australia, including a film crew from the public broadcaster SBS.
“In 1990, on the 50th anniversary of their internment in a camp at Hay, the ‘Dunera Boys’ relived the small forgotten truths behind a bizarre episode in Australian history. This film documents the stories of the men who were sent to Australia on the HMS Dunera as internees. Their experiences then, and their lives in Australia are examined.“ (Screen Australia).
”The film was a great success, it won an award at the United Nations Media Awards and is nominated for the Australian Film Institute Award,” the director reported in Dunera News No. 111.
When Friends Were Enemies. Australia 1991. 58 minutes. Director, screenplay: Judy Menczel. Production: TV station SBS, TV premiere on September 29, 1991. Unfortunately, no visual materials are available for the film. The memorial stone was dedicated in 1990 at the site of the former Hay internment camp. Photo: Dehn.
Friendly Enemy Aliens
What connects 2,500 Jews and others who were deported to Australia on the Dunera in 1940 by the British government as “enemy aliens” with 438 Afghan boat people? They were picked up on the high seas in 2001 by the container ship Tampa. Australia refused them entry to its ports and had the Afghans arrested in neutral waters and brought ashore, thereby depriving them of their right to asylum.
The more than six decades between the two events cannot hide the injustice and reveal parallels. Both journeys were part of an exodus: whether Jews or Afghans, they were forced into exile in their time and insulted as a “fifth column” or terrorists.
Work on the film took the filmmakers “to the Australian desert, a kind of no man’s land” (production text) – to Hay.
The parallels with the 2020s are just as striking. Just look at the Mediterranean and the deportations of unwanted foreigners by plane to third countries.
Friendly Enemy Alien. Germany 2005, 90 minutes. Director: John Burgan, screenplay: J. Burgan, Gunter Hanfgarn, cinematography: Rainer M. Schulz. Premiere on November 2, 2005, at the Duisburg Film Week. TV premiere on August 28, 2006, on ZDF. New Berlin Film Award: Best Documentary Film.
About Camps and Stored People
Dunera & Queen Mary Association
As members of the Dunera & Queen Mary Association, almost 90 years after the arrival of the two internment ships in Australia in September 1940, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren—together with historians—are keeping alive the memory of their forefathers’ experiences. They are continuing the tradition of annual commemorative gatherings in the towns of Hay and Tatura, as well as in Sydney and Melbourne.
Recently, numerous videos have been created and can be found on the organization’s website and on YouTube. These include recordings of recent events, an interview with Ben Lewin, director of the movie “Dunera Boys,” and a four-part interview with Dunera Boy Klaus Friedeberger.
YouTube.com features additional recordings of events and interviews in which Dunera Boys talk about their lives.
The Dunera and Queen Mary Association has published some recent event recordings on its website. Numerous older videos can be found on YouTube. These include a recording of a lecture by historian Ken Inglis, who died in 2017 and was the initiator of the Dunera Lives books.
His Majesty's Most Loyal Enemy Aliens
Despite the deportation of almost 8,000 internees from England to Canada and Australia, at the end of 1940 there were still 14,000 people from Germany, Austria, Poland, and Italy behind bars on the Isle of Man.
The documentary uses interviews with contemporary witnesses, including a statement by historian Francois Lafitte (author of the first non-fiction book on the internments), and adds archive footage. The film focuses on the contribution made by the many intellectuals, visual artists, and musicians to British culture.
His Majesty’s Most Loyal Enemy Alien. Great Britain, 1991. Director Derek Smith, screenplay, production: John Mapplebeck, camera Eric Scott-Parker. The film can be viewed on YouTube.
Medicine Behind Barbed Wire
The recording of a lecture by British medical historian Paul Weindling deals with the more than 6,000 doctors who found refuge in Great Britain from persecution by the Nazis.
The speaker questions the role of the MI5 secret service in the internments and the myth spread by the authorities that the refugees were the “fifth column” and were housed together with German and British Nazis. Arthur Kassel is cited as an example.
Born in Breslau in 1897, the doctor believed he had finally found refuge in England after being imprisoned in Buchenwald concentration camp as an “Aktionsjude” and making a futile journey on the St. Louis. There he was banned from practicing his profession and deported to Australia. When he learned of the murder of his family in 1947, he committed suicide.
Dr. Kassel was one of the Dunera doctors. Among them were also Ernst Friedlich, Hans Frankenstein, and Ernst Wasser.
Medicine Behind Barbed Wire: Interned Medical Refugees on the Isle of Man. Lecture by Paul Weindling at Parkes Institute, University Southampton. No firther information. The film can be viewed on YouTube.
Internment on the Isle of Man
During World War II, up o 25,000 people, mainly refugees from Germany and Austria, were imprisoned on the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea. There were nine camps for men, and the entire southern tip was sealed off from the rest of the island to imprison women and children.
The film traces this history, finding the traces of concrete-encased posts for the barbed wire fence on the beach promenade and rusted steel beams with remnants of barbed wire at the rear of hotels that had been vacated for the internees at the time.
It also reports on the failed escape attempt of three British Nazis.
World War II Internment in the Isle of Man. UK, 13 minutes. Hosted by Alex Brindley. Production: Culture Vannin (Manx Heritage Foundation). Available to watch on YouTube.
Huyton Internment Camp 1940-1945
In astonishing brevity, the film shows impressive scenes from everyday life in the Huyton internment camp near Liverpool. The unique perspective is created by the visualization of works by visual artist Hugo Dachinger (1908-1995), who was born into a Jewish family in Gmunden, Austria.
The British had imprisoned him and tens of thousands of other victims of Nazi persecution as “enemy aliens” and potential spies. Dachinger was interned in Huyton and in the Moragh camp on the Isle of Man. He became internationally known through exhibitions of his artworks created in exile, among other things.
Hugo Dachinger. Huyton Internment Camp 1940-1945. 1.40 minutes. No further crew information available. Can be viewed on YouTube.
(Auto)biographical
Leonhard Adam
The recording was made on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the arrival of the Dunera Boys in Sydney. He documented his life through painting, his daughter Mary-Clare Adam reports in the lecture. Forty paintings were created in the Tatura internment camp.
Leonhard Adam (1891-1960) was a lawyer and ethnologist. The Nazis removed the judge and editor of a legal journal from office immediately after seizing power. He fled to England, where he published his first book, Primitive Art. After being deported on the Dunera and released from internment, he worked at the University of Melbourne until returning to Germany in 1957.
Dunera 80th Anniversary – Dunera, Tatura and Leonhard Adam. Australia, 2020, 75 minutes. Production: Dunera Association, Emanuel Synagogue. Available to watch on YouTube. (Screenshot: Leonhard Adam, self-portrait in the Tatura camp, January 1941).
Heinz Altschul
As a Jewish teenager and resistance fighter in Vienna, Heinz Altschul (1920-2011) found himself in double opposition to National Socialism. With the help of a friend, he fled to England, where he was interned as an “enemy alien” and deported to Australia. After his internment, he first joined the 8th Employment Company before returning to Vienna with his Australian wife. There he was editor of the Communist Party newspaper and Austria’s representative in the World Peace Council (where he met Heinz Dehn again, among others). In 1968, he was expelled from the Communist Party for opposing the invasion of Prague. He worked for the APA news agency until his retirement in 1998. When he learned that Robert Haider, a self-confessed Nazi who had been involved in “undermining the then still independent Republic of Austria,” had also been honored with an Order of Merit, he returned his award.
“Precisely because Heinz Altschul was not a celebrity whose upright character we can dismiss as an unprecedented exception, he reminds us that every society needs many like him in order not to slide into barbarism,” reads an obituary.
Heinz Altschul – An Austrian journalist in the resistance. Austria, 1992, 51 minutes. Film by Klaus Hübner and Lukas Ressl. The interview was conducted for an oral history project by the Institute for Journalism and Communication Studies at the University of Vienna. Available to watch on YouTube. (Screenshot).
Karl Duldig
Recording of a lecture by Eva de Jong Duldig on the history of her family and the artistic work of her father, the sculptor Karl Duldig.
Karl (1902-1986) and his brother Leo Duldig came from Przemysl on Poland’s southeastern border. They were able to escape Nazi persecution with their families to Singapore.
In September 1940, they agreed to travel to Australia with 233 German-speaking emigrants under the false promise of freedom. There they were immediately interned in a camp near Tatura.
Karl’s daughter Eva de Jong Duldig made the journey as a child. In order to preserve the memory of her family and her father’s work, she founded a museum in 2003 in the family’s former home in Melbourne.
Dunera, Queen Mary and Art of Karl Duldig. Australia, 2020, 75 minutes. Production: Dunera Association, Emanuel Synagogue. Available to watch on YouTube. (Screenshot).
Ship voyages into the unknown
Voyage of the Damned
Voyage of the Damned is a cinematic drama directed by Stuart Rosenberg, featuring an all-star cast of international celebrities. The plot is based on the book of the same name by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts.
England 1976, 150 minutes. Director: Stuart Rosenberg, cinematography: Billy Williams, music: Lalo Schifrun. Starring Oskar Werner, Faye Dunaway, Max von Sydow, with supporting roles by James Mason, Malcolm McDowell, Fernando Rey, Helmut Griem, Maria Schell, and Orson Welles.
The film can be viewed on YouTube.
The unwanted
The German TV film Die Ungewollten – Die Irrfahrt der St. Louis (The Unwanted – The Odyssey of the St. Louis) was created in 2019 as a docudrama and told from the perspective of Captain Schröder (Ulrich Noethen). The script, which combines dramatized scenes, visual documents, and reports from passengers at the time, was based on Schröder’s diary. The film ends with Schröder’s warning “that cruelty and inhumanity, wherever they may be, must never be allowed to spread again.” Germany 2019, 87 minutes. Director Ben von Grafenstein, cinematographer Raphael Beinder. The film can be viewed on YouTube.
These films show what a difference of almost 45 years can make in approaching a subject:
It is the story of 937 Jews who managed to get a place on the ship St. Louis, owned by the German Hapag shipping company, in order to escape Nazi persecution. They had visas for the US or Cuba. When they left Hamburg on May 13, 1939, they were therefore full of hope. But both governments and Canada refused to grant them asylum and even refused to allow them to dock in the US. The St. Louis had to return to Europe and reached Antwerp on June 17, 1939. After lengthy negotiations involving Captain Schröder, Belgium (214), the Netherlands (181), France (224), and England (254) took in these “boat people.” After the conquest of Western Europe by Hitler’s Wehrmacht, 254 people fell victim to Nazi persecution.
The British expelled St. Louis passengers Siegfried Mannheimer, Kurt Levin, Fritz Kassel, and Arthur Kassel in July 1940 and sent them to Australia on the Dunera. The number of St. Louis passengers who were interned in England is unknown.
Atlantic Drift
A few days after the war began, 4,000 Jews left Vienna and Bratislava on four ships with the plan to reach Palestine after transferring to three ocean-going steamers. In Tulcea (Romania), 1,829 refugees transferred to the Atlantic. The British Colonial Office deported them all to Mauritius, where they were imprisoned in a Napoleonic-era prison until well after the end of the war.
The journey of a survivor and her adult son to her father’s grave in Mauritius provides the framework for the film, which is expanded with eyewitness accounts of the living conditions, disease, hunger, and death experienced during this escape from the Holocaust.
Atlantic Drift, 90 minutes. Austria, France, Israel 2002. Director Michel Daeron, cinematography George Diane.
The director reports: “During filming, the East Sea ran aground on the French coast. On board were countless Kurdish refugees. During the editing phase, the Tampa, a ship carrying Afghan refugees, was sent criss-crossing Australian waters. The rich countries … have lost the memory of the time when the Jews were refugees before they were exterminated.” (Michel Daeron, catalog of the 32nd International Forum of Young Cinema 2002, page 38).
And the battle continues ...
Nazi Hunters - Journey into Darkness
As a member of the British Wartime Investigation Service, Dunera Boy Anton Walter Freud, a grandson of the psychoanalyst, was involved in exposing and arresting Nazi criminals. Among other things, he investigated the heads of the company that manufactured Zyklon B, the poison used to murder tens of thousands of concentration camp prisoners. He was involved in the arrest of the Auschwitz concentration camp commander and the interrogation of the SS doctor at the Neuengamme concentration camp, and contributed to the conviction of those responsible for medical experiments on the “children of Bullenhuser Damm.”
The film about Freud and his comrades and their role in the capture of Nazi criminals is based on these facts. The moving narrative combines documentary images with dramatized scenes and interviews with contemporary witnesses.
Franz Hartwig as Anton Walter Freud in Nazijäger – Reise in die Finsternis (Nazi Hunters – Journey into Darkness). Three-part semi-documentary, Germany 2022. 35, 34, and 28 minutes. Director: Raymond Ley. Screenplay by R. Ley with Hannah Ley, based on a story by Dirk Eisfeld. Cinematography: Dirk Heuer, Steadycam: Michael Ole Nielsen. TV premiere on January 16, 2022. Available in the ARD media library until April 19, 2027. The broadcaster’s further information on the film includes a biography of Anton Walter Freud (German).
