New on dunera.de 20 March 2025

Historical: The internees of the Queen Mary and their protest against imprisonment

On September 25, 1940, 272 Germans, Austrians and Italians arrived on the Queen Mary in Sydney. It was not a luxury journey, as they were guarded by British soldiers. However, unlike the 2,500 internees who had arrived in Australia three weeks earlier on the Dunera, they were able to enjoy the crossing as 2nd class passengers.

The British colonial authorities in Singapore had expressly confirmed to 223 Jewish refugees that there were no charges against them and that nothing stood in the way of their release. The men and women therefore assumed for themselves and their children that they would live in freedom in Australia “under British protection on British soil” as in Singapore. They were deported because their safety could not be guaranteed in “Fortress Singapore” in view of the threat from Japan.

They were horrified when they were immediately locked up behind barbed wire in Camp 3 near Tatura (Victoria) – the families in Compound D, the single men in Compound C. In the Australian personnel records, they were not listed as “internees” and “enemy aliens” but as “detained refugees”. The camp commander and the authorities in Singapore rejected the 223’s complaints about their detention.

The 49 Italians in the Queen Mary group were also locked up in Tatura. This was to be expected. On the one hand, they were considered enemy aliens after Mussolini’s declaration of war. And on the other hand, many of them lived in Singapore for professional reasons and among them were a number of avowed Mussolini fascists.

dunera.de publishes – as far as is known for the first time in the German-speaking world – lists of names of the Jewish refugees and the Italians of the Queen Mary group and reports on the background to the internment and the experiences of the internees.

The two compounds occupied by Jewish refugees were filled with Australian Nazis of German descent. After repeated complaints about this and warnings about the dangers of this camp occupancy, the camp leader of the Queen Mary Jews, Gerhard Seefeld, was removed by order of the camp commandant. Reports on the resulting conflicts and on the activities of Nazis – despite the ban – in the Tatura camps are in preparation.

The luxury steamer Queen Mary – the second largest ship in the world at the time – was converted into a troopship and repainted at the beginning of 1940. Photo: Australian War Museum, inventory no. P00869.056.

In the Australian personnel files, the Jewish refugees were not referred to as internees or prisoners of war, but as “detained refugees” Source: NAA_ItemNumber9904155.

To the new history articles
From Singapore “under British protection”
and
“… hurts our very innermost”

Please note: March 31st marks the anniversary of the death of the “writer and roving reporter” Egon Erwin Kisch. That was reason enough to re-read his reports from the “landing in Australia” and his impressions of the country. A reading tip will be published on dunera.de on March 28, 2025.