New on dunera.de July 25, 2025

The Dehn family’s documents included a large-format folding card with graphics satirically poking fun at the “meritorious hat captain President Fruitshop Manager Laundry Owner Dehn” on behalf of the camp management. The caricatures about Heinz Dehn’s activities were drawn by Ulrich Laufer. Reason enough for the dunera.de team to ask: Who was Ulrich Laufer?

Born in 1923, the son of a Jewish doctor escaped the fascists on a Kindertransport to England. We know that Ulrich was friends with dunera boy Max Schwarz, who was six years older. The medical student had been forced to leave Vienna after the Nazis – like thousands of Jewish students, teachers and employees – had thrown him out of university.

Ulrich Laufer (left) and Max Schwarz. The portraits taken for the army files are the photos known.

To the article

Both had thought they were safe from persecution in England. However, they were unexpectedly declared “enemy aliens” by the British government and deported to Australia shortly afterwards onboard HMT Dunera. Ulrich Laufer was only 16 years old, one of the youngest Dunera Boys.

Their stay in different camps in Hay initially separated the two. Their lives brought them together again in Tatura. Like many Jews and Nazi opponents deported from England and Singapore, they joined the 8th Employment Company of the Australian Army after their internment. Their young lives came to an abrupt end on December 30, 1943, when they used their exit to go swimming in the Murray River near Tocumwal. Treacherous currents swept them away and the young men met their deaths.

Observed by Ulrich Laufer while gardening in the internment camp.

Speaking to Dunera Boy Walter Pollak, the unit’s commander, Captain Edward Renata Muhunga Broughton, recalled “two young men who went through the trauma of being torn from their families as youngsters, shipped off to a strange country, interned for 2 ½ years and finally, before getting to know the beauty of life, ended up as 2 bloated corpses on the river banks …” (Dunera News No. 24, page 7).

The new biographical article is intended to commemorate Ulrich Laufer and Max Schwarz – in the spirit of the inscription “Gone but not forgotten” engraved on Max’s headstone.

New biography

While going through the estate of Dunera Boy Paul Friedländer – known by his nickname Bonzo – his son came across extensive material about his father and family members. In his book “Bonzo’s Eye”, he combines memories of his own family with the results of years of research into the fates of many family members. Today, the survivors of the Holocaust are scattered all over the world. When Thomas Friedländer learned that Arthur West (Dunera Boy Arthur Rosenthal) was a co-founder of Edition Schwarzdruck, this publishing house became his publishing home.

Thomas Friedländer, Bonzos Auge (Bonzo’s Eye), Edition Schwarzdruck, Gransee 2023, 400 pages, ISBN 978-3-96611-027-3, 27,00 € (in German).

The Dunera & Queen Mary Association cherishes the memory of the refugees who were deported to Australia and interned there. Anyone wishing to support this work can become a member of the organization.

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