The “Song of 200”

Joanne Tapiola’s work “200 Men 200 Stories” on her website “The Dunera Italians” has already been mentioned on dunera.de. There, she deals in detail with the Italian men who were interned in Great Britain as “enemy aliens” in June 1940. Two hundred of them, who survived the torpedoing of the Arandora Star on July 2, 1940, were deported to Australia on the Dunera just eight days later. In her new book “Canzone dei 200 – the Dunera Italians,” she revisits the topic.

After Italy declared war on June 10, 1940, up to 30,000 men, women, and children of Italian descent were threatened with internment in Great Britain. Many worked in the restaurant and hotel industry. Most were British citizens, some of them second-generation. The criteria for internment were that they were between 16 and 60 years old, of Italian origin, and suspected – often without any justification – of being members of Mussolini’s Fascist Party.

On September 3, 1940, the 200 prisoners of war 370 POW’s (Nazis and victims of Nazism) and civilian internees from Germany and Austria were taken from the Dunera, which was anchored in Port Melbourne, to Camp 2 near Tatura., Victoria. Joanne Tapiolas tells their story and stories. Among other things, she reports on the terrible conditions in the British Warth Mills Camp and the assaults by the Dunera’s guards. Twenty-two Italians were taken from the ship directly to a hospital, four of them had to be carried off on stretchers. The guards accompanying the Italians on the train journey to the camp near Tatura were surprised to hear Cockney and other familiar English dialects.

The book provides a detailed account of life in the camp and the daily routine there, as well as the attempt by a group of fascists to gain control over their compatriots. The book ends with the dissolution of the camps and the internees’ decisions to return to England or remain in Australia. The last of the 200 was not released until more than two years after the end of the war, on July 31, 1947.