Book Launch: No One Knows Their Destiny
'No One Knows Their Destiny' is a new book by Tonia Eckfeld, which explores her father's and her uncle's Dunera stories. Join Tonia at the launch in Melbourne on 22 September 2024.
News
New Release: Paul and Paula
Tim McNamara pieces together the incredible story of his friend and mentor, Paul Kurz – engineer, refugee from Vienna and Dunera internee, separated from his wife, Paula, and his mother at the outbreak of World War II and interned in Australia.
Click here for more information and to purchase your copy today. The book launch will take place on Wednesday, 6 December - book your tickets here.
Farewell Bern Brent
Bern Brent passed away in September, aged 100.
"Bern's longevity conferred a sad and perhaps unwanted title. He was the last Dunera boy in Australia, and among the last anywhere... Bern accepted his position with grace, acknowledging the dubious honour as a responsibility rather than a burden, which surely it was. To the best of my knowledge, he never refused a request for an interview, and was diligent in answering questions from scholars and members of the Dunera diaspora," writes Seumas Spark.
Read the full article, A Dunera Life, here on Inside Story.
Book Now: MI:WI 3027
Inspired by the life of Roland Carter (Service No. 3027), the first Ngarrindjeri man to join the Australian Imperial Forces during World War I, MI:WI 3027 tells the story of Carter’s lifelong friendship with Jewish-German ethnologist, Leonhard Adam.
MI:WI 3027 is running at La Mama Courthouse in Melbourne from November 16 to 26. For more information and to book tickets click here.
Hay Reunion 2023
The annual Dunera anniversary event at Hay will take place between 1 September and 3 September, 2023.
Click here for more information or to book tickets.
More Articles ...
Other Stories
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Werner and Ilse Baer: A family on the Queen Mary
Miriam Gould tells the story of her parents, Werner and Ilse Baer.
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Phillip Benjamin and the Dunera boys
‘I didn’t really know that many of the people that I had met or had connections with were Dunera boys’, Phillip begins. ‘It only really emerged later.’
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Hans John Lorraine, 19 March 1923 – 14 August 2012
Hans Lorraine was not an internment artist. He started painting in the 1950s, creating a visual chronicle of peacetime Australian life. But he was a Dunera artist.
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Klaus Friedeberger
Klaus Friedeberger (1922-2019) was among the most talented, dynamic and thoughtful of Dunera artists. He was unusual among Dunera artists, and European artists generally, in seeing the mysteries and beauty of the Australian landscape.
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Erwin Fabian
Erwin Fabian died in Melbourne on 19 January 2020, aged 104. Erwin, one of Australia's pre-eminent artists, came to Australia on the Dunera, though he rarely said so. The Dunera boy label was not for him.
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Interviewing Bern Brent
In May, 2019, two of our team travelled to Canberra to interview Bern Brent – in his words, ‘one of the last Dunera boys still vertical’.
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Hannah & Emil - The story of Heinz and Fay Castles
'Am I a writer because this is the sort of thing spilling from the family closet? Or just ‘fortunate’ to be the recipient of others’ painful history?' asks Belinda Castles in an article in the Southerly Journal.
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An enigmatic ‘vagabond’: the Dunera artist Kurt Winkler
Kurt Hans Winkler was born in Germany on 26 February 1902, the fourth child of Protestant parents. His birthplace may have been Gransee, near Berlin, but this isn’t certain. His father, Carl Erhard Wilhelm Balduin Kurt Winkler, died about 1912...
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The Voyage: the Testimony of Georg Chodziesner
Georg Chodziesner's record of the voyage of the Dunera, told coolly and dispassionately, is probably the most important and comprehensive account available to historians.
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From Dunera to Parliament House: Peter Danby
Aboard the first Kindertransport to depart Germany for Britain, Peter Danby (formerly Danziger) could not have known the unlikely journey ahead.
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Finding Emil Wittenberg
We knew we had our work cut out when we started our search for Emil Wittenberg, one of the most prolific of Dunera artists.
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Searching for Jack Kaczynski
While some of the men who came to Australia on the Dunera chose later to speak about their experiences both before the war and on the ship itself – whether to the press, public, or simply to families and friends – there were many who remained silent.
