Author Talk: No One Knows Their Destiny – Inside the Dunera Story

A moving portrait of two Dunera Boys, from Kristallnacht in Vienna to VE Day in Melbourne, that complicates the traditional story of the Dunera.

Popular culture has mythologised the Dunera Boys – but who were the real men who sailed on the infamous ship, and how did the voyage transform their lives?

Art historian Tonia Eckfeld draws on a deeply personal history to tell the story of her father and her uncle, Jewish refugees whose lives were shaped indelibly by their wartime experiences and internment – each to very different outcomes.

In 1939, Reinhold and Waldemar Eckfeld fled Hitler’s Austria to Churchill’s United Kingdom. There they were unjustly arrested and transported on the troopship Dunera to Tatura prison camp, where it took many months to gain their freedom.

The ship docked in Sydney at Wharf 21 Jones Bay, Pyrmont , just next to the Maritime Museum.

Their experiences of internment were often harrowing, riven with violence, deprivation and frustration. Waldemar, who was beaten by British guards aboard the Dunera, found himself entangled in court martial proceedings – the records of which were reportedly destroyed by the British government to hush up a human-rights scandal. Reinhold, classified as an ‘enemy alien’, joined the Australian Army after release and served the country that would not legally recognise him for so long.

Drawing on a trove of historical artefacts – including previously unseen artworks, photographs and official documents – Tonia Eckfeld takes the reader inside these events as they unfold. Gripping and illuminating, this book asks us to reconsider the conventional narrative of the Dunera Boys, unearthing new perspectives on the impact of war, trauma and legacy on family relationships.

The author will also be in conversation with the Museum’s curator of Post-War Immigration, Roland Leikauf.

Whilst you are at the Museum, make sure you visit the plaque commemorating the Dunera story, outside the waterside entrance to the Museum.

Professor Tonia Eckfeld is an internationally renowned art historian and a principal fellow at the University of Melbourne. She was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship to the University of Chicago and a research fellowship to Harvard University, and was an honorary professor at Zhengzhou University and a distinguished research fellow at Northwestern Polytechnical University in China. Tonia lectures internationally and is a consultant for documentary films for National Geographic, Smithsonian Networks, BBC, Channel 4 and others.

Copies of the books will be available for purchase and be signed by the author.