3 - Memories of the Kindertransport in Australia and New Zealand

Summary

Introduction

As this is the first study to discuss Kindertransport representation in Australia and New Zealand and there is also little secondary literature on Kindertransport memory in these two countries, we frame our reading of the Kindertransport through Holocaust memory as we did in the previous chapter. Scholars have discussed how, in New Zealand and Australia, national memory tends to coalesce around ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) Day, when all Australians and New Zealanders who died in wars and conflicts (particularly the First World War, but also the Second World War) are remembered. According to Rosanna Kennedy and Sulamith Graefenstein, the Sydney Jewish Museum's (SJM) exhibition Serving Australia: The Jewish Involvement in Australian Military History both reinforces the centrality of this collective memory and extends it by focusing on the contribution of Jews to the Australian Military. These scholars as well as the SJM's exhibition highlight the importance of regularly remembering ANZAC Day for Jewish communities in Australia.

Scholars also note that Australian Second World War memory and Holocaust memory both focus on the fate of the Dunera Boys, some of whom were also Kinder and served in the Allied Armed Forces. Several academic studies have explored how in September 1940, over 2,500 “enemy aliens” were brought to Australia for internment purposes from Britain on board the HMT Dunera. The majority were Jewish refugees, and were treated very badly en route by their British guards. Winston Churchill later described the journey as a “deplorable mistake.” The Dunera affair, according to scholars such as Ken Inglis, Seumas Spark, Jay Winter, Carol Bunyan, Paul R. Bartrop, and Rachel Pistol, is central to Australian memory of the Holocaust. Alexandra Ludewig explains that Australia has a celebratory memory of the Dunera affair that is not dissimilar to Britain's self-congratulatory view of the Kindertransport because both these historical events are widely regarded as “success” stories despite the “many traumatic and scarring memories attached” to them. Thus many of the Dunera Boys, as the internees on board the ship became known, stayed in Australia following their release in 1941, making “a significant contribution to the nation's economic, social and cultural life,” as the National Museum of Australia puts it.