Internees remembered To The Guardian

I read with great interest the excerpt from Simon Parkin’s book, Island of Extraordinary

Captives, about Britain’s use of internment in the Second World War. One extreme case of abuse and insult not mentioned, although it may appear in the book, is the case of the troopship HMT Dunera, which transported “enemy aliens” to camps in Australia.

My father, Sigmund Kirstein, was among the internees: a man in his 50s who had managed to reach Britain in 1939. The conditions on the Dunera and the abuse of the internees are a matter of record. Several of the crew were court-martialled after a journey of 57 days with 2,740 men incarcerated in a vessel meant for 1,600 troops. The internees suffered physical

abuse, verbal insults, shortage of food and water – and, according to my late father, the worst of all was that there were only ten toilets for more than 2,000 men. The internees’ possessions were looted, and anything not considered to be of value was thrown overboard. Many of the men were Orthodox Jews, and their prayer books and prayer shawls were also consigned to the waves by their guards. On arrival, the men were interned, mostly at Hay in New South Wales, in very harsh conditions but, like the internees on the Isle of Man, they rallied and did their best to overcome the hardships.

My father returned to Britain to be reunited with his wife in Llanelli, but carried the trauma of his ordeal throughout his life. It is good to see that a book about the dark chapter of “enemy aliens” during the Second World War is now published.

Yehudit Kirstein Keshet, Israel