History Explained & Your Questions Answered…

HMT Dunera set sail from Liverpool, UK for Australia on July 10, 1940, carrying 2546 civilian internees who had been detained by the British during the first year of the Second World War. These internees had been arrested because they were German, Austrian and Italian ‘enemy aliens’. But how did these individuals end up on HMT Dunera and why were the British deporting these ‘enemy aliens’ to other countries?

In this talk Dr Rachel Pistol (King’s College London) and Alan Morgenroth (Independent Researcher) investigate the circumstances that led to the voyage of the Dunera. Their talk explains the policy of internment, how Germans and Austrians were categorised by tribunals to assess whether they were a threat to national security, subsequent arrests, what happened when Italy joined the war, mass internment, deportation policy, and the early camps in which internees were held before they were boarded on HMT Dunera.

Dr Rachel Pistol is a digital historian of immigration and Second World War internment in the United Kingdom and United States. She is based in the Digital Humanities Department at King’s College London where she is the National Coordinator for EHRI-UK and on the Project Management Board of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI). She is the Honorary Historical Advisor for World Jewish Relief and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter. Rachel has published widely on Second World War internment in the United Kingdom and the United States including her monograph Internment during the Second World War: A Comparative Study of Great Britain and the USA (Bloomsbury, 2017) and British Internment and the Internment of Britons: Second World War Camps, History and Heritage (Bloomsbury, 2023) which she co-edited with Dr Gilly Carr.

Alan Morgenroth is an independent researcher into the experiences of the German and Austrian refugees interned by the British during 1940 and deported to Australia and Canada. Initially inspired by research into his own father’s experiences as a ‘Dunera internee’, he has spent fifteen years delving deep into all aspects of the subject. As a retired chartered accountant and entrepreneur, Alan has investigated the daily lives within the Australian camps, with particular attention to the camp economics and their banking systems. He recently published a book chapter in British Internment and the Internment of Britons (Bloomsbury, 2023) entitled ‘The British sent them to Australia from around the World: The internment of enemy aliens in the Second World War at Tatura Camps 1 to 4.’ This event will be relevant to all those who have an interest in WWII internment, in the UK, Isle of Man, Australia or Canada. This was a joint event held by The Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR) and the UK Dunera Interest Group