Honouring those lost at sea
A FUNDRAISING campaign has been launched by the Dunera Association to build a sculpture which will honour Jewish and non-Jewish victims of several ships lost at sea after they were attacked by the German navy during World War II.
A FUNDRAISING campaign has been launched by the Dunera Association to build a sculpture which will honour Jewish and non-Jewish victims of several ships lost at sea after they were attacked by the German navy during World War II.
The passenger liner Arandora Star was taking Italian and German internees and German prisoners of war to internment camps in Canada, and was in the Atlantic Ocean west of the UK on July 2, 1940, when it was hit by a torpedo from a German submarine. The catastrophe claimed the lives of 805 passengers and crew.
Eight days after the sinking, some survivors were sent to Australia on the merchant vessel Dunera, bringing enemy aliens from England, many of them German Jews, to be interned at camps in Hay, NSW, and in Tatura.
Later in the war, internees returning to Europe were among the dead on two other vessels that were sunk by the Germans.
The merchant vessel Abosso was en route from Cape Town to England, when it was torpedoed by a German submarine on October 29, 1942, killing 362 people. Another merchant ship, the Waroonga, was heading from Sydney to the UK, when it was attacked and sunk by a German vessel on April 4, 1943, claiming 19 lives, including seven passengers.
Tatura internee Bern Brent recorded in his diary in July 1941 that a ceremony was held at the Tatura internment camp commemorating the first anniversary of the Arandora Star sinking and remembering comrades aboard the ship who perished.
The occasion was marked by erecting a sculpture, created by Felix Emile Braun. The original sculpture was lost but a painting of it by Leonard Adam hangs in the Tatura Wartime Camps Museum.
Later on, families mourned those internees who lost their lives while returning to Europe on the Abosso and Waroonga.
The Dunera Association is undertaking a project to re-create the Braun sculpture in memory of those internees who died at sea. It will be located in the forecourt of the Tatura Museum.
“While we have received a small grant from the Greater Shepparton Council, we now need to raise $15,000 by the end of March in order to proceed,” stated Rebecca Silk, Dunera Association president.
She has contacted families and friends of Dunera internees in the hope they will make a donation towards the memorial.
The timeframe is fundraising in March, construction of the sculpture in April and hopefully unveiling the work on May 7, at the annual reunion for Dunera internees and families at Tatura.
For further information, contact Rebecca Silk: duneraboys@gmail.com.
PETER KOHN
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