|
Trending Topics
|
Film Shows Suffering of Jews Britain Sent to Outback Exile
(Telegraph-UK) Kate Connolly - The horror experienced by Jewish and anti-Nazi outcasts shipped to the Australian Outback by the British Government during the war has been documented in "Friendly Enemy Alien," a new film that highlights the darker side of Britain's fight against Nazi Germany. The men, mainly scientists, academics, and artists who had fled to Britain from Nazi Austria and Germany at the outbreak of the war, were considered a security threat after the fall of France. On the orders of Winston Churchill, the 2,500 internees were dispatched from Liverpool in July 1940 and told they were bound for Canada. Their arrival in Australia - after a 57-day journey in appalling conditions - was seen as the greatest injection of talent to enter Australia on a single vessel. They were taken to a detention camp in the Outback, where they set up an impromptu university to pass the time. Among the passengers were Franz Stampfl, the athletics coach to the four-minute-mile runner Roger Bannister, Wolf Klaphake, the inventor of synthetic camphor, and the photographer Henry Talbot. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the men were reclassified as "friendly aliens," and hundreds were recruited into the Australian army.