No One Knows Their Destiny

The Eckfeld Records: Inside the Dunera Story

Tonia Eckfeld

$39.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

Monash University Publishing
01 September 2024

Sagas; Family history, tracing ancestors; Biography - Australian

Popular culture has mythologised the Dunera Boys

but who were the real men who sailed on the infamous ship, and how did the voyage transform their lives?

Art historian Tonia Eckfeld draws on a deeply personal history to tell the story of her father and her uncle, Jewish refugees whose lives were shaped indelibly by their wartime experiences and internment

each to very different outcomes.

In 1939, Reinhold and Waldemar Eckfeld fled Hitler's Austria to Churchill's United Kingdom. There they were unjustly arrested and transported on the Dunera to Tatura prison camp, where it took many months to gain their freedom. Their experiences of internment were often harrowing, riven with violence, deprivation and frustration. Waldemar, who was beaten by British guards aboard the Dunera, found himself entangled in court martial proceedings

the records of which were reportedly destroyed by the British government to hush up a human-rights scandal. Reinhold, classified as an 'enemy alien', joined the Australian Army after release and served the country that would not legally recognise him for so long.

Drawing on a trove of historical artefacts

including previously unseen artworks, photographs and official documents

Tonia Eckfeld takes the reader inside these events as they unfold. Gripping and illuminating, this book asks us to reconsider the conventional narrative of the Dunera Boys, unearthing new perspectives on the impact of war, trauma and legacy on family relationships.

'The story of the Dunera internees usually is presented as one of triumph. As Tonia Eckfeld knows intimately, the story is richer and more complex than that. In this compassionate and moving book, she encourages us to consider anew the Dunera story and its many intricacies.'

Dr Seumas Spark

By: Tonia Eckfeld
Imprint: Monash University Publishing
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 170mm,
ISBN: 9781922979780
ISBN 10: 1922979783
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 01 September 2024
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Professor Tonia Eckfeld is an internationally renowned art historian and a principal fellow at the University of Melbourne. She was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship to the University of Chicago and a research fellowship to Harvard University, and was an honorary professor at Zhengzhou University and a distinguished research fellow at Northwestern Polytechnical University in China. Tonia lectures internationally and is a consultant for documentary films for National Geographic, Smithsonian Networks, BBC, Channel 4 and others.