On Being an Enemy

Talk for Inner Wheel Bayside, Victoria, 2nd April 2014

On Being an Enemy

Silke Beinssen-Hesse

This year it will be 70 years since my family and I were released from the Tatura 3 Internment Camp, one year before the end of the war. I was then a precocious eight-year-old. But the first time I talked publicly about internment was in February last year when I was asked to speak at the opening of the The Enemy Within exhibition at the Shrine of Remembrance. It is my incautious mention of this at a Wenona Old Girls’ meeting at which Jennie and Margaret were present that led to today’s invitation. Though family friends and most of my colleagues in the German Department at Monash probably knew about our internment, they were too tactful ever to bring up the subject. Two or three times over the years mention of internment surfaced unexpectedly in conversations. The startled Australians had usually had no idea that children, or anyone for that matter, had been interned and were not sure whether to express horror and regret or to defend the government of the day. A journalist friend of mine recently commented: ‘Of course amnesia is Australia’s chief attitude to history; what an unserious adolescent nation it is – most of its charm lies in this characteristic.’

When I was enrolled in Wenona in 1946 the headmistress and my mother agreed that I must never talk about our internment. This was probably a good decision; the topic of war and war guilt was far too fraught and complex and in those years, often also too personal for us school children to make sense of. My parents too had always handled the whole war issue mainly with silence. It meant that I had early become the world’s most determined eavesdropper .(Later, at university, I then specialized in German Studies to fill in the gaps.) The rule of silence about my past had the side effect that I could really make no friends at school. That did not mean that people were not nice to me; they were always perfectly civil. But everyone knew there was something wrong with me, my un-Australian accent was one obvious marker, and this could not be explained or discussed. Consequently I used school for study and did well at that. Though I did not really have class-mates, I did have two very faithful friends at various times whose families had some out-of-school contact with ours. Early in the war my brothers and I had got used to children being told by their parents that they were not allowed to play with us, usually just as we had started to get on really well. And when I was four and my brother three, all the parents of the kindergarten in which we were newly enrolled had withdrawn their children in protest so that we were alone for the first fortnight. Eventually everyone came back; the compromise reached was for us to work at a different table. (I have to add that we also encountered some extraordinarily supportive and helpful people during those years.) As a result of such experiences, I had decided never to make friends without being quite sure that their parents approved. I then also ended up adopting my mother’s war-time habit of never greeting anyone unless they had greeted me first. It became a habit hard to shake. I was quite adult when I shocked a friend by saying that I thought the most important thing in life was to learn to do without other people. She could not understand what made me think like that. Fortunately I had a close and functional family with many family friends to make up for not feeling part of wider society. 

For me and my brothers, internment was at the time actually more like a rescue than a punishment. It meant among other things that we could be reunited with my father and my mother’s sister, our second mother, who had both been taken away from us. In the camp our family was together once more and with barbed wire all around, no one was likely to go missing again. As I later found out, my mother had actually arranged our internment, by somewhat illegal means, for German women and children were not considered a national threat by the Australian government and they had to be fed if they were interned. Apart from being non-dangerous, we were of course actually also all British subjects and Australian citizens.

So why did I agree to talk about internment after so many years of not talking? When I was contacted about the exhibition at the Shrine I was interested to find out what had awakened this belated interest. I was also a little concerned about the title of the exhibition. I myself had used the phrase ‘the enemy within’ to refer to the Germans’ paranoid perception of the Jews in their midst. So when I was asked to speak, I welcomed the opportunity to introduce some of these supposed ‘enemies’ of Australia. And as Australia’s asylum seeker problem was looming ever larger, it also seemed a good idea to let people have a look at how Australia had dealt with ‘alien’ and ‘unwanted’ civilians in earlier times. (Yuriko Nagata’s excellent book on Japanese internment is entitled Unwanted Aliens.) I have to say here that the exhibition, curated by Jenna Blythe, gave a well researched, well documented, balanced and sympathetic account of this episode in Australia’s history and could not be faulted.

At a recent conference a woman commented: 'Australia, once the destination of convict transports, then a place where Aboriginal people were concentrated and confined in reservations, later the site of large WWI and WWII internment camps, now imprisons asylum seekers. There’s a pattern.' - In WWII Australia took in a total of 7877 foreign internees sent by Britain and its allies and managed to find 8921 ethnically or racially suspicious people on its own shores. Sometimes put together with prisoners of war (there were eventually about 25,000 of these),  internees were then housed in 16 major internment camps that held on average 1000 people each. In the case of the Japanese, the arrest order for Northern Command was specifically racial: everyone of Japanese ‘race’ must be interned, men, women and children, even if they were naturalized, even if they were first, second or third generation Australian-born or married to British or 'white' Australians, and even if they had only some Japanese blood. It was a nationalistic and a racist age. With the help of the United Nations the confusion between ethnic identity and citizenship has since been sorted out, hopefully for good. Nowadays both those born in Australia and those naturalized are legally Australians, and presumed to be loyal unless proven otherwise.

Three weeks ago I participated in a symposium on internment in Cowra. (This year is the 70^th anniversary of the Cowra breakout in which 231 Japanese prisoners of war successfully committed Hara-kiri for their Emperor, more than a hundred were injured and four Australian soldiers lost their lives). Here we heard mainly the stories of Japanese, Italian and Indonesian internees. Their experiences were usually very much worse than those of most Germans, due presumably to the degree of ‘racial inferiority’ attributed to them. In particular, the transport ships crewed by the Dutch, the French and the British, the Dunera is a well-known example, were often hell-ships. For the prisoners arriving in Australia to the friendly smiles and the tea and fresh sandwiches proffered by the soldiers running the Australian operation, this country was like a glimpse of heaven. While there are stories of callously over-zealous Australian police, and of people who denounced and looted their neighbors, and while the bureaucrats from Victoria Barracks were certainly not popular with internees, it seems that nobody could fault the commandants and guards of the Australian camps who cared for the almost 17,000 civilian internees for up to seven years.

I’ll now say a few words about our family background. My grandfather came from the German free city of Bremen on the North Sea. He learnt wool-classing and joined an Antwerp firm that sent him to Australia in 1893. There his business did very well. Three years later he married and brought out my grandmother who had spent childhood years in Philadelphia. Their three children were born between 1897 and 1901 in Sydney. Both parents insisted on speaking English at home; they employed a Scottish governess, and later sent their son to Tudor House, which eventually became the preparatory school for King's College. In 1911 the family moved to Germany for my father’s secondary and tertiary education. Since my grandfather traveled between the two countries with his bails of wool each year, it did not matter much where the family lived. They wanted my father, Ekke, the intended heir to the business, to feel completely at home in both cultures. Since he was born in Australia of German parents, Ekke was Australian by Australian law and German by German law. Because he happened to be in Germany when WWI started in 1914, he had to fight on the German side. Thus in mid 1917 he joined an elite light horse regiment that was then deployed as storm troopers, and ended up fighting opposite Australians in his first battle at Passchendaele. There he was decorated for his bravery in retrieving wounded. On that battlefield he found a fallen Australian captain and when he examined a letter the man was carrying discovered they had almost been neighbors in Sydney. A name mentioned in this letter was of a man who later became my grandfather’s best friend. My father Ekke’s many letters from the front line show that the Australians in the ‘other team’ were constantly on his mind, even though his ‘German blood’ was supposed to be what mattered. 

Ekke then experienced the Versailles Treaty as disappointingly vindictive and not conducive to a peaceful future. The ideal of being bi-cultural with which he had grown up was no longer realistic. My father then spent much of his time as a student trying to work out what being a ‘German’ was supposed to entail. After gaining his doctorate in Economics, he traveled widely. He lived and worked in Arabia and Persia, for a time joined his father in Sydney but was there shocked at the virulent anti-German attitudes now part of the culture. He then moved to New Guinea where he was again confronted with German-Australian problems; he ended up in charge of the native carriers on a lengthy exploratory expedition into the unexplored interior, contracted amoebic dysentery in the jungle, survived that and a resulting abscess of the liver and was back in Germany in 1931 on the advice of his doctors. There he rewrote and eventually published a literary account of his time in New Guinea. He also observed the deepening of the Depression in Berlin where politics were becoming more radical and chaotic. Ekke eventually joined an anti-Hitler group that hoped to split Hitler’s party by providing a genuinely socialist and unaggressive alternative for Germany. Once Hitler came to power, my father spent some months in hiding before giving himself up; with the help of a friend turned Nazi, he was then allowed to leave Germany for Los Angeles in late 1933. My mother came over and married him there. Those were the Depression years and Ekke’s business ventures and attempts at writing for Hollywood were financially unsuccessful. So in late 1935 he joined his father’s office in Sydney. There a competent person was needed to conduct the barter or later Aski business without which trade with Germany was not possible in those days. One of the items imported in this context was a Junkers plane. By the time the war broke out, my parents had three Australian-born children, I being the oldest. 

Ekke’s various experiences had caused him to become more and more pacifist. He believed war to be the greatest of all evils. The CIB obviously found it hard to assess his sympathies, which now tended to be with people rather than with political doctrines or parties. His friends were often chosen irrespective of their politics. Ekke was interned in mid 1940; at his appeal hearing he reiterated that he wished to retain both his nationalities and to remain neutral. Asked what he would do if a ship-wrecked German sailor demanded his help he said that he would ask to be interned, which gave the Tribunal its cue. But he also gave the Tribunal his word of honor that he would never do anything detrimental to Australia and said he would forfeit his entire fortune if he was ever found guilty of a treasonous act. In the camps, and I remember visiting him in Long Bay, Orange and Liverpool camps before he ended up in Tatura Camp I, he initially concentrated on creating a functional community among the internees. But he also spent time on his own scientific studies and his writing and on producing plays. I have translated or copied most of the large volume of Ekke’s uncensored and censored letters from the camps.     

My mother and we three children were interned on 12^th May 1942. From Wentworth Falls we were driven to Liverpool camp in a police car and about a fortnight later taken by train to Tatura Camp 3. This was a family camp, mainly for the German Templers who had settled in the Holy Land in the 1860s and were moved when the war in the Middle East spread. They had been a close, Christian-minded community for decades, had also had the experience of being interned in WWI,  and as camp life was run by the internees, we had the benefit of their experience. The camp had four compounds; ours held Germans, including the New Guinea missionaries, Italians mainly from Palestine and Singapore, and some Arabs who had been deported with the Templers. There were many interesting, well educated and gifted people in the camp and cultural activities and the school benefited from their expertise. Since only every second year level could be taught, I was accelerated and started year four at the age of seven. The camp school gave me and others an excellent education. Through the Red Cross, senior students could there do the German matriculation which was recognized by Melbourne University and there have been quite a few outstanding graduates. 

The camp resembled a crowded and somewhat primitive camping ground, more fun for the children than the adults. I would like to quote from a letter my mother wrote after the war to her one remaining brother because it gives a good impression of the conditions. It is in my translation.

[...] the first year was a nightmare and I often asked myself whether it was the right thing to expose [the children] to these conditions. They came down with one illness after the other, eventually severe whooping cough that affected Silke particularly badly. The food was quite unsuitable for children as they were used to carefully prepared diet food and the sanitary conditions were appalling. It is only thanks to the healthy climate that no really bad diseases broke out. On top of that, there was the crampedness of the huts into which you were squashed. The corrugated iron became scorchingly hot in summer [...] in winter it was icy, terribly drafty and cold. There was no way of heating the rooms. The closest water tap was a walk away and the toilet a journey. There were three showers for about 150 women, the same for men. The toilets were too unsanitary for children to use, so that they always had to do their business in the huts, which meant that one of the adults was always out emptying potties. We had to lug all water for washing across a big yard. There were only two coppers for the entire population. From them to the washing lines was again a lengthy trek. In summer, we suffered from terrible dust storms. You then had to close windows and doors in spite of the burning heat and could still hardly breathe. In winter, there was ankle deep mud everywhere and you never had dry shoes. There were no shade trees and the children could only play right in the dirt and always looked as was to be expected. That meant that Gisela and I had a huge amount of washing every day. The dining halls were terribly overcrowded, because the camp had originally been intended for fewer people. In time, two more barracks were built. [...] Nearly all these things improved after a time. I was the front-line fighter for a children’s cuisine which I managed to get going for a while till a more far-reaching reform of the kitchen could be achieved and the Germans separated from the Italians and Arabs. After that the food became much better and by then the children had also got used to the new conditions. Soon gardens were laid out in front of the huts, which decreased the amount of loose dust and gave a more friendly appearance. The paths were stabilized with gravel, and drains were dug, so that it was, on the whole, no longer necessary to wade through the mud. A large grass-covered oval, on which at first only the school children had occasionally been allowed to do sport, was made accessible to the general public and included in the confines of the camp throughout the day, though it was closed at night because there was only a fence and no barbed wire around it. But that was just marvelous. Then a large hall was also built for plays, concerts and the like and equipped with a great deal of care and good taste. Gardens outside the camp, in which men and women could work during the day, supplied us with fresh vegetables, which had been very rare at the start. Our huts were lined with plywood and the layer of air between it and the corrugated iron created quite good insulation. The considerable disadvantage was, however, that bed-bugs had nested in it and could not be exterminated in spite of the enormous efforts made to smoke them out. (28.1.47)

In spite of the discomforts, my mother perceived the camp experience as, all in all, positive:

On the whole, the time of internment enriched both adults and children. By living together so closely in the camp, you became acquainted with people in ways that would never have been possible otherwise. And putting up with discomfort strengthens your resilience and makes you grateful for what you have. It would have seemed almost unethical not to have carried some of the burden, even though our lives behind barbed wire could not be of help to anyone. For the children, the years of German schooling were important. Silke and Uwe learnt to read and write German and we will make sure that they do not forget it again. (26.7.46)

People sometimes ask whether there were Nazis in our camp. There were and some of the activities like the pretty folk-dances were conducted within a Nazi framework. But their Nazism was pretty pointless and naive, and could fairly easily be ignored by what was presumably the majority. My parents certainly ignored it. Though our greeting at school was "Heil Hitler", I for one had no idea who that was. In other words, we were not indoctrinated.

Finally, I would like to tell you of an encounter I had in 1958. Shortly after I arrived in Germany to take up a scholarship, I was invited to a party for the new arrivals. Amazingly, the host was a former inmate of the camp whom I remembered. He told me he had invited a former scholarship holder who really wanted to tell me his story so that I could pass it on to his friends. The man was called Brack, I have forgotten his first name, and I will tell his story as I remember it. Just before the war began, he had come to England as  a student to take up his scholarship and had immediately been interned. Along with other internees he was put onto the Arandora Star headed for Canada. When the ship was torpedoed he was among the approximately 50% of passengers that were rescued. He was then put onto the hell ship Dunera bound for Australia; officers of that ship were later court-marshaled for their appalling behavior. Brack was then interned in Tatura Camp 1 and there studied medical science along with my father under Professor Henry Brose. (Brose was a former Rhodes scholar from Adelaide whose German ‘blood’ – his parents had been German migrants - had now caught up with him; in WWI, he had been interned as a British subject at Ruhleben near Berlin.) Brack received permission to do a medical orderly’s course with some practical hospital training and got his certification. At the end of the war he asked to be repatriated to West Germany, though he came from just across the border in the East. When he arrived in Germany he heard that his mother had just died. He tried to get a pass to go to her funeral and when that did not work crossed the border illegally. He was arrested by the Russians and for the next seven years he was sent from one former Nazi prison or concentration camp to the other without ever being charged; I remember him mentioning Bautzen and Buchenwald. When Buchenwald became a museum, the prisoners were moved on. Brack said he survived because he was always the only medically trained person and had much more freedom and purpose to his life than the others. Again and again the camps were decimated by typhoid fever, with charcoal the only medicine ever available; so he was never short of work. Brack was then suddenly freed on the condition he would never speak of his experiences. His wife was at the time quite worried that he was speaking to me at all. When I met Brack he had completed his teacher training, was married with a baby daughter and had a job as a teacher. He was one of the most radiant people I have met. In his extraordinary life story the period in Australian internment had the rosiest sheen by far.

To conclude, I would like to mention Cowra again. For fifty years now this small NSW town, that was the innocent site of the world’s most lethal prisoner breakout, has hosted a festival of international understanding for which a different nation is invited and celebrated each year. This year the fiftieth guest to ring the Australian replica of the World Peace Bell that hangs there was the United Nations. Cowra also has superb Japanese designed memorial Gardens that local people have nursed through periods of drought. In the same way the people of Cowra have cared devotedly for the graves of internees and prisoners on their war cemetery; these are still important to descendants who visit. Some of the flag-bearers struggling with Cowra’s fifty flags this year seemed to be kindergarten children; you can never start too early. In this way a country town that has almost no migrant population keeps itself open to the world, its variety and its needs, inspired by the prisoners of war and the internees that were housed there more than seventy years ago.

I might leave it at that. Thank you for inviting me and showing an interest today.

Australian Prison Guards and Others in the Early Years of WWII Internment

Australian Prison Guards and Others in the Early Years of WWII Internment.

Paper presented on 8^th March 2014 at the Cowra Internment Symposium.

Silke Hesse

Like quite a few others here, I was interned in the Tatura 3 family camp as a child. I was there from 1942 to 1944, almost 6 on arriving and 8 when we left, and still have vivid memories of that time. For me the camp was on the whole a rich and interesting experience. Among other things it gave me the opportunity to get to know something of my culture of origin and to learn to read and write German, which we spoke at home; it also took me away from the worrying hostility of some Australian neighbors. The camp was a picture-book-like experience, a somewhat exotic miniature world. If I have war-time scars it is from the social exclusion suffered before and after the camp and not from internment.    

The camp was happy for me because my family was back together again (my father, my aunt who was like our second mother, and a foster sister had been interned before us, all suddenly taken away one day) and because all our three adults wanted us happy. It was also happy because the bulk of the inmates, the Templers from Palestine, had been a functional, community-minded group for decades and it was predominantly they who ran our camp. It was happy because there were many interesting, skilled and cultured people there who had time to share their knowledge. It was also happy because as far as my parents were concerned political views, which can be so divisive, were insignificant compared with human relationships. And it was happy because the Australian soldiers who ran it were decent and professional and saw themselves as looking after us rather than punishing us. Australia currently has camps that are run differently and so I thought I would look at the group of  people in charge of us during those war years.

Here I will draw on the letters my father smuggled out of Long Bay Penitentiary in the early months of internment. Just a brief note on my father, Ekkehard Beinssen. He was born in Sydney of German parents (his father was a wool buyer) and was thus Australian by Australian law and German by German. After primary education in Australia, he received his secondary and later his tertiary education in Germany. Because he was a German in Germany he was called up for war-service in 1917 and had a year and a half of front line combat during which he was always conscious that the Australians in the other team, directly opposite him in his first battle at Passchendaele, were also his people. Back in Australia he found that while some returned soldiers befriended him as their mate, his former neighbors in Hunters Hill, including his best friend, had sworn never to speak to a German again and were keeping their word. (We children later met with a similar rejection when all the parents from our kindergarten withdrew their children in protest upon our enrolment. When they returned, which they eventually did, we were asked to work at a different table.) These two groups, let’s call them the rigid, often racist patriots and the friendly humanists, could both be found in Australia during the wars.

After WWI, my father spent years adventuring in various countries around the world. He  returned to Germany in the Depression year of 1931 for health reasons and was lucky to be permitted to leave again in 1933 after he had been involved in anti-Hitler activities. Following two years in California, he arrived back in Australia in late 1935, now with my German mother, to work in his father’s firm. Soon after, I was born and my brothers followed. By the time WWII started, my father had quite a few influential Australian friends, among them the much celebrated Xavier Herbert who had published his great novel Capricornia in 1938. I am mentioning Xavier here because he helped Ekke to understand and appreciate the distinctiveness of Australian attitudes, the topic of the talk. Herbert later also insisted on visiting Ekke in internment in Long Bay.

Among initial signs of the coming war were increasing difficulties trading with Germany. Ekke’s business friends, mostly also returned soldiers, there stood by his side. But one day a CIB (Commonwealth Investigation Bureau) man turned up in his office and asked to see his home. He greeted my mother Irmhild, by pretending to recognize her from a German patriotic function which she had not attended. Links with German clubs, reading the German newspaper Die Brücke, owning German books (we would soon find other people’s on our doorstep in the morning), having German friends, corresponding with relatives in Germany and the like was then the somewhat schematic formula with which the CIB worked. It was not a particularly good indication of loyalty to Australia or anti-Hitler views, particularly where educated people were concerned, but it was probably the best dredging net that could be come up with in a hurry. An attempt by a CIB officer to record my father’s political views and activities before he left Germany was hopelessly garbled and inaccurate, an indication of how difficult it must have been for  Australian intelligence officers to assess complex overseas politics. My bi-national parents subsequently made no attempt to take precautions; it would have been pointless anyway. While the bureaucrats and CIB officers were professional sleuths, what I have called the ‘rigid patriots’ were eager amateur sleuths. When we children fought over the bathroom light switch one night, the sleuths concluded we were sending signals to German submarines lying in wait.

Shortly before the war my father was also asked whether he wished to surrender his Australian nationality. He said ‘no’, giving as his reasons his business interests and the rights of his children as born Australians. By the time it came to Ekke’s appeal hearing, his writings and years worth of confiscated carbon-copies of his letters had been read with some care. The court allowed my father to explain his perception of his situation as a committed bi-national, eventually assessing him to be a ‘truthful witness’. His judges could understand that he did not want to fight against German relatives. The ultimate test the court came up with was what Ekke would do if approached by a German sailor from a sunken ship. His rather strange answer was that he would ask to be interned, giving them their cue. But Ekke also offered them his word of honor that if allowed his freedom he would never do anything against Australia’s interests.

On 12^th July 1940 my father was interned in Long Bay Penitentiary in Sydney, a section of which had been renamed Malabar Internment Camp. At the time it functioned as the initial reception centre for internees from all over the world. Ekke wrote an account of his arrest and transportation and smuggled it out to my mother in a box of the Capstan 333 cigarettes which they both smoked, the first of many such letters.

            14.7.1940

My consort of honor was a delight and my arrest and transportation a comedy. After I had seen first you and then Edgewater disappear I was brought back to reality in the first curve when I was almost suffocated by my collapsed mattress. From then on I fought a wild battle against death by suffocation till we arrived at the hotel just before the Harbor Bridge, where we stopped as agreed. There we started the night with a few drinks to celebrate my arrest. Then we went on to Aaron’s Exchange Hotel where we had a few more starters and then consumed toheroa soup, lobster mayonnaise and ice cream. We had some bottles of beer to go with that. Having gorged ourselves thus, we arose. But in the lounge my companions met friends and asked would I mind if we joined them for a bit. I was decent and said I didn’t mind and there we then continued to drink till nine. One of these friends was the comedian Lennie Lower, drunk as a lord and therefore somewhat disappointing as a ‘wise cracker’. In between, my escorts left me and I could move around the whole hotel freely and so was able to give you a ring. Eventually the older man came back and said that it was now time to put me to bed. Upon my enquiry, whether we shouldn’t take the other fellow along he said that he was unfortunately dead to the world. He couldn’t take much.

So we went back to the mattress in the car and off we drove to Long Bay at sixty miles an hour. Because of the tempo and the impaired sobriety of my chauffeur I hid behind my mattress like a coward. We lost our way a few times and three times I got out and asked passers-by, politely raising my hat: “Can you tell me how I can get to jail?” or “Can you tell me the quickest way to get to jail?” I have rarely seen people pull such funny faces. Eventually we arrived and after a lot of tooting the gate was opened. Then off we went up the long drive to the women’s prison for that is where we are accommodated. By now it was almost 10pm and the doorman and -woman gave us an earful because we were so late. I should have been taken to a city lockup overnight. Then, loaded up like a mule, I dragged my mattress, blankets, bag, coat etc. into the reception hall where I was ‘checked’.

           

The arresting detectives obviously trusted Ekke’s ‘word of honor’ and their own psychological instincts, enjoyed a prank and a boozy night and did not feel they needed to stick to the letter of the law; and though grumpy, the inconvenienced prison guards were obviously also ‘good sports’.

I have translated my father’s letters from internment because I think they are an important and unique document. They give a fair bit of detail about the process and experience of internment. But what I will focus on here is what they tell us about the mentality of Australians employed  in the ‘law and order’ sector during those war years. This mentality was most clearly visible in the early days when there was still a lot of interaction between guards and prisoners and quite a bit of room for improvisation.

We have all read about Japanese, Russian and Nazi prison camps and we know how convicts deported to Australia were treated.

British guards on board the Dunera with its civilian internees, mostly Jewish refugees, quite a few of them survivors from the sinking of the Arandora Star, behaved almost as abominably. Ekke heard their stories in Long Bay.[1]

Our asylum seeker camps today are not noted for their humanity either.

In contrast to these horror stories, the Australian ‘law and order’ culture as Ekke experienced it in 1940 was characterized largely by a combination of larrikinism and mateship. It was a culture found above all among returned soldiers, which many of the guards and policemen probably were. It implied  mutual trust based not on rules but on intuition, egalitarianism, comradely risk-taking and support in danger, a passion for fairness, a tolerance of disorder and a love of the comic. My father had encountered this culture in New Guinea and written about it, though without as yet warming to it or fully understanding it. It was a culture best expressed in the larrikin prank, which was typically not directed against people but against ’the system’, better, the latent inhumanity of systems and their proponents and enforcers. Another form this culture took was getting drunk together. That would lead to uninhibitedness, risk-taking, mutual vulnerability and consequently helpfulness and the abandonment of accepted standards of behavior as embodied in ‘the system’.

According to the historian  John Hirst, the roots of larrikan culture, which some have seen as lying in convict insubordination, or the Irish rebel spirit, or the attitudes of outback workers [2], are more likely to have been derived from the uprooted poor who flocked to the industrial cities of England in the 18^th and 19^th centuries and from there to Australia where they thrived. He writes:

The larrikin spirit is still a mysterious phenomenon. It was not the defiance of the damaged and excluded; it was the boldness that came from self-confidence, of a young man who would not be confined. A prosperous working class, free of old-world condescension, had spawned in its native-born youth this baroque display of independence. (63)[3]

Whatever its origins, larrikinism in its original form was not necessarily endearing. Melissa Bellanta[4] has documented it predominantly as bad, even very bad behavior. But its WWI melding with mateship raised its ethical status and with the myth of the digger its national prestige, allowing it to establish itself as the national character. Les Murray (as quoted by Hirst) writes of it:

The ability to laugh at venerated things, and awesome and deadly things, may, in time, prove to be one of Australia’s great gifts to mankind. It is, at bottom, a spiritual laughter, a mirth that puts tragedy, futility and vanity alike in their place. [5]

Medieval European countries had related traditions in their carnivals which would make an interesting comparison.  

By New Year’s Eve 1940, Ekke and some of his friends had been in Long Bay off and on for almost six months. Alone or with his friends Ekke had supported distraught or worried new arrivals, made peace among fighting Germans and worked on taking the sting out of their anti-Semitism, mediated between Italians and Germans, helped the Boss to balance his books while his secretary was on holidays, shown an interest in the wider work of the prison by going to Mass there one Sunday, presented a series of evening talks, organized a fitting and moving Christmas celebration for the Germans and all in all, contributed substantially to keeping the prison on an even keel. That it was at this time by no means easy to run a camp well is shown by this report . On 29.11.40 Ekke writes:

What Janssen reports about Hay is not very nice. Dusty, without a green leaf, flies, disgusting toilet facilities and wild dissention among the Italians. It is supposed to be so bad that the camp leadership is in complete despair. The judges from the Advisory Committee were in Hay last weekend to inform themselves. The 20 or so Germans of course have no say amongst the 100 or so Italians and apart from that, there are also rows and disagreements among them.

So it is not surprising that one of the warders felt that thanks were due. What is interesting is that the form this acknowledgement took was again the prank, an egalitarian act of insubordination against ‘the system’ in which the consequences of discovery were likely to be quite as uncomfortable for the warder as for the prisoners. They were in it together. On New Year’s Eve Ekke writes:

I have just discovered that some fairy has softly, inaudibly pushed open the bolt of my little room. Through the peep-hole the eye of the fairy looked in and winked. A short military salute and everything was okay. – Later, after ten, when the lights are turned off, a dark figure will flit through the corridor with soft, soundless steps, will quietly push back three bolts in a well practiced manner, two further ghosts will quickly dart across the corridor and disappear just as quickly in No. 10 and then sit together by candlelight whispering softly and listening as the great wheel of time flings around on its axis to begin a new cycle, a new year. And then the four ghosts will raise their mugs with ‘tea’, will spread a little ‘jam’ on their bread and drink to the fulfillment of all the wishes that are in their hearts. [The tea and jam brought in regularly by Irmhild consisted largely of port-wine, also bending the rules.] Later they will then make a similar noiseless and spectral disappearance, three bolts will again be shut noiselessly while the fourth bolt, which is mine, will stay open. In the morning Rossi’s cell No.1 will be opened first, he will then run like a whirlwind to No. 9 and pretend to open the bolt and (hopefully) no one will notice. The four specters are Rossi, Brose, Janssen and I [incidentally, all Australian Germans familiar with the culture of the larrikin] We won’t say any more about the fairy because they should not really exist in prisons.[...]

And next morning:

Even though the above story was written two hours earlier, it all happened just as expected. Only, when I was locking up Rossi two warders from the women’s prison who were just wishing each other a happy New Year caught sight of me and one of them called out really loudly: ‘What are you doing out of bed!’ – And then when I put my finger to my mouth the other one said: ‘Happy New Year anyway!’ I waved my thanks to her and crept back crouched under the peepholes of the cells. She must have told the nice warder in the morning, for he came in at six and quietly closed the bolt to my cell. ‘No one noticed!’ But we had fun and our mugs with your ‘miserable tea’ were raised to the health of all our loved ones and a speedy reunion.

This prohibited alcoholic tea was also shared with the guards on the long cold train-trips between Orange and Sydney. Such transgressive acts served to demonstrate that the artificial barriers ‘the system’ erected would never be allowed to come between men.

As to be expected, larrikinism tended to be a response to bureaucratic ‘wowserism’ embodied by the elite, here above all Victoria Barracks, and this also existed. Ekke writes:

29.11.40 A new regulation from Victoria Barracks has forbidden all calls, even ones made by the Boss. Seidel had no way of informing his wife [of his departure] to give her the opportunity to come one last time to see him […]. That was messed up for us by L. whose bride […] is supposed to have claimed at Victoria Barracks that she had talked on the phone with L., which wasn’t true at all. [The obvious lesson to be learned: Never try to pull a bureaucrat’s leg! ]

On one of Ekke’s many trips from Orange back to Sydney his warrant was lost with the result that he was kept at the Bourke Street Military Prison, a lock-up for drunk and disorderly soldiers, for nine days till it turned up again. Tolerance of disorder is, as we have said, intrinsic to larrikinism. Ekke writes:

21.8.40 There was argument about me because my warrant had been lost.  The commandant didn’t want to take me in without a warrant and the soldiers wanted to be rid of me and go home to their wives. I was, so to speak, a nuisance [...] Unfortunately, the sergeant eventually won and the prison reluctantly took me with a lot of cursing about bloody this and bloody that […]. Then I had to empty my pockets and the suitcase and everything was recorded in a ridiculously round-about way: 1 mirror, 1 sock, 1 sock, 1 shoe, […] 1 plate of chocolate, 1 sock etc., […] I was allowed to take along cigarettes, matches and a handkerchief. [..] Then the locks, which you already know, creaked and with a rough “Get in there!” I was pushed into the monkey’s cage to join my two Axis-brothers. […] The furniture consisted of a completely blocked toilet. (Note the full stop after ‘toilet’.) For that was all there was if you don’t want to count a lot of dirt and us three fellows with the furniture. The cell had bars as big as a door leading to the corridor. On these bars hung the captured soldiers from last night; all unkempt, alcoholic, still drunken, bashed, extremely dirty and with unshaven faces, swollen up from recent fights, uniforms messy, crushed and with vomit, and hats on their heads as crooked and crazy as only an Australian can wear a hat. There was a strong stench of beer and sick. You can see why I called it a monkey’s cage.  – Then the begging for cigarettes started. We gave them a few and in return one of them brought a ‘glass of water’ in an unrinsed jam tin and another one (he was still quite drunk but meant well) brought something to read, being the label from that tin: ‘Gardner Blue Jam’. Suddenly a fine strong voice from the neighboring cell could be heard and my two Italians excitedly recognized an aria from a Verdi opera.  Then the voice broke off and soon a nice looking young soldier appeared at the bars with a roll of toilet paper. On it was written in Italian: ‘We have been here for four days now. Have not seen the sky or washed our faces in all that time. Don’t speak English.’ And two signatures. The section was torn off and quickly thrown into the blocked toilet, for which it had of course been intended in the first place. Then the soldier, Don he was called, passed in a pencil (the one I am writing with now) and we wrote a reply: ‘Buck up, you’ll soon go to Long Bay to your fellow countrymen.’ Then the toilet roll was taken back again and as an expression of gratitude and delight the Verdi aria resounded once again.

Ekke comments admiringly on the good humored professionalism of the Military Police at Bourke Street.

Instances of chaos and inefficiency abound in Ekke’s early letters but in a benign setting they are the stuff of comedy rather than anger and frustration. From Liverpool camp he wrote:

1.4.41 […] there is not much to write about here other than that we are daily annoyed by the fact that we have only three brooms for the entire camp, one ax with an intact handle and one with a broken one. The pitchforks are about as large and useful as dining forks and the shovels as teaspoons. You get annoyed, then you say shit, and that’s the end of it.

When Ekke arrived at the Tatura men’s camp two months later, things were quite different: ‘This is a beautiful camp, well laid out and efficiently run’, he writes. Here there would be little contact between guards and the internees who ran the camp. Letters were now religiously censored. But it is to be assumed that in Tatura too the benign spirit of larrikinism cum mateship was always only just below the surface, balancing the wouserism of the elite and taking the sting out of the hostility of the rigid patriots. That, I believe, was the secret behind the running of the Australian camps. But as the Cowra breakout  showed, it worked well only on the assumption of a basic cooperativeness between human beings with similar values. Ekke had had experience of larrikinism and mateship and could signal that he would be receptive.

---

[1] Patkin, Benzion The Duneera Internees, Cassell: Australia, 1979.

[2] Ward, Russel  The Australian Legend.  Oxford University Press: Melbouren, 1958.

[3] Hirst, John Looking for Australia.  Black Inc.: Melbourne, 2010

[4] Bellanta, Melissa  Larrikins. A History.  Queensland University Press: St. Lucia, 2012.

[5] Hirst, John op. cit. p. 71, from Les Murray ‘Some religious stuff I know about Australia’ in The Quality of Sprawl. Thoughts about Australia. Duffy & Snellgrove, 1999

Uncensored Letters from Malabar Internment Camp, Long Bay

 Ekkehard Beinssen’s Uncensored Letters from Malabar Internment Camp, Long Bay, July 1940 to February 1941

Translated from the German by Silke Beinssen-Hesse

14.7.1940

My dear, good and brave Haseli! I am only allowed to write two letters of 120 words a week which have to go through the censor. Perhaps I’ll be able to get this one to you on Monday. We are well and taking it all in good stead so you don’t need to worry about me. Now I’ll report chronologically. I hope you can read my writing. I am writing in my cell where there is a pleasantly muted light which wouldn’t even hurt Holm’s eyes.

So: My consort of honor was a delight and my arrest and transportation a comedy. After I had seen first you and then Edgewater disappear I was brought back to reality in the first curve when I was almost suffocated by my collapsed mattress. From then on I fought a wild battle against death by suffocation till we arrived at the hotel just before the Harbor Bridge, where we stopped as agreed. There we started the night with a few drinks to celebrate my arrest. Then we went on to Aaron’s Exchange Hotel where we had a few more starters and then consumed toheroa soup, lobster mayonnaise and ice cream. We had some bottles of beer to go with that. Having gorged ourselves thus, we arose. But in the lounge my companions met friends and asked would I mind if we joined them for a bit. I was decent and said I didn’t mind and there we then continued to drink till nine. One of these friends was the comedian Lennie Lower, drunk as a lord and therefore somewhat disappointing as a ‘wise cracker’. In between, my escorts left me and I could move around the whole hotel freely and so was able to give you a ring. Eventually the older man came back and said that it was now time to put me to bed. Upon my inquiry, whether we shouldn’t take the other fellow along he said that he was unfortunately dead to the world. He couldn’t take much.

So we went back to the mattress in the car and off we drove to Long Bay at sixty miles an hour. Because of the tempo and the impaired sobriety of my chauffeur I hid behind my mattress like a coward. We lost our way a few times and three times I got out and asked passers-by, politely raising my hat: “Can you tell me how I can get to jail?” or “Can you tell me the quickest way to get to jail?” I have rarely seen people pull such funny faces. Eventually we arrived and after a lot of tooting the gate was opened. Then off we went up the long drive to the women’s prison for that is where we are accommodated. By now it was almost 10pm and the doorman and -woman gave us an earful because we were so late. I should have been taken to a city lockup overnight. Then, loaded up like a mule, I dragged my mattress, blankets, bag, coat etc. into the reception hall where I was ‘checked’. I could take along everything except money, pencil and pen. I was allowed to keep the books after my ‘friend’ had declared that I was a learned man and the books were purely scientific. I was given a receipt for my valuables and the detective one for me and that done, I was ‘in’. Then I loaded myself up with my possessions once more and strolled off to one of the many prison buildings in the company of a policeman. The gate was opened with much rattling of keys and clanking of iron, cell no 26 was unlocked, and I was given two minutes to make my bed and unpack. Then the light was turned off. There I remained by myself until seven in the morning.

Cell number 26 is two meters wide and three and half meters long. The four walls, half a meter thick, have been tastefully painted in shit-brown and grey-green. The window, two and a half meters from the floor, has two bars and opaque, slanted glass. The furniture consists of a hammock with a thin palliasse, a stool, two little corner shelves, a toilet bucket and a jug of water. Full stop. My predecessor had cut out newspaper advertisements of the Grace Brothers Furniture Department (armchairs, dream beds, tables and a wonderful bowl of fruit and other treats) and stuck them on the wall. Above them is written ‘The Ideal Room’.

Daily routine: At seven line up with your buckets, march off to the disposal place, then wash outside in bowls. At seven thirty in single file to the kitchen. Breakfast consists of porridge with lumps, a loaf of white bread, a tin mug with weak tea, four ounces of brown sugar. Full stop. Then we are locked into our one-man cells again to eat so that we don’t fight each other for these treasures. Then return of cutlery etc. and off into the yard which is then also locked. This is as large as our back lawn up to the garden shed. There we stay till twelve. Then off to get lunch. Lunch consists of mutton, gravy, pumpkin, a small potato and tea. Then we are locked up again for one and a half hours. Then back into the yard till three thirty. We get our dinner and then we are locked up again till seven in the morning. Dinner consists of a grey gruel soup and tea. At nine o’clock the light is turned off. We are allowed to have a hot bath every few days.

There are about fourteen Germans and sixteen Italians here. Twenty-one of these were recently brought down from Orange to fight their appeals in court. I only knew five of them but met a very nice chap called Koll, an engineer, who reminds me ridiculously of R. in looks and nature. The other Germans are mainly tradesmen, with the exception of two or three whose names I had heard. A response to my application to appeal can be expected in about six to eight days. But if it is approved, it is likely to take a few weeks before I come before the court and then a while longer before the doubtful order for release is signed. It is possible that I will go to Orange before that if a batch of fifty men has accumulated by then. The Italians here are not very exciting; but they are behaving themselves. We can take hot baths every few days. – I don’t find the whole business in the slightest difficult as long as I know that you are all well and that you are not worried on my behalf. The seventeen hours of solitary confinement can do everyone good.

The supervisors are all very decent. I am glad Holm has not turned up yet. I don’t want him to visit me. Mrs. Bergmann is very sick and asked for money. Tell Baker to send Honey with some money. – If this letter business works, then we will do that on every visiting day. The seventeen hours of ‘solitary confinement’ can do us all good. I don’t need anything except what I asked Moore to see to. And on Mondays we can order groceries. My regards to Mrs. T. and John and to my friend X [Xavier Herbert]. Many thanks that you were so brave and didn’t cry in front of the detectives. I hope there wasn’t a belated reaction. I love you …. Your Ekke

17.7.40  My poor dear Haseli! It was so lovely of you to come already on Monday to visit me. It was such a pleasure to see you. You really have it hard, you poor dear. First the worry about me and then the responsibility for the sick children and the worry about them. But I want to make it quite clear to you once again that there is really no need to worry about me. It sounds terrible if you say you are locked up alone in a cell for 17 hours. But it isn’t at all. I read, I can think about things deeply without interruption and if it gets too boring I learn sections of Zarathustra off by heart. So I’m 100% O.K. I received your books, three of them, the very same day and all food-stuff and smokes the next day. So it worked well. Many thanks, my Love. Now I won’t need anything for some time. – I am worried about the children. I would so love to be with you and help you. I hope it won’t be anything worse than bronchitis. Don’t save on taxis and costs of this kind when you come and if Hans can’t drive you always take a taxi. Money doesn’t matter at the moment. We have spent a lot on other people and can now spend some on ourselves, particularly as the bill for my whiskey is no longer an item. I am not missing alcohol. I found the photos of you, Gisela and the house in the cover of the book and was delighted. New people are arriving every day and it is to assumed that we will stay here for a few weeks more and be sent to Orange before our court cases. Germans whom I didn’t mention last time are: Otto Seidel, Liebesknecht [sic!], Griese . We don’t know the others. When new people come in we all have our eyes at the peep-holes. Like real ‘jail-birds’. If you want to come outside visiting hours tell the warder ‘that you must see your husband on business’. Then they have to let you in. Bring my cheque-book in and then I’ll sign a cheque pro forma. That should do. The others are doing the same. – We are allowed to write two official letters on Thursdays, but they take over a fortnight and no one here has yet received a letter. Those seem to take even longer. Always ring the office before you come and ask whether there is anything new. (Now I at least have a decent pencil. The paper is our toilet paper.) Moore hasn’t been here again. But I assume he will be coming today or tomorrow so that I can sign my ‘Objection’. At four o’clock in the afternoon we are locked up again so there is no sense in coming after 3.45pm, even ‘on business’. But please come only if you have a really good conscience about leaving the children. The children are now of greatest importance. Once they are well again everything is O.K. I think of you, Gisela and the children all the time and will be glad if you can report that everyone is well again. And don’t get upset if things don’t always work, as with the parcels on Monday. We had ten good months and can be grateful for that. – To start the car in the morning or if it hasn’t been driven for a while you have to pull out the choke about one and a quarter inch and then press the starter button without stepping on the gas. As soon as it starts, step on the gas firmly twice and then play with it. If the motor dies again repeat the procedure. And after a mile you can gradually push the choke right in again. (Every car has its idiosyncrasies.)  Bring me half a dozen new photos every time you come. I’d also like the one of you on the steps beside the frangipani, even though you don’t like it.

Give everyone my regards. And I hope the children get well quickly, for your sake too. And tell my friend [Xavier Herbert] if you see him to forget me ‘for the time being’ and that the best thing he can do for me is to finish his book quickly in just the way he feels it should be done. He isn’t to get any silly ideas. And regards to the other friend too. Three cheers for freedom and for his freedom.

And now we are going to be let out into the ‘pen’ in a minute, so I’ll finish. Many thousand kisses, your E.

(In Orange food and all else is supposed to be very good, all except sleeping arrangements.)

18.7.40 Mein liebes gutes Kerlchen! I know what it means for you to make the long trip from Collaroy to here every few days. And so I find it particularly lovely of you that you intend to come again tomorrow. But please come twice a week only if you are sure it is not too much. I can’t say how much I enjoy seeing you even if it is only for a short time. At least I see you that way, see that you are well and hear whether all is right at home. It was wonderful to hear last time that the children were better and it was nothing serious. It is now questionable whether we will be sent to Orange at all before our court cases come up. We are now 56. All the new ones are Italians except for two or three Germans we don’t know. Yesterday Fred, the ski teacher from Kosciusko arrived. Sadie and husband were talking about him. He is a nice chap for whom you could please also order some groceries tomorrow. I’ll write the things onto my list. He hasn’t got money here. – I am still well and beginning to feel quite at home in my cell. I have no problem with solitariness and to hear that the children are better again makes things still better. When you come next time, i.e. tomorrow, you will have to tell me what you have told the children about where I am and whether they are missing their father. Today a wave of optimism swept through the camp and everybody was sure that it won’t be long before we are released. I am still not particularly optimistic about being released. –  It was wonderful to see you again yesterday. Hamilton is a fine fellow, don’t you agree? I can’t really complain about anything here. The food is usually quite edible and you can buy extras. Anyone who can’t is supplied by the others. The warders are very decent and we are not cold either. Apart from that one has a sense of humor and can laugh about experiencing the life of a convict in spite of being an educated person who has committed no crime. Because new people are admitted every day we also hear a bit about what is going on in the world. In the beginning I tried to read out in the yard but it is impossible. So I now only read in my cell and have learnt quite a lot that is new about the Welteislehre [a now redundant theory of ice in outer space, particularly on the moon], details that I missed or didn’t understand properly at the first reading. I am more and more convinced that Hörbiger’s theory is in principle correct, even though there are inaccuracies and mistakes in its application.  I’ll finish for today and leave some room in case I remember something important. Now I’ll do a few exercises, read a few chapters of Zarathustra, and then go to bed with the Welteislehre. Regards to all in Collaroy and in the office. To you, Gisela and the children lots of kisses. Your Ekke.

I just had a look at the two photos of you. I do love you so very very much, Haseken, […]

20.7.40 […]  I am starting to feel like an ‘oldtimer’ and even my stomach has also got used to the new routine. The bucket is now only being used as a waste-paper-basket.

Did you run into Mr. Innes when you left on Friday? He was extremely nice and offered to do everything he could for me. He also said his house in Manly or ‘Banff’ were available to you. He didn’t know that you were allowed to stay on at ‘Edgewater’. In case you didn’t thank him, please ring him and say a few nice words. He is really a marvelous old fellow. I know that you don’t like telephoning but please do it all the same. –

Every day there are new faces. It seems that they are beginning to bring in all the naturalized Germans. I am still alone in my cell and hope to stay so. I have improved the light in my cell by putting my shaving mirror behind it as a reflector. […]

My cell mates are two flies and a little spider. The flies are well behaved as they are content with the honey in the wonderful flowers you brought along from the garden last time. The spider must have come in with the flowers. […]

I was glad to hear that so far everyone in Collaroy has been nice to you. In a few hours I’ll see you! A thousand greetings and kisses, your Ekke.

24.7.40  [Engl., official letter]

On Tuesday we were transferred from Long Bay to Orange and I suppose I will stay here till shortly before my case comes to be heard at the Court. Orange is paradise compared with Long Bay. I don’t expect you to come this weekend but when you come next week make sure, if possible, that I am still here, so that you won’t undertake the trip in vain. If you can’t manage to come, you know that it is quite alright. I would like you to bring or send along: sketchbook, broad carpenter’s pencil, rubber, soup-plate, flat plate, cup, knife etc., change of underclothing, photos of you and kids. When writing to me you must address your letters: E.B., Internment Camp Orange, c/o District Censor, 45 Reservoir Street, Sydney. I am thinking of you and the family such a lot, but better not bring the children up yet. Love to you all. Ekke

30.7.40  [Engl., official letter)

I was pleased to see you last weekend and hear from you that everybody is getting on so well. It is so tough to have to miss such a lot out of their lives but I can hardly await next Saturday, when you will bring along Silke and Uwe. I have got the suitcase with all the things. I am half through the Rhodes book and love it. It is a real treasure. I am studying hard at Russian and play a lot of chess in the evenings. I am getting good at it. My Russian teacher sends his regards and apologies for being so short last Sunday. He said you looked like 18 and wouldn’t believe we had three kids till I showed him their photos. He has a boy of 15 and loves children. Love and kisses to you all, Yours Ekke.

30.7.40 Orange.

My dear good Haseken! I wrote an official letter to you today with nothing in it. But maybe you’ll get some pleasure from it all the same. The weather is beautiful today. If it is like that on the coming weekend then Silke’s birthday should be a great success. I am looking forward like mad to you and the kids! – Don’t be annoyed that you were a bit agitated last time. It was a real revelation to me that you loved me so much and though in one way it is bad that it is so hard for you to be separated from me, it is also wonderful to know that it’s not easy for you and that you care so much. Even though I don’t show it, believe me, it is hard for me too to be separated. I try to fight against this ‘nostalgia’ and overcome it through working hard and keeping busy. But one thing is certain, that my love for you is quite young and fresh again and that I am in love with you as though I had only just fallen in love […]

1.8.40 Yesterday the rumor swept through the camp that we were to be sent to Tatura as early as 16^th August. But officially it is being denied by the Commandant. If that is the case, I will try if at all possible to be sent to Long Bay. There I can at least see you twice a week. Perhaps they will also leave those whose court cases have not yet come up here or in Long Bay. I really don’t want to go to Victoria. Funny. Up to now I was always a ‘lone wolf’; now I am so strongly attached to you and to the children, with whom I count my dear, good, sweet Gisela. – This evening we are to move into the new barracks. But it probably won’t be till tomorrow. We Long Bayists have formed a group of our own and invited von Drehnen, Hölterhoff and a second genuine Norwegian to join us. They are all decent people. They asked me to be group leader but I declined. Now it is Paul, the Reichswehr soldier. It is a thankless task and I also prefer to use my time to read or to learn Russian. I am making good progress and am looking forward to getting the new grammar book. I haven’t done any drawing yet. That is due to the wonderful book you gave me. It is absolutely fascinating. What will interest my friend is that the first convict ships landed here at precisely the time that the constitution of the U.S.A. was ratified. I won’t elaborate on the connection. The days pass quickly here. So far I have always played chess in the evenings, with Bergmann, Meyer, Henry, Weissflog etc. But that is about to be curtailed since I would prefer to use the long evenings for learning Russian. I was delighted with the large photos of the children. If possible, I will hang them up in our new quarters. And if you have time, do see whether you can find the big one of yourself. As far as books go I would like: Die Gesetze der Fortpflanzung [The laws of inheritance] and Man the Unknown  (Carrell). Perhaps you can slip the German one into your coat pocket to save time. But don’t bring too many books since they are a nuisance when you have to move. You are coming the day after tomorrow! Hurrah! Lots of kisses, Your E.

6.8.40 My dear sweet Haseken! I hope you had a good drive back home. I can imagine that it would have been quite hard to start the car in the cold on Monday. In out huts the water was frozen 1cm thick in the basins. It was milder again tonight.

It was so wonderful to see you and the children on the weekend. Three weeks isn’t very long but I noticed that the children have developed. There’s been quite a change and they both look very well. They were really very well behaved. It is good that they don’t understand the significance of the barbed wire yet. Now they are probably going to pester you each weekend to be allowed to come along. They made a very good impression on everyone who saw them and my fatherly heart beat higher. And you looked so young and pretty again. I like your new hairdo. –  I met a very nice fellow called Heini, a seaman-stoker who jumped ship. A wonderful person who has known a lot of hardship. He can’t go back home for political reasons and has a wife and three children in Hamburg [...] His wife was to follow with the children but at the last minute she called it off so he has now lost his family as he can’t go back. Isn’t that a tragic fate. Next Sunday I’ll introduce him to you. You’ll like him. Yesterday five Italians are supposed to have been released. –  We have now made a submission to Victoria Barracks to be allowed to stay here. It probably won’t be of any use. When we voted whether the submission should be made, 25 actually voted to be sent to Tatura but by far the majority wanted to stay here. We don’t know anything definite about when the move was to be made.

7.7.40 We have just loaded wood and in doing so drove round on the truck a bit. It was a bit of a diversion. Then I sat in the sun in a less frequented spot and looked at all your photos. My dear family. Seven years ago there was only me […] – Now it’s time for lunch. In the afternoon 100 men are coming from Long Bay, among them 39 Germans. I hope some who I hope will remain free will not be among them. – The newest rumor now is that we are all going to Hay and none of us to Tatura. But it seems pretty certain that we will be leaving here in three weeks. – I am still enjoying Pacific Pageant and Russian is going very well; but it’s all really ‘make-believe’. The worst is that you lose so much time and miss so much of the children’s lives and the hours and days and experiences with you. Last night it was unusually cold and I was freezing for the first time. But I have worked out a way to prevent that happening again. During the day the weather has always been quite beautiful and at lunchtime today it was really quite warm.

8.8.40 The weather today is splendid. One could lie naked in the sun without feeling cold. My cold has almost gone. Yesterday afternoon 39 Germans arrived, most of them from New Guinea. Acquaintances: Furter (who financed our expedition with Ah Chi), Parkinson, the grandson of ‘Queen Emma’, Werner (Trude’s brother), Janke (the brother of the man whose wedding I attended) and the little missionary from Salamaua, (the successor of missionary Beier with whom I stayed while I was waiting for the steamer after my time in hospital). Others I do not know. There are a whole lot of Protestant missionaries and 7 Catholic who have stayed in LB. For the poor devils from the tropics in their light gear this feels like the North Pole. 60 Italians also arrived yesterday and a few ‘neutrals’. The family is gradually growing. –  Now I have to go to roll call. The day is constantly interrupted – roll call twice, room duty, reading the paper, Russian lessons, and I also have mess duty this week, setting the tables, serving, tidying up, eating yourself,  so you get little else done.  Setting the table for 195 men consists of sweeping the tables with a broom, then using your fingers to put a piece of bread, a piece of butter and one of cheese on every place and in the end sweeping the tables again. Sometimes the kitchen then gives you an extra treat, this evening for instance Beefsteak a la Tartar with a lot of pepper and onions. (The smell will have dissipated by Saturday.) I will be seeing you in two hours and am looking forward to it immensely. A thousand greetings and even more kisses, your E.

21.8.1940    Bourke Street Military Gaol.

You left less than half an hour ago and I am writing to you already. That was really wonderful today. I saw you for nearly two hours. […] I am so happy and grateful that I have such a lovely and ‘clean’ family. You become particularly aware of that when you see the physical and human filth that collects in this place. And it is easy to be in prison if you have a clean conscience and nothing to regret. Many of the depraved people who are brought here are in the main victims of their circumstances and education. Many could even now be raised out of their squalor if they were under the influence of a strong and wise person for a while. I was surprised that most of them have no conception of anything higher and more worthwhile than cheap plonk and low women. In the few days here I have listened to the stories of perhaps a hundred of them, for all of them came to my peep-hole and spoke to me as though I were one of them. –  But I wanted to tell you what has happened since I left Orange. At nine-thirty the entire crew of hut 2, led by a flute, accompanied me to the gate. Then the gate opened and bag, mattress and Ekke were loaded onto the back of a truck, together with two Italians and three soldiers with bayonets planted. The band played ‘Muss i denn’ and then the ‘doctor’ was cheered with three ‘hip, hip, hurrahs’. It was quite touching. Heini waved for quite some time as he saw ‘his only friend’ whom he had just found disappear again [..] At the station we waited for half an hour or longer looking like emigrants with our inelegant luggage, beside a greyhound who was being transported to the dog races and who in contrast to us howled pitifully. We were apparently the most interesting sight on the platform. We then got into a reserved carriage, the soldiers (a sergeant and two men) settled down on one side and we on the other. The two Italians slept nearly the whole way and the sergeant for half of it. I couldn’t sleep a wink and strangely enough wasn’t tired either. In Mount Victoria we had some tea (!) which tasted marvelous on that cold night and warmed us up. From then on I had a really good conversation with the very nice sergeant who started off a bit gruff but then increasingly, became himself. In Orange he had bidden a close and passionate farewell to two quite pretty girls, much to the envy of the two soldiers who didn’t have any. At the last kiss when the train was already departing his lips had become drawn out like chewing gum. In Sydney six soldiers (military police) armed with pistols etc. collected us and with now nine guards we drove off to the prison in Bourke Street. We were first served two fried eggs with bacon on plates that looked as though they had lain on a rubbish dump in the rain for two years. On their edges were the remains of other victuals not being served for breakfast, and the tea was in mugs that revealed a history similar to that of the plates. The tea itself was a peculiar consistency as though it had been made with starch or gelatine and when you had finished it there were tea leaves left in that sort of jelly. But we munched it and slurped it for there are circumstances when even the most elegant gentleman  can no longer ‘eat’ and ‘drink’. – One after the other the two Italians then disappeared behind the bars but there was an argument about me because  my warrant had been lost.  The commandant didn’t want to take me in without a warrant and the soldiers wanted to be rid of me and go home to their wives. I was, so to speak, a nuisance and ‘unpopular’. [...] Unfortunately, the sergeant eventually won and the prison reluctantly took me with a lot of cursing about bloody this and bloody that and bloody bastard. Then I had to empty my pockets and the suitcase and everything was recorded in a ridiculously round-about way: 1 mirror, 1 sock, 1 sock, 1 shoe, 1 shoe, 1 sock, 1 shoe, 1 sock, 1 plate of chocolate, 1 sock etc., everything individually and then I put my name to the document. I was allowed to take along cigarettes, matches and a handkerchief. [..] Then the locks, which you already know, creaked and with a rough ‘Get in there!’ I was pushed into the monkey’s cage to join my two Axis-brothers. – The cage was as large as our library. The furniture consisted of a completely blocked toilet. (Note the full stop after ‘toilet’.) For that was all there was if you don’t want to count a lot of dirt and us three fellows with the furniture. The cell had bars as big as a door leading to the corridor. On these bars hung the captured soldiers from last night; all unkempt, alcoholic, still drunken, bashed, extremely dirty and with unshaven faces, swollen up from recent fights, uniforms messy, crushed and with vomit, and hats on their heads as crooked and crazy as only an Australian can wear a hat. There was a strong stench of beer and sick. You can see why I called it a money’s cage.  – Then the begging for cigarettes started. We gave them a few and in return one of them brought a ‘glass of water’ in an unrinsed jam tin and another one (he was still quite drunk but meant well) brought something to read, being the label from that tin: “Gardner Blue Jam”. Suddenly a fine strong voice from the neighboring cell could be heard and my two Italians excitedly recognized an aria from a Verdi opera.  Then the voice broke off and soon a nice looking young soldier appeared at the bars with a roll of toilet paper. On it was written in Italian: ‘We have been here for four days now. Have not seen the sky or washed our faces in all that time. Don’t speak English.’ And two signatures. The section was torn off and quickly thrown into the blocked toilet, for which it had been intended in the first place. Then the soldier, Don was his name, passed in a pencil (the one I am writing with now) and we wrote a reply: ‘Buck up, you’ll soon go to Long Bay to your fellow countrymen.’ Then the toilet roll was taken back again and as an expression of gratitude and delight the Verdi aria resounded once again. – In the meantime we settled into our cell. I rolled up my old raincoat and offered it to one of the Italians who gratefully accepted it after some encouragement. I supported the wall with my shoulder in the good old Australian fashion. Then around lunchtime the locks creaked and the two Italians from next door appeared at the bars. They were rather dirty but happy to exchange a few words and then they had to wash. They were taken off to Long Bay before lunch. Then came our food. It was served on the morning’s unwashed plates and put on the floor in the middle of our cell. We slunk around the plates suspiciously and then decided it would be better not to eat anything. The plates also leaked and a little stream of gravy was slowly running across the floor into a corner. – All morning we had tried to get a broom and somebody to repair the toilet for we all had to go. Instead of the broom and the plumber a stick was passed through the bars around one o’clock and I tried to remove the blockage by stirring hard. Unfortunately the only result was that the stench got worse but the blockage remained. Finally we were taken to the cell in which I am now. It is as long as two men and as wide as one. The inventory is quite luxurious: a toilet, a bench, one mattress of sacking and straw, and blankets. Full stop. – In the evening around five, my two Italians left me. They were also being taken to Long Bay. When we were taken from the first cell to this one the dinner plates of the singer and his comrade were still on the floor. They had been polished clean as though the mice had been at them. You could have put the dry white bones of the mutton chops into your pocket as talismans against loss of appetite without dirtying your fingers. –  Before he went the older of the Italians (to whom I had offered my coat to sit on), called Panozzo, told me that he was descended from the Cimbri and that in the part of northern Italy that was ceded to Italy after the war there is a region where the only pure Cimbric tribes that still exist live on two plateaus, 1000 meters in height, on either side of the river Brenta. And even today these tribes speak the old Cimbric language. Unfortunately he himself no longer knew it. But he was very proud of his ancestry. He is exactly as old as I am and in December 1917 we faced each other on the Brenta, I in Primolano and he in San Marino. Now we were squatting together in a dim cell and again had the same destiny. Panozzo is built a bit like Brenn, also with a broad, thick-boned face and large deeply recessed eyes that always have an expression of wonder. The great battle of Asiago in which a terrible amount of blood flowed was conducted of all places on the two Cimbric plateaus and razed his home village to the ground. Deep snow and the inaccessibility of the area resulted in most of the dead not being found. After the war Panozzo then took on the job of  looking for these, collecting their dog-tags and burying them. He pursued this task from the end of the war to the end of 1921. In that period he and his helpers found and buried 56,000 dead. 250 alone were piled up in the cellar of his own house where they were laid when they fell because they could not be buried outside because it was winter and there was no ground that could be dug. – When he told me all that I was at first horrified. There was something eerie about being locked in a dusky cell with this person. I suddenly felt revolted by this man who had volunteered to become a grave digger for money. But then he went on to say that the work had seemed like a sacred trust to him. He described how he always carefully detached the dog-tag and how with his own hands he had lifted many who were only a miserable little pile of bones into the canvas bag and then buried them. [...] He is now 41 and he said that the dead, his dead, had now accompanied him throughout all his life and if he experienced something that was sad and difficult then he only had to think of his dead. Then he laughed and pointing to the cell said: ‘This isn’t hard, this is only annoying.’ And then the light in our cell was turned on from outside, the bolts squealed and Panozzo and his compatriot were moved to Long Bay; I stayed behind with the wealth of his story.

On Monday afternoon I then had the great pleasure of seeing you and telling the Commandant what I thought of his jail. It wasn’t very tactful of me to say that in your presence and I apologized next day through the peep-hole in my door. For the Captain inspects the respective nightly catch of drunkards and those who have been caught absent without leave every morning. That takes place in the corridor in front of my cell. To finish off he always pokes his nose into my peep-hole and says: ‘Alright?’ – I then answer: ‘Alright, Sir’, and with that my case is closed for the next twenty-four hours. – On Tuesday a German from Long Bay came to my cell for the afternoon. He was called Corall or something like that and was the tomato grower in Mona Vale who was the first to buy our peat-moss. That was a change in the monotony. In the morning Moore came and in the afternoon you, my darling. On Wednesday I was all alone and then we had the two beautiful hours together. On Tuesday two Italians came from Orange in the morning. One of them was taken off to Long Bay after a few hours while the other suffers from the same ailment as I do, namely that there is no warrant for him, and he is therefore still with me. I would prefer to be alone. He is a young, uninteresting fellow, speaks poor English so that you can hardly understand him and used to be a sales attendant in a fruit shop. – Today is already Friday and my case was supposed to go before the court today. But I have not heard anything yet. – Perhaps I will see you again today!? – The night before yesterday the catch was forty and last night similar. I have rarely experienced such a wild night. All completely drunk and there was a coughing and retching that I was nearly sick myself. In the morning you could then study faces. Many go out again next day but there are also some who have been here longer. One is our friend Don, a young soldier who borrowed a military vehicle for a joy-ride and was caught.  He is a nice bloke and every now and again a newspaper or something happens to drop through the peep-hole. Enough for today. More tomorrow. 1000 kisses, Your E.

24.8.40 My darling! You looked lovely today and were so bright. I was so glad because you looked a bit depressed last time. Even though it was a bit short it was good. The Sergeant said I had to disappear before the Boss came. The apples are beautiful. I have plenty of smokes, we get newspapers and there are no grounds for complaint. I haven’t been able to get the photos. –   Saturday night: A large catch. Among them ‘some good fighting specimens’. Irishmen of course. Eventually four M.P.s took them by all fours and threw them into a one-man cell where they amused themselves for the rest of the night with kicking the iron door till someone went and took off their boots. [..] I don’t envy the M.P.s their job. But I have to admire their professionalism and ‘efficiency’ in handling these fellows. – Spagettini, as I call him, seems to have already told me everything worth telling. They are now leaving the light in the cell on during the day so that you can at least see something without straining your eyes. Also very pleasing. We will gradually turn this prison into a hotel. This letter is a bit boring and colorless. I’ll try to write you an amusing one tomorrow. I am so looking forward to your coming today. Next time please bring along a writing pad. This is the last page of this pad. The next letters will be written on copy-book paper. I’ll try to do a drawing of Spagettini today. It will be a nice memento.

So, my Darling, enough for today. I love you and everyone at home so much and have to think of you all the time. Remain fond of me too. Many kisses and a firm and long embrace, Your E.

26.8.40 Sunday was fairly uneventful. I did quite a good drawing of my Italian and gained the admiration of all the inmates. They wanted me to draw them through the peep-hole but that was technically impossible. Were out in the orangutan cage for half an hour. – In the evening they came in swarms so that the late-comers were piled up like herrings in the corridor in front of our door. The noise was as to be expected. We are now allowed to buy newspapers which is nice. I won’t mind awaiting our departure to Tatura here. Spagettini (Taranto) is now learning German and pesters me terribly about pronunciation. Language-wise he is not very bright. But in other respects I can give him the support he needs and as a person he is very decent. All the same, I would rather be alone since I am not after company as such but stimulating company.

30.8.1940 My poor dear darling. What a terrible disappointment yesterday that I couldn’t come to the court in the afternoon. Unfortunately, the only sergeant who can’t stand me and who also spoilt our visiting hour the other day was on duty and when Picker and I wanted to take off with our soldier again at two o’clock he held us back roughly and impolitely, pushed us into our old cell and banged the door shut so violently that Picker got the fright of his life. There we sat till half past four and were then taken to Long Bay with old Mr. Schnell. I felt so sorry for you and I can really imagine your disappointment. I will never forget the spiteful and nasty face of the sergeant when he noticed my contained rage and disappointment. In the corridor there was the usual noise and Picker, who was there for only two and a half hours, couldn’t understand how I could have stood it for 10 days at 23 hours each. He really blossomed when we were picked up at four thirty. Here we are allowed to be together in the corridor till eight o’clock. Then we are locked into our cells and the light goes off. I read for quite a while by candle-light last night and it was really quite cozy. They have now drawn barbed wire around our house and in the corridor; that satisfies the international agreement whereby prisoners of war have to be kept behind barbed wire and must not be locked up. The doors of the cells are now bolted at night but no padlocks attached; that means we are not ‘locked up’, which doesn’t alter the fact that we can’t get out of our cells. But the policemen are, as always, very nice. We do not know when we will be moved from here and where to. – I have little hope that I will be let out on the basis of my interrogation. Unfortunately we have to accept that. But if I should be released with certain restrictions then we will all be hugely happy. Better not to get one’s hopes up too high only to be disappointed later. Perhaps it will all end sooner than we think. – Today I want to do a drawing of Panozzo if he is willing. But it will be difficult to get the sensitive and kindly expression on his otherwise coarse face. –  I feel so terribly sorry for you, my love, all the work and the responsibility has been piled onto you. But see to it that now that my court case is over you get Mrs. D. to help you. I love you so much and yearn to see you and the children again and also my dear Gisela. Stay fond of me and I know you will always be true to me. Your E.

2.9.40 My dear, sweet darling! What a wonderful surprise that you came after all today. I hadn’t expected you and so hadn’t ‘prepared’ for you either. When they called me I was just lying on the grass playing chess with my friend Panozzo. So the delight was particularly great. My love, in such moments I realize how incredibly fond I am of you, with all the vigor of youth, and that’s not because of the prison. This period of being apart is a bit like the time of our unofficial engagement when I was in America. I only have one thought and one wish to be back together with you again and I look forward to that time as only once before and that was when you were coming to me in Los Angeles. And now I am also looking forward to the children. Unfortunately, the time of my wait is less productive this time round, but I will now try to write even though it is hard to concentrate here and to find a corner where you are left in peace and not interrupted for a few minutes. In short, I love, love, love you. I am glad you liked the drawings of Panozzo and Taranto. I put a lot of effort into them and they were also created in a difficult situation, particularly that of Taranto in the poorly lit cell in Bourke Street Gaol. For me these two drawings in particular are a nice memento of a time that was certainly difficult but also positive in that I was faced with the problem of proving to myself that mind is master over matter and circumstances. What was important was to demonstrate that even in these circumstances you can be not only master of the situation but also master, mentally, of the people with whom you are imprisoned and those who are guarding you. It was a real pleasure and gratification to me that I succeeded in gaining control of  these somewhat inferior ‘fellow prisoners’, who started off being insolent and derisive but eventually looked on me with respect. The latter is also true of the guards with the exception of my ‘enemy’ whom I  probably annoy precisely because of my upright and unbroken stance. I was also glad that I could give support to little Taranto who is really quite a soft fellow. He would have gone mad if he had been alone in the cell, or certainly broken down. And I wouldn’t have missed the conversation  with Panozzo on the first afternoon in the dim cell for anything. For his work as grave-digger he had 2000 soldiers to help him. I forgot to mention that when I wrote that he had found 56000 dead in his sector and buried them, which of course would be technically impossible for an individual person. – I think when I get out, you and I will have a very rich life emotionally, on the assumption, of course, that you survive my first embrace. And our little Gisela will also need to watch out. The kiss for her will be of high caliber too. The children will come last and their salvation will be that I will already have expended most of my strength on you. Although our robust little Peter looks as though he could weather any onslaught. I am glad you are going to bring him in one day. I don’t think it will hurt him. He probably won’t recognize me and perhaps he won’t want to come on my arm at all. But that won’t worry me as it is only to be expected. Once I am back with you he will soon learn all that the concept Ekke entails. – I hope we will now succeed in remaining here in Long Bay. I really don’t want to go to Orange and certainly not to Tatura. I hope you have now also made it clear to Moore that it is my own wish to stay here. ‘I will put up with all the discomforts if only I can see you from time to time.’ Apart from that, prison is prison, no matter whether it is locks and bolts that confine you or barbed wire. And I can read, write and do the same sort of things here as there. By the way, we are now also behind barbed wire here. For the sake of appearances and to comply with the international convention they have now strung barbed wire inside the doors and outside in the yard in front of the walls and are calling our location ‘Malabar Internment Camp’. And if the doors are locked outside the wire too that’s none of our business. The doors of the cells are also bolted at 8pm but now no padlocks are attached. In this way they are honoring the convention.

3.9.40 We had just finished our dinner when we were told that all of us, with the exception of those still waiting for their interrogation, have to be ready and packed at 4.30am tomorrow morning and that we will be taken to Orange. I am absolutely furious for I am on the list too and apparently my, or rather Moore’s request to be allowed to stay here has been rejected. To top it off, we were immediately locked in our cells again and our peepholes were also closed. One nonsense after the other. The only good thing, and I am grateful for that, is that it’s Orange and not Tatura. In Orange I’ll talk to the Commandant right away so that I’m not suddenly moved on again. What a bloody shit! –   The flowers are still quite fresh. I won’t take them but leave them here with Picker instead. They would only wilt on the journey. But they gave a great deal of pleasure to me and everyone, day in, day out. I had also put up the large photos of you and the children so that particularly at night by candle light my cell looked quite homely and comfortable. –   There was a wild storm here yesterday and all the towers and locks rattled and the wind howled through the stone corridors and cells. You could also distinctly hear the sea roaring. And if I squinted at the flowers in their vase (a jam tin) next to my bed, I could imagine I was lying at home beside you and only had to get up and walk onto the veranda to see the raging sea. But since it was raining and storming and also uncomfortably cold I did not get up but stayed in bed. – Now I can’t see my little Peter on Friday either. I repeat: what a shit! – Otherwise all is well. Now my Dear, good night. Tomorrow we have to get up at four in the morning. A thousand good wishes, Your E.

4.9.40  My Dear! Now we are back in Orange. We were woken at 4am, rose, breakfasted, quickly packed up our miserable belongings and then stood in the corridor waiting till half past seven. Then we were loaded onto a bus, 26 of us, and were driven to the Mortuary railway station under heavy armed guard just the same as last time. At 9.30 the train then finally left. So five and a half hours for what could have been done in an hour and a half. On the journey I sat with Panozzo and Picker and we took it in turns to play one game of chess after the other. We had quite good sandwiches to eat but to drink only lemonade, no ‘tea’ like last time. Panozzo is really a fine person. He told me some more about his life. From the station at Orange we walked to the camp between two rows of soldiers with bayonets planted. There I was greeted with delight in the manner of a young puppy who has finally found his master again by my Bourke Street companion Spagettini Taranto. I am not sure whether it was more touching or funny. In all there are 36 Germans here and all the Italians. The latter are to be transferred to Hay in three or four weeks and it is probable that we won’t be sent to Tatura before then. In the meantime I’ll try to ‘pull some ropes’ that I’ll be sent to Long Bay. I do want to be able to see you now and again, and perhaps I’ll then be able to see little Peter some time too.  – We have just been told that the coming weekend is the last visiting day before we are transported off. That is, however, also only a rumor. Other more reliable sources say that we will be here for another three or four weeks. – I have just spoken to the Commandant and told him that in approximately a month I have to appear in court as a witness and that I should be sent to Long Bay if we are transported off before then to save the costs of returning me from Victoria to Sydney. I should only be sent to Tatura after the court case. He is going to fill out a request form. On the other hand, if I should be released I would have to go to Tatura after all since you cannot be discharged from Long Bay, but only from an internment camp. But I am not counting on being released in order not to be too disappointed as the case might be.

8.9.40  I am continuing this letter as a diary to give it to you some day when it might be permitted, that is when I’m freed, which I hope for but hardly believe. Two minutes before you came yesterday I had the definite feeling that you were going to turn up after all even though I hadn’t counted on it earlier. And what joy when you then appeared with the two children!! My dear, you go to so much trouble to make me happy, the only true happiness we can have here in the camp is to see you and the children. On Friday we were all extremely disappointed when we were informed that as a ‘punishment’ we would now only be able to see each other through the fence. Since Liebeskind is not a very skillful negotiator and also speaks a frightfully pure Saxon English, it was decided by all that I should lead the negotiations which I then did with the result that we can now at least see each other at tables. Yesterday I found it hard to see the children this way and to keep them away from my side, but today it was, in contrast, very nice and they were quite ‘lenient’. So I was able to hold my Silkelein and little Uwe-fellow on my arms and go ‘Heisedehchen’. Even though we didn’t get to speak to each other much, the Sunday was quite wonderful for me and I was able to see you. Just being close to you and being able to look you in the eyes is wonderful, like fresh dew falling on the soul. And even though it is hard to see you leave again, the image of you in your chic slacks, a very young looking mother walking off with the two children was so lovely and I am so proud of my family. – Today just after you left the rumor came through that all the Italians were to go to Hay before the 21^st and that none of us Germans were to go to Tatura but all of us to …..Randwick. Wouldn’t that be marvelous! But as I said there’s a lot of rumor-mongering here. You can only hope. I was so glad that you liked my friend Panozzo. I’ll have to do another better drawing of him. Your critique has kindled my ambition. He really is a fine person. –

11.9.40 On Monday it will be two months since I was interned. It already seems like an eternity that I’ve been away from you even though, considering the circumstances, I have seen you quite a few times. The poor fellows in Tatura have now been in for more than a year. I hope we won’t face a similar fate. – I hope I’ll have a chance to see my little Peter before I am taken to Tatura. I could almost say ‘meet him’ instead of ‘see him’ for he will have changed so much since I last saw him. – There are only a few reasonable people in my hut. The others are a terrible rabble. Young blokes without respect or consideration who still have to be taught the most basic rules of comradely behavior. Among the decent people are Picker, Langsch (with the fine head), Fischer, a well mannered but somewhat boring merchant, Zenker, a rather feminine but intelligent artist (painter and draftsman).  Eckhardt is a big disappointment; of amazing intellectual poverty and lack of interest. Among the rabble are Ewan von Müller, an illiterate and a ‘half-wit’, who has taken a special liking to me and formed an almost dog-like attachment. In Long Bay he offered to sweep my cell which I accepted with misgivings. When I then entered the cell unexpectedly I caught him opening and examining my suitcase obviously with the intention of stealing. He quickly flung the case closed and I pretended I hadn’t noticed. When he had finished sweeping he asked me for a cigarette because he had no money. I gave him a packet and said, when he thanked me, that we were here all mates and had to help everyone. He and I and all the others were now comrades. That flattered him so that from  then on he more or less made himself everyone’s servant and told me the entire history of his life, in confidence. He arrived in Australia when he was five, was brought up by stepparents and didn’t go to school. He has traveled through much of Australia on foot or by bike and worked on the railways as a fettler. In around 1926 he won £6000 in the Golden Casket lottery. He invested the entire amount in land and , as he says, the Jews (?) diddled him of it all. For six years during and after the last war he was in the Foreign Legion in Africa. For a reward of £1000 he then set fire to a house and shed for an insurance swindler and spent two years in Bathurst Jail for that. Upon release he was paid £500 of the promised £1000. His fortune is now £4/10/0 plus 5 shilling which I gave him. On top of that he has been in jail a number of times for theft since then. Here his behavior is impeccable and because I treat him as my equal, the others, who were initially prepared to treat him with contempt and disapproval, are doing so too. I think when he comes out he will look for an honest job and if he finds it, will probably stay honest too. So it is possible to do some positive things in a mixed company like that. I had my first row today when one of the ‘rabble’ started to run down Lahusen as a person and as a pastor in the most shameless manner. I ordered him to shut up since Lahusen was my friend and so superior to him that he as an insolent good-for-nothing had no right to criticize him. When he then became cheeky and continued I threatened to beat him up. When I got up off the bed to make good my threat, he stopped talking and apologized. Since then he has not mentioned the name again and has tried to get into my good books. There really are disgusting people around. As a human being, my ‘half-wit’ is infinitely superior. – Among the rabble there is also the ‘lice-man’ who has in the meantime got rid of his occupants. He is even more disgusting than the enemy of Lahusen. All these young fellows are amazingly egotistical and inconsiderate; I have rarely met the likes of them. But gradually we’ll straighten them out too.

13.9.40 Friday. The Commandant has just informed me that I have to go back to Long Bay the day after tomorrow, on Sunday. I am not at all sad about that because then I’ll be able to see you occasionally and little Peter too. Perhaps it can be arranged that I see Gisela briefly too, if you all came by car some time and then maybe you came in with Peter and Gisela afterwards by herself. But that’s only a suggestion and if it’s too difficult that is also fine. Last night we had strong winds and a storm and today it’s been raining heavily all day. It’s a blessing for the countryside but for us it means terrible mud outside and lumps of clay in the huts. – You will probably be informed today that I am coming so that you don’t come to Orange this weekend which you probably hadn’t intended to do anyway. But all the same, just to make sure, you are being very kindly informed. – These last nights I have had really good conversations with a Mr. Zenker, who is essentially a painter and draftsman and in his way a rather over-sensitive artist type. He made a miserable living in Sydney with German language lessons. He has written a substantial tome (I mean in dimensions) and will let me read it after the war: a philosophical work. I’ll be very interested. It hasn’t yet been published but has been written with the typewriter. But since he is a very intelligent and thoughtful person, I could imagine that it is worth reading and would be of value. At least our conversations were most stimulating. – He has the habit of snoring at night and when his neighbor suddenly woke him recently he almost died of fright and was ‘off his tucker’ and nervous all day. He is basically a theosophist and believes that the soul leaves the body at night; thus the fear of being suddenly woken.

15.9.40 I didn’t expect you at all yesterday. I was convinced that you wouldn’t be coming. And suddenly you appeared. That was absolutely marvelous! Unfortunately, it is however not possible for us to drive down together in the car. I tried again around the back way today. But nothing doing! So it will have to be the boring trip by train! But I’ll probably see you, little Peter and Gisela on Monday or Friday in Long Bay. If you think of the terrible things that are happening over in Europe, then little disappointments like this are nothing. What a blessing that I need not worry that you and the children could be bombed; and for you too, that I’m well and not in danger of my life or starving. Considering everything, we are relatively very lucky and what’s happening to us is nothing. But that doesn’t stop me from really wanting to come home to you. – And now I am looking forward so much to your coming this afternoon. My dear Love! Enough for today. Your Ekke.

16.9.40 Long Bay

Now I am back ‘at home’ in Long Bay. It’s like coming home! The trip was very nice and we had a good deal of ‘tea’ to drink to warm us up. At first the Sergeant was quite rough and stern and then very nice. In Sydney we were again collected by the Bourke Street M.P.s , unfortunately under the command of my ’enemy’. We two Germans and four Italians were then locked in my old cell (6pm) after we had first been subject to a thorough body search which consisted of looking for rum bottles or the like in our pockets. The inventory was again done in that round-about way. Around 9pm, after quite amusing exchanges with the captured soldiers and after we had been served a chop and onions for breakfast on literally shiny and absolutely new plates (I nearly fell over backwards with amazement) we were then transported to Long Bay by truck where I was greeted most heartily by all the policemen. There are about eight Italians here and Corall. In addition we have thirteen ‘refugees’ from England who were in Hay and were brought down here again a few days ago to work their way back to England on the ship on which they came out. But they have protested and will probably stay. These thirteen are all Jews, between sixteen and twenty years old [...] It isn’t clear yet what will become of them. The biggest joke is that a local Jewish business sent these fellows wind-jackets in a fit of generosity, for nothing of course, and all the jackets had swastikas embroidered on the sleeve (back to front by mistake). How did the Jewish business get those swastika jackets? [...] But in defense of the thirteen and as an honest reporter I do have to mention that they sent them back. The prison looks like a pigsty and their cells still worse. All of them speak German and it sounds very strange to hear them whistle the Florian Geyer song in these halls and not only that, also SA songs. The world is quite mad.

I have to stop now since I want to get ready for your visit and it is almost 2pm. Apart from that I didn’t sleep a wink last night. The next diary page will bring more about the thirteen and their story. Lots of love and 1000 kisses divided among all the family. Your Ekke.

17.9.40. I would have thought that since you didn’t come back from Orange till quite late you would come with little Peter on Friday. Then when Mr. Farmer (my nice policeman) said that you were there and Peter too, I nearly hit the roof for joy. By golly, Peter has made progress! He has become a real personality! And he’s beautiful with his coloring. He is more handsome than Uwe was  and has a completely different nature or personality. I say ‘different’ not ‘better’. I don’t want to make qualitative comparisons for they are both such strong and well defined characters that it’s quite amazing. I wouldn’t have thought two such similar little fellows could be so different. At the start I thought that Peter would be a different edition of Uwe. But yesterday it was obvious that Peter is something quite different and all on his own. I am incredibly proud of my children and no less of my beautiful and brave wife. All the policemen and Pantano (the Italian grandfather, one-time Anarchist and adventurer) said words of praise and admiration which almost made me blush. Perhaps you’ll bring Peter again before I have to go back to Orange. Who knows how long it will be till I see him again after that. – And I was so very delighted to see Gisela that I didn’t know what to talk to her about. The time was so short too. At most ten minutes. Gisela looked lovely and very healthy and fresh. -

Just after you left, our thirteen Jews were taken off. Rumor has it that the poor fellows have to go back on board ship as part of the crew to sail back to England. They were absolutely terrified and many of them were shaking all over. The Rabbi said: ‘This awful happening will take years from my life!’ In the case of the Rabbi this was probably an exaggeration. Some of the surnames of the fellows were amazing: Berliner, Friedländer, Elefant (no joke, or only insofar as he was a tiny fellow), Seide, Kallbaum, Paretzkin, Kobrak, Rosenstock, Kahn, Lewey (Levi). And all of them had grand Nordic first names like Wolfgang, Siegfried, Kurt etc. They spoke German among themselves but some had already learnt quite good English. All day they had busied themselves studying the telephone book and noting down the numbers of people who had the same name or the same name as people in the village from which they came; they expected the policemen to ring up these people for them, which of course didn’t happen. They were so dirty and unkempt that even the Italians claimed that the prison now not only smelt different, but actually stank. Here I have the advantage of a diminished sense of smell. A case where a disability is an advantage. In all, 3000 are supposed to have come on that boat. Of these about 800 are those rescued from the Arandora Star (among them also the son of the former German ambassador to Japan, His Excellency Solf), about 500 are Italians and 300 German merchant sailors. The remainder were refugees like the others (German Jews) though there were some Aryans among them too. [...] I can’t say that the time of my internment has been uninteresting.

I still have to tell you about Pandano. He is an intelligent and interesting fellow, 61 years of age. In his youth he was an anarchist and was condemned to six years hard labor and a $12000 fine because his newspaper attacked the tobacco monopoly in Argentina. But he fled the country without a passport and landed in South Africa without any problems, disguised as a Zulu Kaffir. He knows many famous people from the turn of the last century, like Clemenceau, Emil Zola, Count Kropotkin etc. and happened to be a journalist in Paris at the time of the Dreyfus Affair. Anyway, he is a fine type of person who is now of course older and more sedate and has abandoned anarchism. I suppose that was the result of having a family.

I had a bit of a talk to Pandano’s brother who is also here. He is quite different from the one you know who has a long head so you can see that he stems from the Norsemen who once sailed down the Volga into the Black Sea and finally founded colonies in Sicily and South Italy. For the Pandanos actually derive from them and traditionally they all still bear Nordic first names. Though the brother is also dark blond he is fatter and has a round head. He also had a strange life: as a young man in 1907 he was forcibly married to a girl and took off from the altar during the ceremony before saying yes. Friends were waiting in a car and he then fled to Germany and Austria with a false passport. He eventually migrated to Australia and in 1926 when he was on a visit to Italy he managed to achieve the annulment of his marriage which hadn’t really existed for 20 years. In 1932 he then won the lottery with ₤5000, like little Müller. But he did better at investing the money and is now a rich man. – He is not as appealing as his brother and now has a different wife and a married son. So that was Pandano II.   

18.9.40  Moore didn’t come yesterday but he has apparently made an appointment for this morning. The Clarkson matter is so complicated that it will be difficult to keep everything in my head since I’m not allowed to take the papers in. I will try to see if I can take them in for a day after all.  I can well imagine that Clarkson is responsible for my arrest in July so as to get out of payment commitments.

Yesterday another three Germans and about six Italians were delivered here. The Germans are unknown quantities. One of them arrived from Germany in the first month of the war. He is only now being interned. It is hard to make sense of the policy of arrests. There seems to be no system. I am amazed and still happy about Holm’s freedom. The new Germans are not very interesting.

20.9.40  I am expecting your visit any minute now so I will close. Our numbers grow by the day. Today a Wuppertaler came in, a simple fellow. I’ll tell you the rest by mouth. A thousand greetings and kisses, your Ekke.

22.9.40 My dear Haseli! I was really annoyed with myself afterwards that I told you so frankly on Friday that I was homesick and that I found the time in jail difficult. We are all homesick but we must not let that get us down. I hope it didn’t upset you when you went home. I’m quite O.K. again and you just saw me on one of those days  that will inevitably come every now and again. But you were looking so particularly sweet and lovely and it is no wonder then that my longing becomes great. But it is better like that than it would be if you didn’t look sweet. The day will come when the prison gates open and till then you just have to grit your teeth and ‘make the best of it’. I had also dreamed the night before that I had come home and since it was unfortunately only a dream the walls seemed even less attractive than usual to me in the morning. Now the beautiful flowers that you brought along stand in front of your picture and those of the children on my side shelf and it is looking quite homely, particularly as I am now using the dishcloths as tablecloths. – When you have a spare moment I would like you to get Mary to make a large photo of Peter, or rather just an enlargement of one of our Leika photos so that I can display my youngest too. Try and finish the film in the Leika as quickly as possible so that I can get some new pictures of the children again. I know you have a lot to do but perhaps you can spare a moment all the same. And have them developed and printed at Leika because the last prints from Harrington were no good. – I have spent the last days studying the Clarkson case and considering my statement in court. It is a damned complicated matter, particularly as there are so many dates and figures of quite similar shipments to memorize. I hope I’ll manage. By the way, the proceedings are open to the public and you can attend the session and listen. I am happy for you to be present when I give evidence too, it won’t bother me. Then we could perhaps see each other and have a talk before or after. As far as I can tell from the paper, the case will not be heard on Monday and probably only on Tuesday which is good insofar as it can be assumed that another transport will leave from here to Orange as our numbers have again grown to more than thirty. – A few days ago a German who knows Tommy came in and asked to send his regards. He is called Raitz and is also a Dr. rer. pol., so a ‘colleague’. He is quite nice but I have a similar suspicion in his case as I had with Duisberg, probably without foundation. The Koller brother has shown himself to be very nice and is a proper and decent fellow. A completely different person to his brother. The Leithold-Heini mixture is an engineer from Hardt’s Cement Works and his colleague arrived yesterday. An older, stout gentleman who looks like a bald lower middle class brother of Hindenburg. He would make a marvelous Santa Claus and also has the disposition of a Santa Claus. The man from Wuppertal is called Pronsdorf. I haven’t told him yet that you are from Elberfeld. He speaks 100% Barmish with all the mannerisms. (It’s a slight variant of Elberfeldish, in case you don’t know.) When he’s serious, I can hardly listen to him. It has the effect on me that Saxon has on you. He is not overloaded with wisdom. Should I ask him if he knows Mother, or better not?  We also have a genuine Kings Cross gangster here, an Italian. But up to now he has behaved very meekly. – With Koller I occasionally play chess and I beat him twice in three games. Koller would also prefer to stay here rather than go back to Orange because of the visits.

Moore was very nice when he was here last time. I feel sorry for the poor fellow. He is very worried about his daughter and everything affects his nerves.

Lunch is ready. I might write a bit more before closing this letter. A thousand loving thoughts, your Ekke.

24.9.40  Mein liebes Kerlchen! After you told me during your visit yesterday that the court-case had been postponed, Mayer came back from the court in the evening and said after you had spoken to him a man (according to the description presumably Baker) had arrived an hour later and said that I was to give my witness statement on Tuesday, which is today. So far I have heard nothing from here and presume that Baker didn’t yet have the latest information from Moore. The others have not left for Orange yet but it is assumed that they will disappear tomorrow morning.

Some time ago I told you that my little friend von Müller has a dog on which he lavishes all the love of which he is capable. The dog is the only creature in the world that he loves and that belongs to him. Before I left Orange I wrote a letter for him to the police sergeant who took the dog when he was arrested and asked where the dog was and who was looking after him. He received an answer but Mayer didn’t know what was in it. Anyway von Müller asked the Commandant whether he could have the dog sent to the camp. The answer was ‘no’. That upset him so much that he, who already had a bad cold, developed a high fever (probably pneumonia) and couldn’t be moved from his bed anymore; he had to be sent to hospital with his bed. I feel terribly sorry for the poor little fellow. – For our nice gentleman Commandant with whom I conferred at the time has left and the new one is supposed to be strict and unpleasant. I am sure the old one would have permitted it.

I would also like to compliment you and express my admiration  that you assisted at little Pudel’s operation in such a sensible and competent way. In my eyes you were very efficient and I am very proud of my Haseli. I feel sorry for poor Mrs. Pudel and I only hope that the little fellow will be right again soon. I hope you don’t run into problems because of the telephone call and the overnight stay. It really is a deplorable situation that I have to sit here inactive while you have so much to do and I could help you so well. I hope little Peter has had no bad effects from his fall. It probably was a light concussion if he vomited afterwards. And our poor little Uwe; I hope the worms will be got rid of without the unpleasant treatment in hospital. Worms are horribly unpleasant and stubborn beasts. I wish both you and myself that these will be the last ‘irregularities’ with the children for the time being.

I have tried but it has been impossible so far to concentrate on writing. You are constantly interrupted and your head is full of so many other things. I have also had to spend time on the Clarkson case and learn my statement which is full of dates, sums of money and transactions that are very similar so that they can easily be confused. So I have put aside my Arabian memories for the moment.

25.9.40 This morning at four o’clock the candidates for Orange were woken and they finally departed at eight. My cell and those of all who remained were locked in the meantime so that I could only say good bye to them through the peephole which is the size of  a five shilling piece. About 30 men went. Mayer, Corall and I and three Italians of the old guard stayed but yesterday and this morning so many more arrived that our company has again swelled to 25 or 30. Among them a German, unknown and insignificant.  After the others had left, the hall looked as though several garbage trucks had been tipped out there. I swept out my cell, then locked it and fled out into the fresh air while two criminals are trying to reduce their sentence by busily working away and cleaning.

It is a wonderful sunny day and I have just lain on the lawn for half an hour and closed my eyes. Then you can hear the larks singing, great flocks of them high up in the sky. That suddenly brought back the mood of my first nostalgic Weltschmerz when, in my ‘romantic period’, I lay on the edge of a grain field in Bayern with my eyes closed in just the same way. My heart had been full of poems and songs in which there was a sweet melancholy that made you sad. In spite of that, these were perhaps my richest and happiest years. And all the scents of the ripe wheat-field and the flowering meadows also came back. One is really amazingly receptive and impressionable as a young person. In those days your soul was like a harp that would start to sing at the slightest breeze. I hope our children will also be as impressionable and as rich of heart as we were then. That is something you can only inherit, never acquire. And this capacity for music of the soul is what makes people of German blood so rich and what, generally speaking, Australians lack and what makes them such sober people. This inheritance is what I was talking about when I stood before the judge and was interrogated about my education and that of my Australian children. And I think you can do quite a bit to open up the hearts of the children for the experience of such sensations. I think Uwe is going to be particularly susceptible to this. Through increasing rationality and the soberness of everyday life one loses a lot of this sensitivity as an adult. You still have experiences of this kind but more rarely. I am looking forward to the day when I can lie on the golf course with the children with the larks singing and the see murmuring and then I would like to listen to their little souls and hear the resonances in them. That day will come. That great, very great, even tremendous day of liberation! And you are fond of me, hugely fond and I am fond of you too and thus everything is good and I will be happy and content. – When the others left I ‘organized’ a prison mattress for myself so that I now have a palliasse and two mattresses lying on my hammock. You can see I’m spoiling myself.

26.9.40  Before I forget: Please bring me two writing pads on Monday, one with thin paper like this and one with many pages where the thickness of the paper doesn’t matter so much, but don’t make it too thick. Also an HB pencil, for this one is already tiny because I have used and sharpened it so much.  

The Italians are arriving in batches. We are already more than forty here. No more Germans have come. I hope they send the fellows off to Orange soon. Too much noise and too much spitting ‘for my liking’. Among the new arrivals is a father with his son and the father is worried about the son and the son about the father. I suggested to both that they give up their reciprocal worrying and then they might find it’s not so bad after all. They said they’d do that.

My cell is now quite cozy and at night after I have finished reading I put the candle in front of your picture and you look at me in such a lively way that it almost seems as though you were looking into the cell through a window. Then I say good night to you and blow out the candle. – You’ll be coming again tomorrow. I’ve been looking forward to it since Monday. I hope the news about the children and the other problems is good. Love Ekke.

29.9.40  Dear Haseken! I have copied out the beginning of the Arabian memories so that you can read through them and tell me next time whether you think it’s alright the way I’m doing it and whether I’ve hit the right tone. It is very difficult to work without any critique and I’d like to know at least whether the beginning is right. Please an honest and not a flattering critique. Perhaps you can read it to Gisela one of these evenings and then she can also express her views. If you think it’s more or less alright I’ll have the courage to go on. But it is extremely difficult to concentrate in this stable. – On Tuesday or Wednesday the surplus will go again; I hope I won’t be with them. -  

Today there is a wild storm. From the first floor of our villa we can see Maroubra Bay. The waves were splashing right up over the highest cliffs. I can imagine that at our place the sea would have run into the garden. I’d love to see the marvelous scene now from the veranda! I’m interested what you will report when you come tomorrow. I’m assuming you won’t bring little Peter if the weather stays like this and that would be right. – Today’s letter will only be short. I’m already looking forward to tomorrow. A thousand greetings and still more kisses,

Your Ekke.

6.10.40 That was really a surprise when you turned up with Xavier last Friday. You can tell him that I really appreciated that he visited me here in the prison and also that he didn’t express sentimental regrets but made positive suggestions ‘how to make the best of this time.’ I think he sees the danger for me in becoming only a ‘family man’, or rather that I might already be that. In that he is not entirely wrong and my task will be how I can combine ‘the other’ with the job of the ‘family man’. I am by no means clear about this and I am also not certain whether the famous farm in the south-west is the solution. It could be one solution but one could ask whether you shouldn’t set yourself higher goals. In other words: the problem still exists and will have to be solved during this period. It would also be really good if you could occasionally think about it so that we can talk about it during visits and exchange ideas. Of course you will have to see it from the point of view of the family since whatever happens, the family will always be the first consideration for me, however much the views of good old Xavier might differ. 

7.10.40  Today three Germans and an Italian arrived from Orange: Jakobsen, Griese and Liebeskind who all still have to go to their appeals. They had nothing good to report from Orange. Bruno Koller, the idiot, has become camp leader for the Germans in place of Liebeskind and instead of Janke whom Liebeskind recommended. The Commandant isn’t happy either and it is to be assumed that his reign will not last long. In addition, visitors now have to speak through a double wire fence and are no longer allowed into the camp. There has also been a fight between Bill the Cowboy and another ‘Australian’ called Schmidt. It is said that the camp will soon be sent off to Tatura. If so, then hopefully while we are still here. Perhaps I’ll try to put in a request to stay in Long Bay through Moore. But I don’t have high hopes that a request of that nature would be granted. -

Last night a hysterical woman in the building next door yelled and screamed and banged against the door with her stool and mug all night. She had a ‘brainstorm’ as the warders expressed themselves. That went on from seven in the evening till seven in the morning with one and a half hours respite. Nothing was done. It wasn’t that she was sick or in pain, she was just naughty and used ‘language’ that I have never yet heard from a woman. I would have liked to have screwed her neck.

Today in eight days is Peter’s birthday. Will you bring him in again for that? And I’d like to see the other two again too before I leave here, perhaps to go to Tatura for good. I’ll try and arrange that we will then again be given the room where we were with little Peter last time. I hope his teeth will soon have come through. And that Uwe is getting better makes me happy and relieves me.

And now it is only a few hours and I will see you again. Much love, my darling,

Your Ekke.

11.10.40 My dear Love! Unfortunately I can’t give you a new chapter of my Arabesques today because I don’t have one. I rewrote the Port Said chapter three times but it was never any good so that I tore it up each time. I also thought that I would have to go to court on Wednesday or today, which however wasn’t the case. Since I probably won’t find out till the morning, I always have to prepare the whole witness statement, of which I am by now sick to death. I have also drawn Mowinkel  and even though it is not a perfect likeness, I still think that it is a good sketch. I am also reading the books that P. sent me with a great deal of interest and have finished two of them. (That about Mrs. Lindberg and the one about Lawrence and Zionism.) Apart from that, Poinke lent me four interesting Kosmos books which I devoured. (about blood circulation, artificial pigments, life cycles and animal states and communities). Now I am assuming that the case will come up tomorrow, though I won’t be at all annoyed if it’s not till next week for next week the Germans will probably be sent off from Orange to Tatura. Here there is at least an opportunity for us to meet. Tatura is the next best thing to the South Pole. I am dreading Tatura and the long separation from you and the children and Gisela. – Our numbers have again grown to thirty. Only two new Germans, Jews. – It doesn’t matter that I haven’t gone on with my writing. As soon as the court case is over, my mind will be free to take it up again. – The news that the order has been accepted and will go through was very good and my delight in proportion to my prior disappointment. Give the office my regards and tell Baker how grateful I am to him and that I acknowledge how bravely he is carrying the banner of the firm. Come Christmas, there will again be worthwhile bonuses. I’ll see you again tomorrow and am already looking forward to that. I love, love, love you and have boundless trust in you in every respect. […] Your Ekke

12.10.40. Dear Haseken! The flowers in my cell are absolutely superb. I have made three vases of the bunch and every mealtime they beautify our rather sober table. Afterwards they are jealously brought back to my cell.

Today a new Norwegian came in, a very fine fellow, blond, tall and strong and young, like ‘Nordic man’ personified. He was the third officer on the Troja that now has a different captain and he refused to sail to England. For ten days he was held in Bourke Street Gaol just as I was a while ago and now he has arrived here. He is quite happy about it and the Polar Bear is glad because the two know each other from school in Norway. A pleasant change after the Jewish influx. That would be a man for Gisela if he gave up his profession as a sailor. Hm,hm! I can hear Gisela protesting: ‘Kindly leave that to me.’ Well, I was only suggesting ... On Tuesday or Wednesday everybody will leave. Williams tells me that I won’t be among them. – I have had a think about what you told me concerning the Arabesques. You are right and I will write in the first person from now on. The new Norwegian is called Mons Ree and is … don’t be too amazed … the secret fiancé of Eva, the captain’s daughter. They were going to marry as soon as he got back to Norway. So at the moment there is nothing doing. He comes from the well-known town of Lillehammer. I have promised him  to show him all the photos of Eva that we have, if you would be so good as to bring them along next time. Please remember because it will give him so much pleasure. So my marriage plans for Gisela have again been scuttled. But I’m still of the opinion that he would have been a fine husband for Gisela. The jelly was marvelous. I can only say ‘da capo’ and Poinke and the two Norwegians agree. Is it a lot of work? I am happy to do without the potato salad and mayonnaise as long as there is jelly. Hurrah for Haseli’s culinary talents and imagination! Much admiration all round. I am looking forward so much to Monday when the whole family will be there! And my little Peter will be a year old, already quite a little man with his own personality. On Monday morning I will be thinking of the exciting moment when he was about to be born. Maybe you could ring our good Sister Armstrong in the evening and congratulate her and also the other Sister whose name I have forgotten. I am sure they would appreciate that. What a good thing that we had made the decision  to have the birth at home otherwise Peter might have been a Sydney Harbor Bridge child too.

14.10.40 So my heartiest congratulations to you and Peter for his birthday. If he turns out as decent and smart as the other two I’ll be happy. And I have no doubt that he will. This afternoon I’ll be able to congratulate him myself. And I am also looking forward ever so much to the other two. – We have invented a new game with a tennis ball. We throw the ball against the wall and the opponent has to catch it. Scoring is as in tennis. My arm is quite lame today and I sweated gallons. Good exercise with a shower to follow. – I am still so delighted with our Norwegian. He admitted that he wasn’t engaged to Eva after all, had only seen her briefly and that they had liked each other but he would have preferred her light blonde. So my plans for Gisela are stirring again. It’s a shame I can’t show him off today. By the way, he was not on the Troya in those days. He knows Lerke very well and through him has heard quite a bit about Inge and knows her well from photos. So also bring a few photos of the trip with Inge. No new Germans have come in. With the Norwegian we are now twelve and make up a nice comradely group. I have done some more work on the Arabesques but it’s not ready to be copied out yet. Read quite a bit in Kosmos books, about vitamins etc. Mowinkel really liked ‘Kolun’ and read it in one sitting. The transport will probably not leave till Wednesday. But it’s not yet certain. A thousand greetings and kisses to all of you, your Ekke.

18.10.40 To my great pleasure Dr. Brose came back from Orange today and his case will come before the judge as early as today. He has written an excellent tract which he submitted with his appeal and which demonstrates how crazy and outrageous his internment is, which of course is the case. That is probably why he has been called up so quickly and out of turn. I am curious to hear what he will tell us this evening. Since writing about my laziness yesterday, I made an effort and wrote many pages of the Arabesques but it was all such banal and stylistically poor rubbish that I tore it all up again. I’m sorry, but that’s how things are. Inanity and ‘mental deteriorization’. (The word is not in Xavier’s dictionary.) Now I’m expecting you in an hour and will spruce myself up for you today. If the intellect doesn’t shine then at least the exterior must. – I love you ever so much. Your Ekke

17.10.40  My Darling! I’ll be seeing you again tomorrow and so I’ll quickly write something even though not much has happened.  On Wednesday morning the big contingent of fifty men took off for Orange again and since yesterday calm has set in again, or rather it took a whole morning to clean up the huge mess the fellows left behind. I haven’t got round to writing again since last week in spite of making a few attempts. The reason is probably a lack of energy and I am very annoyed about that. I am ‘fed up’ again and just can’t concentrate. A stiff brandy would do me good but unfortunately that can’t be had here. Still, I have read a great deal, but that’s nothing productive, just like playing chess and sport, if you can call what we do for exercise sport. I hope I’ll be able to tell you something positive next time. –  It was wonderful to see the children again last Monday and saying good-bye went without any problems. Peter, the birthday child, looked good and is really developing beautifully. Silke’s tenderness and affection were so sweet. I think she loves me very much, anyway more consciously than Uwe who was of course more interested in the surroundings etc. It was wonderful to see the little faces light up through the window when they recognized me.  The two of us didn’t have much time with each other but that will always be the case when the children are along. But we’ll be alone together tomorrow. Gisela looked sweet with her new hair-style. I think it suits her very well. And as stated, it’s much more practical for the swimming season. – Mons, the new Norwegian, whom I showed photos of you and the children,  said quite without my prompting that Gisela was his type and when he left he said: Give my regards to Gisela and tell her that I love her blond hair. (Delightful to hear for my match-making instincts.) He also left for Orange yesterday. Those still here are Meier, Liebeskind and I and four Italians, among them fat Pantano who left for Orange on Tuesday. I drew Meier but the resemblance is so poor that I won’t show it to you at all, even though I labored at it for a whole morning. The warders don’t know what to do with all their spare time now that there are so few people here and keep on coming and wanting to be entertained. The Boss came and borrowed some books today. It is a ridiculous waste of time for prisoners and guards and all for nothing. I just wish I had more energy to use all that time productively. I hope it’s just a phase of stagnation which will soon pass. Can you suggest a cure other than ‘pull yourself together’? If so, please bring it along next time. – I have the feeling that the war is going to end early next year. I hope so! – Perhaps more tomorrow. Meanwhile with all my love and much longing for you, Your Ekke.

20.10.40 My dear Darling! I have managed to fix my fountain pen and now you’ll be able to read my letters better. Being with you on Friday was marvelous. You looked so lovely again and were so merry and had so many stories to tell. It was a wonderful hour and I am looking forward to tomorrow like the thief ‘who got away with it’. –  Yesterday two Dutchmen arrived, apparently Dutch fascists, who happened to share a cell with Mons Ree, the Norwegian, for a few days before he came here. Both nice fellows, one of them very nice. Both are married in Holland with three children each. Aren’t we lucky that we are allowed to be together in the same town that is not being bombed. And Brose is so stimulating. We talk together most of the day and I am learning so much from him. He is really an extraordinarily intelligent fellow. I am now studying his tome on glands since I am really not in the mood for concentrating on writing at the moment. He said to me today: “You know practically more about glands than most of the doctors,” for it’s his experience that there’s hardly a local doctor who has any idea of the importance of the glands and how much can be achieved by treating them. He recommended giving Uwe vitamin C for his nails and Silke for her missing tooth. Or are you already doing that? It was his opinion that calcium alone may be of no use for Uwe for he may not be able to absorb it and may immediately eliminate it. That is why Vitamin C would be good. I will also ask him about the best place to buy it. Strangely enough, I have no inclination to read novels at the moment. I have begun the Blunck, read about a third, and though I think the book is excellent and I really like the style, I just can’t find the interest and peace of mind to continue reading it. It is just the same as with the Arabesques. In contrast, I have just consumed the scientific books of the Kosmos series and am knee-deep into Brose’s medical books. So I think I should not force myself to write or to read novels but simply follow the dictates of the moment and make the best of my current fascination with scientific studies because my interest is so strong that things stick in the mind whereas my thoughts constantly stray when I am reading e.g. Blunck. –

The Dutchmen were in Amsterdam for another three days after the invasion and had a lot of interesting things to tell. – Outside there’s another thunderstorm and since it is getting late and I want to read a bit more I’ll close for today. (‘Late’ is nine o’clock.) We’re becoming infantile again. –

With every new day our boss, Williams, is proving himself to be a really intelligent, educated and well-read man who has seen a lot of the world. He is ten times too good for the ridiculous position he has here. Unfortunately he doesn’t know enough politicians and is reputed to be a ‘reformer’. It’s a great shame. 1000 good wishes, E.

24.10.40 My Darling! Congratulations to you on the birth of our little Uwe. What I wrote to you ten days ago about Peter is even more valid for Uwe. What a terrible nerve-racking night that was and how I feared for your life and that of Uwe. And then all went well and now the little fellow has become a prize exemplar. It seems to have been an eternity ago and it’s only three years. In the meantime we were in Germany, there was the nerve-racking departure from there and then the war and little Peter’s birth. It is hard to believe that so much can be compressed into three years with all the wealth of joyful and challenging experiences. In view of the fact that we are all healthy and have got through these three years without injuries, my internment, though certainly unpleasant and unnecessary, is still a very minor evil. – There has been great excitement this week for yesterday nearly all the Germans from Orange and about thirty from Queensland arrived in Long Bay, stayed for the day and then left for Tatura on the evening train. Only a few have stayed in Orange, among them Henry, all people who were either sick, had pulled strings or still have to go to court. I was worried that I would have to leave too but it went all right and it can now be assumed that I will stay here for some time, even without a date in court. Landheld told me that I had been on the list together with Meier and Liebeskind but that we were eventually crossed off. All three of us are not sad about that. What a lot of excitement and commotion. But it was very nice to see the old faces again and I was especially glad that they were all so warm towards me and that I could have the feeling that I didn’t have a single enemy among them and limitless trust on the part of most. I felt like a father confessor. Nearly all of them sent their kindest regards to you, at least all those who knew you and had seen you, particularly Furter and Zenker. But you should have seen my room. Seven men stored their luggage there, three used it as a change-room (those were the clean ones who took a bath) and all seven used the floor as an ashtray and garbage bin. All the same it was nice. They then took it in turns to sleep on my bed. And the stores of butter, sugar, apples etc disappeared as though the rats had been at them. I was able to give Furter half a bottle filled with ‘tea’ and his delight was great. When they then took off around six we had to clean up for about half an hour. But as I said, it was marvelous. None of the poor fellows was very happy about having to go to Tatura. I had the opportunity to write short greetings to Leithold, Haggy, Bergmann, Heini, Reitmeier and Solti. The Queenslanders were quite a wild looking company, most of them simple people. One of them knew Father and Gerda from 1929, a young man by the name of Jäger. I gave Mons the photos of Eva. He has kept them. Then I showed him the photo of Gisela and the three children on which Uwe is being roughed up. He actually pinched it! He has already fallen in love with Gisela so I really couldn’t take it off him again! He sends his regards to both of you, even though he has not met you. The Polar Bear too, of course. The latter has definitely had a mental disturbance these last three weeks. He is not his old self and subject to fits of rage, so bad that you have to intervene. But he still thinks you are the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. Zenker did a drawing of me which I will give you. I think it’s good from the nose up but the mouth is wrong. I want you to frame it and put a narrow, light border around it. It is a nice memento of the time here. Zenker was delighted with the photos of Uwe and little Peter and then said that he had never seen a couple that were so well matched as you and I ‘from every aspect’. I would really love to see some of these fellows at our place in Collaroy  once the damned war is finally over. I am beginning to believe too that it won’t be all that long, perhaps till spring 1941. Last time you forgot after all to deposit money and I forgot to remind you. So I had to produce my 10 shilling in cash which I was officially not allowed to have and they were accepted with a malicious laugh. –   Today the two Dutchmen were told that they will be deported to Java by ship on Saturday. They are both very nice and we regret their going. As members of the Dutch NSP they run the risk of being interned again in Java. – Little von Müller behaved badly in Orange in my absence and has turned people against himself. He has also admitted that that isn’t his name but Major (first name) Davenport and that he is not a German at all. His passport was bought and doesn’t belong to him. He is a stupid idiot. I really gave him a piece of my mind and hope that he will now behave better. He also tried to embezzle money in Orange. It is strange how a person who has a really good chance to get back on the right track still prefers to risk the crooked one.  

Tomorrow I’ll see you again and that is marvelous. And on Monday both the children are coming and little Peter will mind the house. – Enough for today. Your E.

25.10.40 In the meantime only one ‘German’ has arrived, an unpleasant and pushy Jew, and a few Italians. Dr. Brose’s court case is still not over but he is certain that he will get out. His case is causing ripples as far as Canberra. He was arrested on the basis of three ludicrous slanders. He has to go back once more on Monday and then the decision will probably be made quickly. By the way, my name was also mentioned. I’ll be very sad if he leaves, although I certainly won’t begrudge him his good fortune.

Now I should get ready as you will be here in an hour. I’m going to shave too!

1000 greetings and kisses for you all. I still love you so very very much. Your Ekke

 27.10.40 My dear Haseli! Nothing much has happened in the few days since you were here on Friday. Two new Germans have arrived, both nice people previously unknown to us, a joiner from Darwin and a ship’s engineer.  Our Jew is daily getting on our nerves more. He is disgustingly pushy and prides himself on being a marvelous ‘raconteur’, boasting about his connections and his stupendous achievements and that of all those arrested he remained ‘coolest’. Which doesn’t stop him weeping bitter tears every now and again because they have dared to imprison him. Nietzsche says: One should get rid of beggars. You are annoyed when you give them something and annoyed when you don’t. The same is true in this case; you are annoyed if you give him your little finger because then he immediately grabs your whole hand but you also feel sorry for him. And we were such a homogeneous company without him. Maybe he’ll be sent to Orange with a few others on Wednesday.  It was hard to say good bye to our nice Dutchmen. They were both such decent, fresh lads. On Friday evening we celebrated with ‘tea’ and the fellows presented us with amazing gifts. I was given a silver cigarette case with an engraved map of Holland and the islands. We had practically nothing we could give them and so I had to promise to send them my book after the war, something I can only do if there has actually been a second edition. Both of them said that they had learnt more for their lives in those few days than in the last ten years, in particular in matters of human relations and especially comradeship. Dr. Brose and I were both amazed at the huge change that occurred in the fellows in such a short time, particularly in one of them. A few new Italians have rolled up again too. We’ll soon be back to 30. I am reading a lot in Brose’s medical texts and also the book about ice in space and on the moon, which has presented a whole lot of new ideas in that field. For physical exercise we occasionally play bowls with a children’s set. It’s fun and you actually move about quite a bit too. What is probably most stimulating are the one on one conversations with Brose; for if the Jew is with us he always wants to hold forth and doesn’t listen. He really is most irritating! – I was so glad to hear from you that Xavier is working hard and that he is making good progress. He definitely shouldn’t take a job. The ‘jam’ you made yourself tastes marvelous! And the flowers were unbelievably beautiful. Half of them are still alive but unfortunately they didn’t last as well as they did last time. Probably because of the heat. Bougainvillea, roses and hibiscus have wilted but all the others are still very beautiful. Tomorrow I’ll redo the vase. – Brose said on no account to have the children’s tonsils removed, not even partially. That was quite out of date and all the experts reject this operation. You can now treat tonsils, adenoids and such things quite simply with very diluted thyroid hormone injected into the bottom. He says, and that seems quite logical, that God hasn’t put tonsils into the body for nothing and that you can easily treat their functioning and disturbances with hormones. He’ll write down the prescription for me, but I would suggest that you wait and see whether he is released so that he can do the treatment himself. If necessary, Dr. Hay would do it according to his instructions. So we’ll wait.

As a farewell feast for the Dutchmen, Brose had a lobster brought in, as big as a calf. I have never seen such a monster. It could more than feed eight men. For breakfast we then each had half a grapefruit donated by you and in the evening everyone also had a fat Lloyd cigar. All that was missing to turn the feast into a symposium was the presence of you lovely women, and perhaps also a dinner suit. Coffee was donated by Liebeskind and the cake by the Jew. – I’ll make you a drawing of my cell, or rather two, one from the window side and one from the door side. I drew this as a memento for one of the Dutchmen and realized that it was damned difficult for the simple reason that there is so little in it and the perspectives are so strange. But you won’t get that before next Friday. Today I drew Liebeskind. The resemblance is good but it’s a bad drawing. Next time could you bring along the small drawing book that I gave back to you a while ago. I am enjoying the photos of the children every day anew, not to mention those of you. I’ll have another look at them now and then go to bed. It is probably close to ten o’clock and the candles are already burning down. Good night my sweet one. I love you. Your E. 

28.10.40  This morning Hölterhoff, Seidel and Wicke arrived from Orange. They say that the entire camp, including the remaining 16 Germans will be sent to Hay on Friday. Now it is a matter of staying put here for I certainly don’t want to go to Hay. The families of the three have already been informed that they are here. We are now eleven at the German table. – Please bring me the ivory miniature of my mother; I want to display it with the other pictures. – Brose is in court again today and it will probably be the crucial session. I hope he gets out. One would wish it for him and his clients. Poor Messey is in hospital in Orange and is, in Brose’s opinion, dying. Everything has been done to free him because of his illness but without success. It is really scandalous. How could the old man possibly harm the country? I don’t know whether Mrs. Messey knows how bad he is so don’t mention it if you should happen to meet her one day. – So: and now you will soon be here. How I’m looking forward to you. My love and good wishes to you all. Your E.

31.10.40  My Darling! I have asked Dr. Brose about the children’s worms and he said Beier had a very good treatment for them. It is called BUTOLAN and you can get it from Tommy along with directions. It is pills or something to be taken by mouth and it is supposed to work beautifully. – By the way, what I said last time about injections of thyroid extract for tonsil and adenoid problems was wrong. It is only suitable for adults.  The treatment for children is also from Beier and to be taken by mouth; Tommy can tell you what it is. Brose has forgotten the name. Beier have also put out a pamphlet for doctors concerning treatment of the tonsils with the Beier medication. Tommy should give you that too. That contains all the information and you don’t have to ask a doctor. –  What would you think if I got Moore to make the following submission. To release me to go home on parole and I will pay wages and provisions for a returned soldier to guard me. If necessary I won’t leave the enclosure of my garden. At least then I would be with you. What is your view? Williams thinks that they might do it. Not much has happened since Monday. Brose is still before the court and expected to be occupied there all day today. That is now six full days because of some ridiculous accusations. Only a few Italians have come in new (4 brothers, 1 father and 1 son-in-law) etc. and one young Viennese Jew. We are now 12 men at the German table. Tomorrow the remaining Germans from Orange are expected here (18 men) and there are rumors there will soon be another transport to Tatura. I hope I am not with them. The Madonna lily is as beautiful as on day one and another bud has opened up. The other two buds are preparing to open. Brose said he will ask his wife to send you the pamphlet about tonsils etc. (Tommy doesn’t have any) and after reading it you can get the necessary medications from him (his office). The medications come from England, not from Beier, as I had first understood. Incidentally, Brose’s case finished yesterday and before making a decision they are still waiting for a letter from New Zealand. Anyway, all accusations were dismissed as ludicrous and unsubstantiated so he is hopeful of being released. His disadvantage is that the B.M.A. is his enemy because of his cancer report. This morning Messey and Schmidt (the red-haired one) came down with a few Italians. Messey doesn’t look good but not as bad as I had expected either. The entire Orange camp with the remaining Germans (Henry too) will be sent to Hay today and those who still have to go to court will be fetched down from Hay und are then supposed to go to Tatura with us when the time comes. I don’t know what is going to happen with Henry and others. Among the Italians who arrived here today  is Rossi, the man from New Guinea and the friend of Panozzo. – I was able to see yesterday’s tornado beautifully from our second storey and I could also watch the water spout. A good example of the intrusion of course ice into the atmosphere. How did you experience it out in Collaroy? I haven’t finished drawing my cell yet as it was not possible yesterday due to the darkness during the thunderstorm. – I have finished the book about the moon and am still busily reading, or rather studying the biology books of Brose. – I am looking forward to your coming like mad. – Do you still love me? I love you enormously! Your E.

3.11.40  My dear Darling! It seemed to me that on Friday you were particularly tired and worn out and I only hope that you are not working too hard and overdoing it. Can’t you hire a help to do the cooking and the housework? And did you hear from Mrs. Bluett whether she is still looking for a nurse for little Peter? That should already be a big help. Please ring up Sister Gardiner or Armstrong. Perhaps they will know somebody. – Was there perhaps something that depressed you last time and that you preferred not to tell me? –  Presumably most people will go to Hay on Tuesday. The Major was here today and made up the list. I am definitely staying. Brose, Liebeskind, Meier and the new people from Orange too. Messey will probably go to hospital. He hasn’t got worse. – I am currently reading König Geiserich with great enjoyment. I started with Der Berg des Königs but Gertrud Bäumer’s style doesn’t appeal to me at all. After the first 100 pages I couldn’t go on. Blunck, in contrast, is a great pleasure, not only content-wise but even more stylistically. Can you bring me another book by Blunck? I have read Urvätersaga, Große Fahrt and the fairytales. Do we have other books by him? If not, then bring in Große Fahrt again. – I am waiting to hear from you tomorrow whether a) the vaccinations of the boys have shown reactions and b) whether Silke’s scratch has developed. You have to be careful with the dosing when you use sulfanilamide on children. – Brose and I are eating the good jelly by ourselves. It is too precious to pass around, particularly as they all have enough jams. The last version was the best, although it could be a little bit firmer. The stuff tastes marvelous! - Sally (our wonderful Jew) is on the way to ‘becoming mental’. I have never experienced such a ‘sensual type’. At ten in the morning he shakes with outrage, runs up and down with fists clenched like a mixture of a berserker, an idiot and an orangutan, sheds bitter, tremulous tears about nothing and at eleven he is the Olympian, the grand victor, superior, halcyon and serene because he has mastered – nothing. Brose and I are sitting in the cell talking and eating ‘jam’ when he rips open the door with the words ‘ Excuse me! Look at me! You have never seen me as nice as this! Just look!’ We look into the victorious shining face of a man who has just defeated all his enemies with a single stroke of his sword. ‘What has happened?’ we ask full of concern. ‘ I have just written a Drama! The best that was ever written.’ We congratulate him and express regret that we can’t celebrate this event appropriately. When we make a point of not enquiring about the contents he says: ‘That drama will never be written, it will be ... lived!’  ‘Is that so,’ we say maliciously, ‘ we thought you had just written a drama.’ ‘It is all there, all finished, here,’ and with that he points to his forehead with a thumb released from his armpit. ‘And do you know what the drama is called?’ – long, long, dramatic pause. – And then with frightening force and suddenness he hurls the word ‘Revenge!!!’ at us. And with that he freezes in the pose of the smiling, superior victor. Just as suddenly the pose is then given up and he is normal old Sally again. ‘Excuse me, I didn’t want to interrupt you,’ and then he disappears just as unexpectedly while Brose and I sit there with our mouths gaping. – But it’s impossible to describe it. A completely mad and extremely unpleasant cockerel who has a moist enunciation as well and heightens its effect by talking at very close range. Sally will be among the departing on Thursday and those of us who are staying will cross ourselves when he goes. – Excuse my writing but I had to give up my table as there are now so many people here. All the buds of the lily have opened and are still as fresh as on the first day. And their scent fills my cell, as though a beautiful woman had been here. But unfortunately it wasn’t you. Do you still love me. I love you more with every day if that is possible. My darling, how well we are suited to each other. Zenker is right. It is quite unthinkable that I could have been as happy with any other woman in every respect as with you. You were just the only one of the four or five billion women on this earth who was intended for me as wife, mother of my children and faithful comrade. ‘And to think that I picked you out of all those women!’ Hihi, I enjoy you so much! –

4.11.40  Now I’ll spruce myself up for you. Today I am going to give you a drawing of my cell (view from the window). I haven’t yet created the other view. It’s nothing special, just a memento of the ‘beautiful’ days here.

A thousand good wishes to you all. Your E.

7.11.40 Quite a lot has happened since you were here last. The transport which was organized for Hay on Monday was cancelled at the last moment, apparently because of lack of room in Hay. A new, nice young German tradesman has been brought in and a few Italians, among them the man who was shot in the Parramatta river and who has had his leg amputated. Another Italian, who recently had his arm amputated as the result of a car accident has also just arrived. Brose is expecting to go to court for the last time tomorrow, because the letter from New Zealand which they want to have before the verdict is pronounced will arrive today. Pantano won his case with flying colors and will presumably be released. Messey has been admitted to hospital ‘pending his release’. –    

Our Jew Sally has surpassed himself. Though he was so well accepted into our community in spite of his unpleasant and pushy personality he has managed to compile a long report in which he blackens all our names, and to give it to the Boss here for the purpose of passing it on to the CIB (Civil Investigation Branch). This report was the ‘Revenge’ drama that he announced a while ago, but it has only become a drama for him. We had suspected something like that for a while because we had frequently noticed that after certain conversations he would rush off to his room to take notes. I suppose the lie of the drama was invented to put us off track. On Tuesday morning the Boss called me into his office and asked me in confidence if I thought Sally was right in the head. I had to admit that there were definitely a few screws loose. Then the Boss said that he was of the opinion that he was ‘cuckoo’ and told me of the report he had received from Sally. The report was nasty but very unclear and confused. He assured me that it would not be sent on as he didn’t think the man was in his right mind. Would I observe him these coming days. At lunch on Tuesday when we had just finished eating he whispered to the Englishman: ‘Quickly tell the Boss. My food has been poisoned, I am beginning to fall asleep.’ Then he raced into his cell and threw himself on his bed. Of course that was nonsense since he himself had chosen his bowl from the 60 on offer. Shortly after, the door opened and he called me into his cell. Would I do him a favor and call the Boss since he was sooo tired and had to tell him something important. In the morning he had committed the indiscretion of telling the Englishman about his report so that I could ask him about it without betraying the confidence of the Boss. I did that and after a stern interrogation in which he contradicted himself I caught him out and he had to admit that he had written the report and also handed it in. I then told him what I thought of him, that he had completely lost his honor and that he was just a low little informer who wanted to get off at our expense with invented accusations. He jumped up from the bed (we were alone in the cell) and wanted to grab my throat. When I didn’t move but just looked at him sternly he became afraid and dropped his hands. Then he cried that he had done it only for patriotic and not for selfish reasons ‘for I have discovered the soul of this country and had to do this for its security.’ I told him that I wouldn’t even give him the benefit of the doubt but despised him and would warn the others about him. When I then told the story at the table that night the majority wanted to beat him up immediately (he himself didn’t come to the table) and Dr. Brose and I had difficulty persuading them not to do it and instead to punish him by showing him our contempt and ignoring him. In my mind’s eye I could see the headlines in Smith’s Weekly: ‘Germans beat up Jew in jail’, or something like that and we would also have turned him into a martyr. All Wednesday he ran backwards and forwards like a madman, lay on the lawn and groaned, wept from time to time, and actually acted the madman but only when the warders were looking. He turned in circles, pretended to have fisticuffs with the wall and in the evening he lay in his cell and mimed being dead so well that we became worried and had to watch him for a considerable time to determine that he was only acting. In the evening the warder, who had watched the strange behavior, said if he became raving mad we were to lock him in his cell and push the bolt closed. However that didn’t happen; he pretended to be dead till we were locked in at 8pm. This morning he tried to make friends with us again by dashing out of his cell, throwing butter and sugar on the table and dashing out again just as quickly. Someone put the things back in front of his door. Then, in despair, he approached Liebeskind when four of us were standing together. L. only said: ‘Go away, you dirty pig.’ Thereupon he screamed: ‘Then hit me, why don’t you.’ ‘That is probably what you would like,’ said Liebeskind. ‘I would defile myself if I touched you.’ He [Sally] then ran off limping.  This morning the Boss sent for Brose and me and expressed the opinion that he was in actual fact mad. ‘I have seen many cases like him. He is running true to form.’ At lunchtime he was then questioned by a doctor for an hour and probably threatened with being locked in an observation cell if he continued to act up this way. Since then he has been behaving quite normally, particularly as he has found an Italian to talk to who hasn’t been informed.  I am interested to see how his drama will now develop further. The outrage among our people was immense, particularly as nothing is said here that could be in any way incriminating. He must have invented it all. To buy freedom for himself he thinks nothing of blackening our names with invented stories and putting at risk the freedom and happiness of our families, when all of us are trying to get out of here. He is certainly ‘mentally unbalanced’ but I don’t think he is mad and believe that he is responsible for his mean action.

The lilies that Silke gave me lasted till today and two are still quite fresh. Do we have more in the garden? In the evening with the candle lit they throw big beautiful shadows onto the wall and I then lie as in the garden of a silhouette maker. The bean salad was absolutely super-good! The best we have had here, except perhaps the ‘jam’. Dr Brose asked me to tell you that upon eating it he had dreamed of beautiful women all night

and urgently wants the recipe of this ‘harmony-salad’. Though I also thought it was a superb dish, I only had wonderful dreams of one beautiful woman in the night and that was you. It was certainly worth your labor and that has been recognized. – I finished reading König Geiserich. It is one of the most beautiful books I have read. Its style is good and very clear and the parallel with modern times cannot be ignored. The strength of these fellows lay in their strict morality and in their faith. Amazing person, this Geiserich. – Brose is now reading it. – Today’s afternoon was dedicated to sport and I had a really good work-out and am wonderfully tired this evening. – And tomorrow I’ll see you again. What joy!

9.11.40 My dear Haseken! Twenty-two years ago today the Revolution broke out in Germany. What a hard road the German people have walked since then. And who would have believed that such a growing in strength would have been possible in such a short time. It is worth thinking about. I won’t write any more. The spirit of the Vandals. You know what I mean. That inheritance is still in the blood. These Vandals! On Sunday, when you come, it will be Armistice Day, the 11/11/1918 at 11 in the morning. Perhaps the great experience of my life. When will the 11/11 in this war come? – I was called into the office by the Boss this morning. The Secretary is on leave and he couldn’t get clear with the books. £9 were missing. I was to help him. After half an hour I had found the mistake, a hidden accounting error. He was very happy and grateful and I was very proud since I had never been particularly good at bookkeeping and my five-finger on the head counting technique is most inadequate. That took till 4.30pm and the others, who had already been locked in the building, were starting to think I had gone home. When I did return Seidel had prepared a festive meal of salad, ham, sausage, appetizers and coffee (real and strong) and had set a ‘private’ table for Brose, himself, Wicke and me in Brose’s ‘flat’. After dinner, which couldn’t have been better and healthier in the Hotel Australia, there was ‘jam’ by the spoon-full and fat Lloyd cigars. And with it all, amusing and stimulating conversations, so that the meal really became the most beautiful of feasts and we will probably all remember this prison orgy for the rest of our lives. The milieu of the cell and the prison added a very particular flavor to it all. – Yesterday around 8pm there was a short circuit in the entire prison block and since an electrician had to be got from the city to rectify this problem the light didn’t go on again till 9pm. From eight till nine we sat at tables by the light of candles (for that reason we were only locked up at 9pm) and the whole prison suddenly had a new and ghostly feel to it and since we 65 men did our best to be quiet and well behaved so as not to frighten the poor warders in the dark, you could imagine being part of some secret conspiracy in the catacombs. When the light then came on again the candles disappeared with lightning speed and nothing could have been proved. Then the call came ‘all in’ and in no time we had all disappeared in our caves, the bolts clanged sharply and if you looked through the peep-hole into the well-lit hall, now empty and sober as usual, it was really as though the hour by candle-light had been a hallucination. Such are our diversions. – On Monday I will give you precise instructions from Brose concerning the children’s worms. –  Now I have to continue the story of Sally, alias with his true Jewish name Schmuel ben Jehudi. On Friday he again ran around with the face of a mentally disturbed person and then threw himself onto his bed in the cell where he remained groaning. Around nine his wife came to visit. When the warders informed him of this he refused to see her. The poor woman wept and almost broke down. The warders again tried to persuade him to see his wife. But Sally again refused. Then we decided that he really was mad and to send Brose in to tell him that if he apologized for his action then we would accept him into our community again. Brose did this and he was so grateful that he embraced Brose and kissed him on the cheek, much to Brose’s disgust. Then he agreed to see his wife. At lunchtime he then came rushing out of his cell, positioned himself in front of us most theatrically with arms spread wide and screamed: ‘Pater peccavi. I was mad. I made a terrible mistake. Forgive me!’ and dashed back into his cell. He then began to pack and cried: ‘I have to live like an ascetic, I will only keep toothbrush and soap, and will have only tea and dry bread. Everything else I will send home again!’ Our other Jew, Löwy went to him and tried to convince him not to do something so stupid, but to no avail. Then I went to him and said that we would forgive him if he could comprehend that he had committed  an act of great meanness against us and if he apologized. He then swore that he had not intended to do anything bad and gave me a copy of his report to the CIB. And when I had read that I could see immediately that he was crazy. He had the perception that he had been sent to Long Bay to be tested as to whether he would be a suitable Secret Service man and for that reason we had all been interned for appearances sake and all of us twelve Germans, Australians and Englishmen were here only to investigate him and test him, each one of us entrusted with a special task. And in consequence, the whole report that he had written was in the following vein: ‘Hihi. I have seen through the comedy. Not bad; but I wasn’t deceived by it! A. has this role. B. has that one, this trick was good, that one too transparent etc. I think that I have now proved my competence and that you can now take me into your service. Please be so good and order a taxi to come to the gates of the jail for me on the stroke of nine. My wife will be delighted and very proud of me. Yours respectfully ...’  ‘Do you now believe that my intentions were not bad,’ he cried. I had to assure him that I believed it. Then he embraced me too. I just managed to avoid a kiss. I then had a serious talk with him and made it clear to him that he was well on the way to becoming mad and warned him that the Boss had threatened to put him in the observation cell if he continued on like this, and then I scolded him and gave him a piece of my mind. Thereupon he decided not to send the food-stuff home but to distribute it among impecunious comrades; he wanted to do that through Löwy for he was determined to chastise himself. Löwy expressed the opinion that he wasn’t mad because of his report but because he wanted to give away his things. That offended Löwy’s common sense to such an extent that he refused to be the executor of such madness. Then Meier took responsibility for the ‘treasures’ and brought them onto the table in the order of their perishability and generously helped himself to the tobacco. Löwy couldn’t bear the sight of that  and in his caring hands one sausage after the other, tobacco, eggs and bacon secretly found their way back into the cell of the ascetic who is now eating with us at the table again, albeit with a lot of slurping and attention seeking. He is having only bitter tea and dry bread whereas during the night  the sausages etc in the cell of the ascetic become shorter day by day in spite of the door being locked. Just as mysterious is the matter of the countless cigarette buts in the sweepings of  the ascetic. – Ever since then Schmuel ben Jehudi has been happy, sees his wife and is grateful to anyone to whom he can speak moistly for a few minutes (nobody can stand it for much longer). Now I wonder whether this will be the end of it. – That’s the story of Sally, alias Schmuel ben Jahudi. It is comic, it is tragic, but first and foremost it is disgusting. 

13.11.1940 Today is Wednesday and since I wrote the above much has happened. Firstly, that you didn’t come on Monday. Farmer told me that you couldn’t come because you had laryngitis and Wicke, who had seen his mother, confirmed that. I was somewhat worried about you since the children with their worms are not quite well either and things have to be pretty bad before you take to your bed. When Farmer rang up today he said that you were up again but didn’t yet know for sure whether you could come on Friday. I asked him to tell you not to come if you weren’t completely well yet. Anyway, I wish you good health and a speedy recovery. These throat infections (tonsillitis as it emerged via the telephone today) are nasty and through the poisoning they sap your strength. I hope the children were spared. Anyway, I’ll hear through Mrs. Wicke on Friday how you are even if you yourself cannot come. – I have finished reading the book about ‘man above forty’ and since I had also read about the virtues of fasting in one of Brose’s books on naturopathy, I decided on Sunday to eat nothing for a week and not to smoke either and have kept that up so far. But it is quite difficult since in this stable there are few diversions other than meals and smoking. But I have insisted on sitting at the table with the rest and watching them eat. The first, second and third day are supposed to be the worst. So by tomorrow it will have become easier. I also enjoy exercising my will-power. I don’t know yet for how long I will give up smoking. Perhaps I’ll also go back to that on Monday, but in a measured way. But I am going to start eating again on Monday, that’s for sure. What a stupid decision not to eat for a whole week! The only ones enjoying themselves are the others who eat my share and have fun making my mouth water. –

Sally’s story can now be concluded, at least in so far as it concerns us here. Yesterday he had another one of his attacks and got completely undressed in his cell. He insisted that he was now the true Schmuel ben Jehudi, all the clothes, all the things that were in the cell belonged to E. and he wanted nothing more to do with the fellow. All efforts of persuasion on the part of the warders and Löwy were to no avail. He remained naked and everything that belonged to ‘E.’ was flung out of the cell. Then the warder suggested to leave E. in the cell with his stuff and for Schmuel to move to another cell. Thereupon he took his palliasse and blanket and went up the stairs naked. Half way up he turned to the assembled men and cried that he was now only Schmuel ben Jehudi and that he no longer knew E., the gourmet, the spoiled posh gentleman. The expression on his face was quite terrible to see since the dark shadow of madness already lay upon it. At night he was reasonably peaceful and lay naked on his palliasse with only a blanket over his legs. A miserable sight. In the morning I had to help the warder to take water for washing into his cell and settle him as he was terribly agitated and on the point of becoming violent. But we succeeded in keeping him quiet and even persuaded him to drink some tea and remain in the cell. Around midday then the soldiers of the Military Police came and took him to the Reception House. He went along quietly as he was told he was going to join his friends. Brose was of the opinion that he was a ‘dope fiend’, opium or cocaine. I have never seen such a change towards mental and physical dissolution as in this man. And he had an aura of foul vapors and decay about him that it was almost impossible to stomach being with him and I was nearly sick when I packed his things on an empty stomach. ‘Sic transit gloria mundi’, in this case Sally, alias Schmuel ben Jahudi. And we are all glad to be rid of him.

15.11.40 Today I had to help with the accounts again and in doing that found out that two transports are leaving on Monday. The Italians are going to Orange, which is apparently being opened again, and the Germans to Hay. Seidel, Schmidt, Meier, Hölterhoff, the Englishman Acroyd and I are staying here. Brose and Liebeskind have to leave too. Brose is rather ‘upset’ and furious. But more about that another time. I regret him leaving. – I will see you today and hope that you will be quite well again. I am looking forward to you so much! Enough for today. Your Ekke ( Have kept strictly to fasting and no-smoking rules since Monday.)   

17.11.40    Mein liebes süsses Kerlchen!  It was so sweet and also so self-sacrificing of you that you came last Friday after all, even though you were by no means well yet. I hope it didn’t delay your recovery. Anyway, I was extremely glad to see you since I was rather worried about you.

I more or less stuck to my fast for the seven days. Apart from some orange juice and some water each day nothing passed through my gullet and I haven’t smoked either. Today, Monday, I had some grated apple and cornflakes on Brose’s recommendation, since seven of our German comrades have to go to Hay tomorrow and I want to be able to participate in the farewell meal. I had the same for dinner, just a bit more and some dates. I still feel fine and my hunger is enormous! But the fast was very strenuous, not just as an effort of will but also physically strenuous which probably also had to do with giving up smoking at the same time. Tomorrow I want to eat normally again and cautiously smoke a few cigarettes. I was pleased with myself that I persevered for 168 hours and it also brought me some admiration, though mixed with irony, from the others. I think a fast like that does you good, but only if you have the leisure for it. Please don’t try it when you have so much to do at the moment. – I hope you didn’t drive those people to Bondi on Saturday; the weather was altogether too nasty and not good for you in your condition. – Something really positive: Brose is staying here. His wife talked to Billy Hughes and Spender personally and they have arranged it. I now think that he will get out too since those two are on his side and more powerful than his enemies. That is marvelous. Here in the camp we have become friends for life. - Even though I was a little disappointed with the mental results of the fast, I still think I am making headway with finding  my new path. But I can’t be more specific yet. –  We are now 76 people; 34 Italians and 7 Germans are leaving and 9 Germans are staying. Unfortunately Wicke is among those who are going. –  Brose and I are getting on better with Williams (the Boss) all the time and have interesting conversations with him every day. I regularly help him with the books and the transportation lists since the secretary is on leave; as a result I find out a lot that the others don’t hear or perhaps hear days later. – I am looking forward to your coming tomorrow but only want to see you if you are really quite well again and it is not too much for you. I have to say that we men have gained enormous respect of our wives during this time of internment. Even though I believed you capable of considerable achievements and initiative, I never thought that you would be so capable, brave and perspicacious when I was imprisoned. I take my hat off to you and to Gisela too. – Enough for today. I am still too exhausted to write much. Your E.

I don’t think the war will go on for much longer. It would be a blessing for mankind if the murdering could stop. It is just too horrific.

19.11.40 Mein liebes, gutes Kerlchen! It was so lovely to see you and Silke yesterday. Silke didn’t look particularly well but better than I had expected. That you still have those pussy tonsils is horrible and I only hope that you will soon be able to have the Casbis injection done because Brose is of the opinion that it will cure you completely in a few days. I hope you will be quite well again on Friday. Because of the others, the Broses, the Wickes etc. our togetherness was somewhat disrupted and we didn’t have much of an opportunity to talk to each other. I was rather depressed about that when I returned to my cell after saying good-bye to you, so much so, that I read for almost one and a half candle lengths which must have been till long after midnight. But I suppose there are always these ups and downs under such circumstances and when your health is finally restored we will also be able to make more of the short visiting hour in future. If it is getting too much for you to visit twice a week, which considering your work-load would be very understandable, just come once a week for a while till you are feeling stronger. So much depends on you that I don’t want to be a further burden. What about doing that for a while? I don’t need to tell you, my sweet, sweet beloved, how much I look forward to seeing you. But I am prepared to do without everything if that makes your life with all its responsibilities easier. – Today is the first day after my fast that I’m aware of all the benefits. I haven’t felt as well and strong physically and mentally for a long time. I can now sympathize with Heini whose hands were yearning for an axe as an outlet for his pent-up energy.  Anyway, I am sure I will come out of this period of imprisonment stronger than when I went in. I also think that our plans for the future will soon ripen in me, even though I can’t say anything definite yet, as I told you last time. But I can see the direction clearly in front of me and have already eliminated paths that are impossible for me, which, even though initially negative is a positive step towards clarity. What is also positive is that I have a firm conviction and almost know that I will find my way. Last night around 8pm the ten Germans going to Hay were transported off. As a farewell, I penned an occasional poem in ten minutes and though it wasn’t a work of art it aroused mirth all round and made for a good mood for the departure. (You don’t believe it, do you?) Unfortunately there was no time to make a copy. Liebeskind and Wicke were quite downhearted and we all felt very sorry for them. The people still here are: Brose, Seidel, Meier, Acroyd, Hölterhoff, Schmidt, Riedmüller, myself and a new German who was picked up from the bush this morning and who is nothing special but fits well into our group; his name is Spiegler. Brose and I have decided that we will now take it in turns to give lectures in the evening twice a week. My first one will probably be a summary of the Welteislehre. That will break the monotony. – I hope you are no longer annoyed about the traffic fine, it is not worth getting excited about it even though it was very unjust. Moore will fix it up for you without a problem. – The thought of not being with you for Christmas is depressing, particularly because of the children. But the tree will probably make them forget the absence of their father.

21.11.40 Yesterday we had the first of our so-called ‘lecturettes’. Brose spoke for an hour about glands, their nature and importance. We had set up the benches as in school and the entire crew attended. It was an enormous success and the Italians were quite touching in their gratitude and their intense concentration. It was even suggested we have lectures every night but we have decided to stick to three times a week. On Saturday I will talk about the theory of ice in outer space (Welteislehre) and on the coming Tuesday Rossi will speak about New Guinea and gold prospecting etc. In the literary digest you brought along last time there was a wonderful article by Alexis Carrell about self-discipline. Did you read it? He is about to write a new book which we must buy when it comes out. -  I am very much looking forward to your visit tomorrow, if only to make sure that you are well again and to hear whether the Casbis injection helped you. I want to see you well and strong and therefore happy again. Brose thinks that the reason why Sulfanilamide didn’t help was that you were ‘generally run down’. For Sulfanilamide doesn’t work as a direct poison for the bacteria but as a stimulus for the body to create its own defenses. On Brose’s advice you should take Vitamin [B] I tablets. You can get them at Brose’s office. Their effect is supposed to be excellent. -

22.11.40 Tomorrow evening I will give my lecture. I will concentrate on the topic ‘The Moon and the Deluge’ because that will probably be the easiest and most interesting for our type of audience. I am really looking forward to it.

Now I will get ready for your visit. I can’t wait for it. Today my desire for love and tenderness is particularly strong and my love for you is burning like a torch. Haseken! Just wait till we are free!

I have the feeling that there will soon be a big Christmas peace offensive. I hope the enemy powers will settle their differences soon. A thousand good wishes and still more kisses to you all. Your E.

24.11.40 Mein liebes, süsses Haseken! The visit last Friday was one of the most beautiful we have had together. You looked so pretty and quite well again with your red cheeks and they gave us such a lovely long time and we had so much to tell each other. It was wonderful and the joy lasted for quite a long time afterwards. The flowers are beautiful and for the enjoyment of all I put them on the dining table during the day and at night they embellish my cell. The garden must be quite lovely now! How much I would love to come home, even for just a day! When I have to go to court soon I’ll try and get permission to quickly drive out to Collaroy with a guard for an hour or so. Next time Major Lindrum comes out here I will approach him about it. He can’t say more than ‘no’. I think I have deserved a small privilege for good behavior. – So yesterday I gave my lecture from 6-7pm and the warden came in too and listened to it. All 50 ‘prisoners of war’ were assembled and we had lined up the benches again as in school. The dark brown wall was used as a blackboard on which I drew my circles with chalk. The topic was ‘The Great Deluge’.  I prepared a bit that afternoon but then spoke without notes. It was really a big success and I managed to speak without ums and ahs and stuttering and to develop my ideas clearly. Brose claimed, without flattering me, that my presentation was better than that of most university lecturers. But I had a very receptive audience and for these people it was something quite new. It was a delight to see their bright eyes and their concentrated and interested faces and at the end we had another half hour of questions and answers. Even Brose was fascinated since the Welteislehre was something new for him. In short: it was a lot of fun, particularly as the people are so grateful for stimulation of this sort.  During the day I was again helping Williams in the office with the books. I take more and more pleasure in this man who has changed so completely since I have known him and is at last becoming the genuine fellow he really is. The  conversations with him are extremely stimulating and enjoyable. – I am discovering again and again how great my influence on people is and how easy it is for me to ‘get under their skin’. I don’t say this boastfully, just stating a fact. You’ll know what I mean.

25.11.40 Last night Rossi gave his talk about ‘Goldmining in New Guinea’ which also aroused a lot of interest and gained a lot of applause and which was a good speech. On Tuesday Acroyd will speak about India where he was born and raised. Quite unpolitically, of course. – This morning I spent another hour doing office work, also read and played some sport. In this way we pass our long days. And in an hour or so I will see you again. What joy! Will you be bringing Uwe this time? – Some time this week another transport will leave. Brose and I will not be among them. It would be good if they moved off some of the Italians because it is too loud and crowded now, even though we would then lose some of our audience. – Mrs. Rossi who is an Australian and who looks very nice lives in Collaroy. Rossi has already told her about you and us and she would love to visit you. He (Rossi) saw her this morning and couldn’t give her our address and telephone number. Would you perhaps ring her some time and invite her; in the evening would probably be best. Her address is: Mrs. Rossi, c/o Woodard, 2 Pittwater Road, Collaroy. Tel: XW 8482. – I’ll see you a bit later. A thousand greetings and kisses to you all. Your E.

29.11.40 Liebes Kerlchen! The days since Monday passed fairly quickly or better, relatively quickly. I had to help the Boss prepare the lists and books for the two transports and in payment was again given early information about who is being exiled to Hay and who to Orange. Yesterday morning the Italians (30 men) got up at the crack of dawn and at 7am the locked cells of those remaining were then opened. The noise from 5 to 7am was enormous and the dirt they left behind no less. In the evening (yesterday on 28/11) at 8pm the 5 Germans were then marched off to Hay. This pitiable group consisted of: Seidel, Hölterhoff, Spindler, Schmidt and Riedmüller. Those still here are: Brose, Meier, Acroyd and I and Janssen, who turned up here from Hay in the course of yesterday with a few Italians. Janssen is soon to appear before the court. I felt very sorry for Seidel, particularly because a new regulation from Victoria Barracks has forbidden all calls, even ones made by the Boss. Seidel had no way of informing his wife to give her the opportunity to come one last time to see him and Mrs. Hölterhoff just happened to be here this afternoon so that Hölterhoff could at least see his wife. That was messed up for us by Löwy whose bride (a Viennese Jewess) is supposed to have claimed at Victoria Barracks that she had talked on the phone with Löwy, which wasn’t true at all. So it could happen that one day when the court-case is over I will just disappear soundlessly without informing you unless some coincidental visit offers the opportunity to inform you and you have to be prepared for that. Seidel was sent off even though Victoria Barracks had given him permission to stay. So there is the possibility that I could be sent to Hay even before Christmas. Don’t be sad about that. Obviously I’ll try to stay here. –

What Janssen reports about Hay is not very nice. Dusty, without a green leaf, flies, disgusting toilet facilities and wild dissension among the Italians. It is supposed to be so bad that the camp leadership is apparently in complete despair. The judges from the Advisory Committee were in Hay last weekend to inform themselves. The 20 or so Germans of course have no say amongst the 100 or so Italians and apart from that, there are also rows and disagreements among them. Henry has had a fight with the ‘Pernance’

Kaiser etc. By the way, Kaiser, Griese, Poggendorf and amazingly Neumann have been released. The last piece of news (Neumann) was told me by Moore who came to visit me this morning to discuss the Clarkson matter with me. He doesn’t believe he is in a position to get permission from V.B. that I stay here even after the court-case instead of being sent to Hay. But he can delay the Clarkson case till after Christmas, meaning it would probably not come up till February. Since that doesn’t involve the risk of losing money or the case I have asked him to postpone the matter till after Christmas. Moore is of the opinion that I have been forgotten here. ‘So don’t muck it up by asking silly questions.’ – I have asked him to arrange the matter of the walk to the dentist with V.B. and told him that you would arrange a time for next week with Pigott and then inform him. A had a nasty abscess on one of my teeth and cured it in two days with Ularon (Sulfanilamide). Isn’t that amazing!

Do you still love me? Yes! Good! All my love, Your E.

1.12.40  Mein liebes Kerlchen! Friday was another one of those beautiful visiting days alone with you. I was so glad you looked so well and pretty and were also so happy. It appears that you are over the poisoning that comes with tonsillitis. Silke’s little comment that she thought it was about time that Ekke came home made me both sad and happy. And I was absolutely delighted with her very first letter. The first letter is really the first step towards growing up, in the transition from the dreamlike existence of the child  to becoming a conscious person. Silke’s letter really brought to mind what an enormous step mankind took when it invented writing, a step just as significant as the earlier invention of language. In contrast, little Uwe is still a dreamer. Peter’s next big achievement will be learning to walk. It’s about time, the lazy little fellow! I am looking forward so much to him and Gisela tomorrow afternoon. Since the 30 Italians and 5 Germans left, things have quietened down somewhat here but we are still about forty men. A few more Italians and two young Germans were brought in yesterday and the day before. One of the Germans is really a Dutchman, but left a German ship and at the time Holland was invaded he refused to go back to Holland and fight. Consequently the Dutch Consul will have nothing to do with him anymore and since he has no papers it was impossible for him to prove that he wasn’t a German. Both of the men are married to Australians but have no children. I have never seen anybody arrive here so downcast, you could almost say weak and lily-livered as that Dutchman. But we are starting to have an influence on him and today he even smiled once. The other man asked to be interned because he had been out of work for six months and just couldn’t stand the ‘nagging’ of his wife anymore. The poor fellow looked half starved and had been at a police station for eleven days before he was taken here. A bit like me in Bourke Street. But we will have fixed him up too in a few days time. – Yesterday evening Brose gave another very interesting talk about glands which was also very well received by the less educated Italians. Tonight I will give a talk on gliding. – It was raining all day today and since we didn’t want to stay inside all the time I suggested to Brose to put on our shorts and walk in the rain. We did that; Brose stayed out for five minutes while I jogged bare-topped with shorts for an hour and a half with intermittent gymnastics and breathing exercises. It was really marvelous although everybody thought I had reached the first step of Sally-madness. After that a hot bath, a cold shower and a spoon of ‘jam’. I now feel wonderful and as hungry as a berserker.  .

2.12.40 Yesterday I gave my lecture about gliding; it went smoothly and flowed well and aroused a lot of interest and enthusiasm. Strangely enough Brose had no knowledge of the theory of gliding and was extremely interested. It lasted for an hour and a quarter and I drew beautiful pictures of landscapes with ideal thermal conditions, up-drafts, and storm fronts onto the black wall. In short: it was a nice success and Farmer listened to it too. – When we were locked up at 8pm Farmer allowed us to be locked up together and we then talked and played chess till 10.15. I beat Brose twice. When the light was switched off I then moved back into my digs. – Brose and I are reading a beautiful book about stars and atoms together. I read it out aloud and then we discuss it. In the evenings I then read the wonderful book by Jeans The Universe around Us by myself so that I will soon have a detailed understanding of the world of stars and atoms. – By the way, I purposely didn’t prepare for the lecture and noticed that if you know the material about which you are speaking well, it is not at all hard to speak fluently. Anyway, it’s good training for me since by nature I have severe inhibitions about speaking in public. – Now I will see you soon and can’t wait!! All my love, Your E.

6.12.40 I can only write you a short letter today because when playing bowls I tore off and bent over the nail of my middle finger right to the root and am therefore handicapped when writing. Nothing much new has happened. On Wednesday Janssen spoke about his flights from Australia to Europe and Rossi spoke about New Guinea in general. The first was a bit boring, the latter very good and interesting though not new for me.

The business with the dentist on Wednesday was a typical stuff-up. On Tuesday Victoria Barracks called the Boss and said that I would be picked up on Wednesday afternoon. I waited ‘all dolled up’ till five o’clock and heard nothing more till Moore rang up on Thursday and said that I couldn’t be taken out without the recommendation of the doctor here. The Boss said that he would ’fix’ it for me, but probably not before next week. I was quite angry particularly when I thought of you sitting in the waiting room and having come to town and wasted so much of your precious time for nothing. Were you furious? Poor darling!     

The wife of the Dutchman who, by the way, is now perfectly okay and has turned into a nice and lively young fellow is a pediatric nurse and kindergarten teacher and since she has to work now, I have suggested that you two should meet. That is to be arranged this afternoon. I have the feeling that it could be the right thing for you since she is not afraid of work and prepared to help in the kitchen and the household as well. I said that she could then visit her husband along with you while he is here though that will probably only be till next week. She is a Tasmanian by birth and has become either Dutch or German through marriage. I don’t think it can harm me even if she should have to register as a German in Collaroy. I haven’t met her but Acroyd who saw her this morning said that she looked very nice. Anyway you can have a talk to her. As a nurse she earned 30s and would probably come to us for the same.

That’s probably all for today. It’s uncomfortable to be writing. All my love to you all and to you my sweet darling a strong embrace in my thoughts. Your E.

9.12.1940 My Darling! Today is such a hot, tiring day and you poor Haseken have to travel the long way from Collaroy by bus and tram. I only hope that you will at least take a taxi from town. I can just imagine how annoying the stupid car accident was for you. I personally am glad that only the car was a little damaged and nothing happened to you or others. I am just sorry that the car is not at your disposal today. But see to it that you have it again on Monday when I have to go to the dentist. Nothing much has happened since Friday. A new German, the chef of the Pacific Hotel in Manly. Nothing exciting. On Saturday night Brose gave a lecture on stars which was interesting and comprehensible and met with considerable applause. I have also started to sketch Brose and believe that it will be good. I am a little handicapped because of my finger but it has healed up today and now I only have to wait till the nail grows back. There was no puss at all. Bill the Cowboy came from Hay yesterday. A very ordinary fellow. He says that all the German accounts in Hay have been closed and that this week the Hay-Germans would be brought either to Orange or to Tatura. Orange would be nice. Next Saturday (the 14^th November) I will have been interned for six months, probably four of those in prison. It has certainly been a long time to be away from you! I hope the war will end soon.

I am reading, or more accurately studying, Astronomy and Astrophysics with wild enthusiasm. I am just reading the book by Jeans The Universe Around Us. So far, the Welteislehre does not contradict Jeans’ views and where he admits to gaps in the chain of logic the Welteislehre fills them. It is so exciting that I could hardly go to sleep last night. Not only because of the innumerable mosquitoes. Talking of mosquitoes: Next time you come or whenever you have time please bring along mosquito netting. We want to put it in front of the windows. Brose and I together will need a piece two to two and a half foot wide and seven or eight foot long. We will then cut that in half and stick it to the window with adhesive tape. We have enough of the latter. Rossi and I have spoken with the Boss about Christmas. We asked whether our wives could come in and drink coffee with us. But it is absolutely impossible for any outsider ever to set their foot further into this hallowed institution than into the visiting room. But we will get an extra visiting day on the first or second day of Christmas. He can’t say anything definite since it depends on the number of people who are here then. The fewer there are, the easier it will be to allow privileges. – A thousand kisses to you all, E.

Attached is a poem by Henry Lawson who once ‘did time’ in Long Bay.

Doing Time

It’s a bitter day of sorrow when you drink the cup of shame,

When you’re branded with a number and forced to drop your name.

When you don the beastly garments for the outcome of your crime.

It’s a bitter, sad reflection, when you find you’re ‘doing time’.

At night when you’re surrounded by the dirty white-washed walls

A’listening to the hours chime as the warder pays his calls

Or perhaps you may be dreaming of the one you love so well

When suddenly you’re awakened by the chiming of a bell.

You rise and dress in silence, still listening to its mournful chime,

And as you roll your bedding you recall you’re ‘doing time’.

You march into the yard, your heart as heavy as lead.

There you’re handed a dish of homony and a lousy lump of bread.

You toe the line at muster and respectfully salute,

And you’re forced to answer ‘Here Sir’ to some big dirty brute.

The next is to your labors you walk into the yard

Accompanied by a big fat screw to see that you work hard.

You breast up to the workshop with the feeling so sublime.

There you think of all the fun there is attached to ‘doing time’.

You do your work in silence though it hurts your free-born pride

To think that you are under men that you could – outside.

The hill of life is a steep one; it’s a long and dreary climb.

But it’s a bloody sight steeper, Bill old boy, when you find you’re ‘doing time’.

Henry Lawson,

Long Bay Prison.

9.12.40 Bill the Cowboy came from Hay yesterday. He is a very common sort of fellow. He said that all the German accounts in Hay have been closed and that the Hay-Germans were being taken either to Orange or Tatura this week.

Rossi and I spoke to the Boss about Christmas. We asked whether our wives could come in and have coffee with us. However, it is quite impossible for any stranger ever to penetrate further than the visiting room in this hallowed institution. But we will get an extra visiting day on the first or second holiday. He can’t say for sure because it depends on the number of people who are here then. The fewer there are, the easier it is to grant privileges.

13.12.40 Today’s letter will not be long as I have worked all day in the office filling in ‘red tape’ forms for the last few days. The Boss has discovered my typing skills and since he hates typing himself he has enlisted me. – That was a stuff-up again on Wednesday but it was really marvelous to see you. It was quite a new experience to be in town with you.  Amazingly, we got back to Long Bay without having a car accident. I have written a draft of the letter to Mother and will read it to you during your visit today. It is fairly certain that I won’t be sent away before Christmas ‘but the Almighty (V.B.) moves in mysterious ways’. So it is not certain. More next time. – Will Gisela and little Peter be coming along today? All my love, Your E.

15.12.40  

Mein liebes Haseken! I want to start to write to you a bit earlier today so that the letter won’t be as short as last time. In the meantime I have typed 45 forms and a few letters for the Boss and gleaned his thanks. As a ‘reward’ he intends to lobby V.B. to give us decent privileges at Christmas time. I made the suggestion that he should try and push through  that we are allowed to see our wives and children for a few hours on the lawn near the main drive since the prison administration will not allow visitors to penetrate the sanctum of the prison. They can get soldiers to guard us as they did initially in Orange in case they are afraid we will run away. I hope his luck is in. It doesn’t look as though there would be a transport to Hay before Christmas. Poor Brose heard ‘indirectly’ today that he will not be released. ‘He is taking it marvelously well’. The decent fellow in me is very sad about it all, the egoist is delighted since I would find it very hard to do without his company and his stimulating conversation. It will probably be a harder blow for his wife than for him because I think she was quite certain that he would be released. – During the last week we had another two lectures by Brose about stars and one by Campion about China. They were all very interesting although for me nothing very new was said, particularly as I have become half an astronomer myself through my reading. The book that I would like is The Universe around Us by Sir James Jeans., published by the University Press, Cambridge. I imagine that it could be hard to get here; but Preece will be able to get it for you. On Monday I’ll give you a few other titles as well. As a real Christmas present from you and Gisela I would like a nice (but not too expensive) normal sized chess set with collapsible board; the figures will then always remind me of the time in camp. The travel set is too hard to manage for daily use.

Unfortunately there has been friction among the men at our table for some time. The reason is that that revolting fellow Meier can’t stand Janssen and keeps on stirring against him. The lovely harmony we had has disappeared. Tonight at dinner I want to bring the matter up and clear the air one way or the other. If there is no other way, Meier will have to eat in his cell; he will just be excluded if he doesn’t make an effort. He has all the character flaws that can be combined in one body. The worst of them: enviousness and resentment, arrogance mixed with inferiority complexes. –  By now it is evening and we have had our military tribunal with the result that Janssen and Meier gave each other a handshake of reconciliation and apology, all sorts of other little things were brought up too and settled nicely and now there is complete harmony and I was unanimously voted in as official mediator. A ‘Rütli-oath’ was sworn by all to keep the peace, to promote good comradeship, to discuss all disputes openly and not behind people’s backs and where no agreement is reached, to turn to the peace-negotiator (which is me). Now everything is okay again and since then the mutual politeness is almost too much to bear. But I repeat: Meier is and remains a grouser and a selfish pig. But with the dignity of my new office I will make sure that he doesn’t overdo it.

Today I had an interesting and impressive experience. I had the idea that we could accompany the Catholics, about 30 Italians and apart from Brose and me two or three other Germans, to the prison chapel this morning. We first went through a few yards that were opened with a rattle of keys and were then admitted into the convict-built church through a narrow door. The church was nice and bright and clean and down below there were pews as in any other church. The altar was simple and beautiful and above it was a really fine stained glass window with a picture of the prodigal son coming home and being embraced by his father; in this place, it is a very appropriate motif for a church window. We sat in the first six rows of pews on the left and watched two nuns who were busy at the altar, one quite old and one young, both with intelligent faces and a kindly expression. The older one then came and spoke with some of our Italians while the younger one played softly on the harmonium. A piano was there too and Brose got the idea to ask whether he could play there some time. Rossi then went over to the old nun and she wanted to try and get permission for him. She then came to us and Rossi introduced us. Then the kindly old woman said that it was a pity that Mussolini was not fighting on the British side. She wanted to say something nice and we could only smile pleasantly. She thought we were Italians. – Then the female prisoners filled the gallery; it was closed off with curtains of thin tulle so that you could only see the women sitting there like shadows. And finally the criminals from ‘down below’, as they say here, came from the other side. These sat on the pews next to us on the right hand side; there was only the aisle between us. And while they (about 75 men) were practicing Christmas carols with the young nun, among them also ‘Silent Night, Holy Night’, and Brose and I were trying not to get too emotional, we could study them. And I can assure you that my fingers never felt such an urge to draw faces. The faces of all kinds of criminals: strong, weak, brutal and crafty, old and young and also a percentage who looked quite normal. No 171 looked like a rat and could move both eyes independently. His face and his right eye looked ahead while the left was watching us. His eyes were small and soulless like those of a rat. His neighbor, No 120 was a typical murderer, a high heavy skull like a tower, heavy jowls, a brutal chin and a course nose. Also little pig’s eyes. A very heavy bony body and he was constantly sweating and wiping his face and neck with a dirty cloth. He looked as though he was afraid of the tortures of hell. A third, No. W, was a posh looking man, though with a somewhat brutal chin; but in ordinary clothes he would never have been recognized for the murderer he was: ‘In for the term of his natural life’. It was somehow incongruent that the strong face wore an expression of complete hopelessness, aimlessness and indifference. ‘He’ll go out only with his feet first’, the warder whispered to me. A fourth, No. Y, had one of those really messed up faces and was constantly licking his lips with his tongue. He was about 60 years old and the type of the weak criminal. And then there was one (now don’t laugh)  who was such a spit image of Xavier that I had to look over a few times to make sure whether it was him or not. Let’s call him No. X. [..] I couldn’t find out what his crime was but have to assume that it was something really original and unusual, or in any case, that his motives were. On the last seat were a whole lot of homosexuals, queens as they are called here. More repulsive than the rough true criminals and not even interesting. – Those are only a few random examples. Now imagine: These men are reverently singing ‘Silent Night, Holy Night’ while a young nun accompanies them on the harmonium. It was quite unreal, ‘uncanny’. I had to think of Dante’s Purgatory. Up to then about forty minutes had passed. Then the priest came in his elaborate vestments. A young person who stuttered a bit and reeled his Latin and English off like an automaton. His actions at the altar were also quite automatic. He preached extremely badly about the divinity of Jesus Christ and the blessings of confession which they all ‘had to’ go to on Friday. Through confession they could free themselves of their sins and make peace with God.  ‘It is so simple. You only need to confess and be sorry, really sorry, and God will forgive you all your sins.’ (Too simple.) During the litany the old nun in her black garments knelt by the steps of the altar and from time to time she rang the little silver bell whereupon all bowed down low like grass in the wind. ( The opportunity to whisper or exchange something?) At the end came the hymn ‘Immaculata’ and an Advent hymn and then the priest moved off into the sacristy. The young nun then approached Brose and me and asked: ‘New arrivals?’ And when we nodded she said with a kindly and loving look that could almost have been called worldly: ‘Isn’t it a shame that two men like you should be in here.’ We thanked her for her compassion and then she took herself off. The internees went out and the criminals followed us with a wistful gaze. They probably envied us. The ‘lifer’ in particular had an expression that I won’t easily forget. – I took a table into my cell with me this evening in order to write. For Brose has my little one in his room and the lights have just been turned off and now two candles are burning and in the middle is the beautiful, colorful bunch of flowers that you brought in for me last time. We are really lucky and the poor fellows from ‘down below’ have every reason to envy us. Even more so if they knew that I am going to see you tomorrow! A thousand greetings to you all. Your E.

19.12.40  Liebes Haseken! Last Monday was one of the most beautiful visits we have had. You three looked so healthy and little Peter was quite enchanting. It is amazing how much the boy has developed since I saw him last. And the news that the other two have not looked so glowing and healthy for a long time is so pleasing. School really seems to agree with them. – The dice have rolled with regard to Christmas privileges.

1. On Christmas Day, 25/12/40 visiting time is from 8 to 12.

2. On New Year’s Day, 1/1/41, also visiting time from 8 to 12.

3. These extra days do not affect the normal visiting days.

4. Then we have pushed through that we will get food rations like in Orange and Hay, meaning butter, bacon, cheese, jam etc. and that permanently, not only as a Christmas privilege.

Unfortunately meeting on the lawns or at tables like in Orange could not be achieved. I talked about it with the Boss for quite a while and he strongly advised us not to make such a request. Visiting privileges are already very generous compared with Orange or Hay and were we to put in a request of this kind there would immediately be questions about how visiting hours were being handled at present and the result would be that they would insist on the exact times here too and possibly put up chicken wire, ‘Let sleeping dogs lie.’ And we could only agree with him. We have to be satisfied with that. That would mean that we have the following visiting hours:

25/12  Wednesday from 8-12

27/12/  Friday as usual

1/1/41 Wednesday from 8-12

3/1/41 Friday as usual.

Tomorrow you will then have to tell me how you want to arrange our meetings. I’ll have to leave that to you entirely. I would suggest that you don’t come on 25/12  since there will probably be a big crowd and the children will want to play with their things and you and Gisela will be tired. But do as suits you best. 

Can you perhaps bring some lametta and a few glass balls on Monday and also a few little candles. Only a few. I would like the texts of a few Christmas carols too. We want to sing carols on Christmas Eve and nobody knows the words. We will type them on the typewriter. ‘Silent Night’, ‘O du fröhliche’. ‘Es ist ein Ros entsprungen’,  ‘O Tannenbaum’ and whatever else Gisela can suggest. – On Monday Baker is to make suggestions for the Christmas bonus. I can’t judge it from here. Please bring along six 10/-sh notes next time. In addition, bring flowers on Monday, as you would probably have done anyway. I can’t buy anything for Gisela and suggest you give her a ‘children’s bonus’ of £5. I would also be happy with £10. By the way, is she still getting her pocket money regularly? –

20.12.40  I had intended to continue this letter but I am being employed almost all day in the office of the Boss as typist and general secretary. So more next time.

Today it’s pouring outside and I feel sorry for you that you have to drive all that way in the rain. I hope the windscreen wipers are working. A thousand good wishes, Your E.

23.12.40 My dear Haseken, dear Gisela!  This Christmas letter will only be short because I have been very busy since Irmhild’s last visit. It sounds funny writing that from the camp. But I completed the drawing of Rossi with a great deal of effort and everybody thinks that it is a very good likeness. Rossi himself is the most delighted of all, which leads to the assumption that I have beautified him. Last night in my cell I started writing a Christmas tale for the children. It was fun and after the electric light had been switched off I continued on by candle-light. I hope the children like it. I would like you to read it to them tonight since it is to prepare them a little for the fact that I won’t be there tomorrow. Or rather, first read it yourselves, for you might find that inappropriate for practical reasons of some sort.

Unfortunately I now have only the two drawings for Irmhild and the fairy-tale for the children and for Gisela what Irmhild and I agreed upon in our last consultation. It will be hard for all of us not to be together tomorrow but in our thoughts we and those on the other side of the globe will be together all the same. Pass the evening happily and tell me all about the children next time. A thousand greetings to you both and warm Christmas kisses to all five of you. Your Ekke

27.12.40 Mein liebes süsses Haseken! What a joy when you came quite out of the blue on Christmas morning. I hadn’t expected you and hadn’t even guessed there could be such a surprise visit, so that you actually succeeded in ‘catching me asleep’. You looked lovely and Janssen made you the most flattering compliments afterwards. He couldn’t stop giving detailed descriptions of your beauty, your freshness and your elegance. And eventually he became yellower and yellower with envy that I have such a wonderful wife. Gisela had better look out because ‘he has set his mind on her’. But I must say, if it has to be somebody, better the Norwegian, although he has no money and Janssen a lot of it. Janssen is too much of a merchant for my taste, not masculine enough and far too caught up in the old world of materialism and individualism. But this is all purely theoretical. – I am awaiting your visit today with some trepidation in order to hear from you how the children are. I hope they don’t have whooping cough. That would be a big worry for you. Brose is going to write up a precise treatment for me with the relevant medicines (homeopathic) and with the various dosages for the children. If it is not whooping cough all the better. The book on naturopathy says to give children only a small amount to eat but a lot of fruit juices (oranges, lemons, limes) and if the fever is not higher than 100- 102 degrees sponge them down every two hours and if it is over 102 then apply moist compresses around the chest and possibly the neck and change these when they become dry and warm. That would enable them to sleep peacefully. –

Now I want to tell you a bit about our Christmas festivities in prison. On Tuesday afternoon the young man from Hamburg, Schant, and I decorated the Christmas tree which you brought in on Monday. Along with the tinsel you gave us, all the branches were covered with cotton wool so that the tree really looked quite nice and winterly. Then Brose, Janssen and I set the table nicely and decorated it with chocolates, nuts etc. and also flowers. Several plates with treats were prepared and at six o’clock the little silver bell was rung. (A knife against a bottle.) Everybody came except Schreiber who was sick in bed. Menu: tinned tongue, salad, sliced pineapple with sugar, cheese, sausage and bacon and to finish off, ice-cream and fruit-salad (from tins). Everything tasted wonderful and at the table things were beautifully harmonious for the first time. ‘Oh du fröhliche’, ‘Silent Night’ and ‘Oh Christmas Tree’ were sung standing while I lit the Christmas tree which looked very fine and had the proper shape. To finish off, we sang old soldiers’ songs and then Meier gave an address in which he thanked those who had prepared the festivities so nicely and then asked everybody to raise their mugs for a hearty ‘Siegheil’; what was to be cheered he didn’t say, probably the Christmas tree, the mugs were empty too, but that didn’t faze him. The two Jews were not invited on the pretext that this was a purely Christian religious festival. But I had taken poor Joseph Herrmann a parcel with treats and a candle (a most desirable item) beforehand and he was very appreciative. On Christmas Day you then came early and that was my best Christmas present. I unwrapped the other presents at 9pm in my cabin when I was alone; thank you, my dear, a thousand times for the beautiful presents and thoughts. The chess figures are perfect and the books marvelous, particularly that by Jeans, and the ones from Gisela and from Xavier. The latter I have read and I could keep on reading it all over again. I haven’t started the Jeans yet and only had a brief look at Gisela’s book. That one will be started tonight and yours when I have finished the other book by Jeans. The shirts are great. And the underpants too. Handkerchiefs and tie are perfect, not to mention the bits and pieces. Grete’s cake tasted better than any apple-cake I have ever eaten. Tell her that and also give Xavier my thanks. You have all really spoilt me. At 10pm the light was turned off and then I had to think of my Haseken and imagined us standing on the veranda, I with my arm around you, and I had a tremendous yearning for you and all you stood for, that is children, home, love and friendship. Hopefully it won’t all last too long. 

On Christmas Day the Italians decorated the hall with colored paper and had their feast at midday, to which they invited all the Germans except Meier. Of course we couldn’t accept because the exclusion would have caused a rift among us and given rise to all sorts of unpleasantness. So he invited only Brose, Janssen and myself as his personal guests. We accepted and had a nice feast with superb food which the Italian women had brought in. The result was great agitation and disgruntlement among the Germans that we and not they had been invited and also among the Jews. It was a real revolution and the waves of outrage surged high. Consequently I then decided on Thursday to grab the lion by the tail and convened a meeting for all. In it I explained that initially everybody except Meier had been invited because Meier had repeatedly insulted Rossi and the Italians in a very tactless and insolent manner. Meier denied this but when I called in Rossi, he had to admit it. Everyone then demanded that Meier apologize, otherwise .... He did so and Rossi accepted his apology. Everyone agreed that I had acted properly and Meier was given a serious warning. The business has been sorted out and now peace reigns once more until the stinker Meier thinks of something new again. The Jews have also calmed down. Now we want to celebrate New Year all together. In the meeting I suggested to vote whether we shouldn’t invite the two Jews, who always eat by themselves in their cells, to come to our table. It was a secret ballot. The result: 7 no, 3 yes, 2 indifferent. I was surprised at the result.

So, my dear, I’ll be seeing you soon and only hope that you’ll bring me good news of the children. A thousand loving wishes to you all and many thanks again for all the wonderful Christmas surprises. Your E.

`  

29.12.40 Mein liebes Kerlchen! There is not much to report since your last visit on Friday. It was lovely for me, even though the two of us did not get much time together, because I could see the two children who both looked very well in spite of their runny noses. Both have developed quite a bit since I saw them last and have grown and become sturdier. I hope the ogre of whooping cough passes us by because particularly in the case of Peter it can’t be taken too lightly. I am anxiously awaiting what you have to tell me tomorrow. You warmed the heart of Herrmann with your friendly smile and your whole appearance. He hasn’t stopped raving about you and the two children but particularly about you. He claims to have been quite blinded by your beauty. It’s nice to hear something like that. Oh my sweet love, I have such a great longing for you. I wished this were over soon and I could come back home to you. I love you so very much and yearn for your tenderness more than ever before. I sometimes try to imagine the day when the gates of this prison open and we will all be free. That will be an emotional upheaval hard to bear. If one could only know when that great day might come. I am even looking forward to driving in the car with you at the wheel. And then the first evening at home with you sitting comfortably in the library! And one or two good bottles of wine! – On Friday evening three Italians were released from here. One of them was the one sitting next to us in the visiting cell on Friday, on the other side of Herrmann. He had already been informed unofficially and he was telling his wife. But she wouldn’t believe him. Then when we came back into the hall it was announced to him officially so that he arrived two hours after his incredulous wife. You should have seen the joy of those three. One was so pale he looked as though he might faint any minute. If that happened to me so unexpectedly, I would know better things to do than to faint. But unfortunately that won’t happen to me before the war ends and only god knows when that might be. The flowers you brought me last time are absolutely beautiful. I have made two fine big vases with them. One of them I lent to Dr. Brose overnight because his red roses have faded. During the day they are on our dining table or in my cell. –  

I have almost finished Gisela’s book. It is very interesting and well written and in parts also very depressing and unpleasant. A lot of things can be understood much better in relation to this country if you read about the times and the people of the early colonial period. Many things have not changed at all. And then the beautiful poems of Ian Mudie that speak of a completely new era. But I am afraid that the ‘new’ is still in the distant future. Please give Xavier my thanks again and tell him how happy I was to get the book. Without doubt he and Mudie are of one mind. But how many of these people are there? Sometimes I think he is right ‘that this land is doomed’. The average standard of the people here is so low and the intellectual inferiority and stupidity so overwhelming.         

Greetings to you all from your E.

31.12.40 My dear Haseken! Now it is eight in the evening and we are all locked into our cells again and in four hours it will be New Year. You will probably both be so tired that you won’t stay up till twelve. But I will be thinking of you, my dear and imagining you lying in the big bed and hopefully sleeping peacefully without worrying about the children or being sick yourself. It is a beautiful picture to imagine you like that. In my last letter I completely forgot to wish you all a happy and peace-bringing New Year. So I am doing it now and have only one wish that we can be reunited again in 1941 and that this terrible war will come to an end, and that afterwards we will find the others all healthy and well when we can hopefully go on another trip to Europe and see everyone again and show off our war-child Pitt and the two others who will be quite ‘grown up’ by then. I can’t say more but you know exactly what I mean. Tonight, or rather at nine tomorrow morning all those at home will be thinking of us as we will be thinking of them and our wishes will all be the same. That should be a force strong enough to achieve something! Let’s have faith and trust in that and this will make it easier to await the time when we can communicate again. And the certainty that we both know that we love each other as much as two human beings can love each other, that we are happy with our three children who have turned out so handsome and well and that we are grateful for what you and I were allowed to experience in the seven years since we met and married must sustain us. Those were years rich in experience and even though the present time is a little difficult for us because of the separation, we both know that we are lucky compared with millions of others in Europe. I have to tell you too that I am happy and proud that I have such a brave and sensible Haseken and above all a wife who is so decent and faithful and so clean in every respect and who can be a comrade in these difficult times as none better could be found in the entire world, also not among men. You and I, my beloved, we understand each other and nothing must ever come between us that could estrange us. As it was in the last seven years so it shall be in the next year. Friday in eight days, on January 10^th, we will have known each other for seven years, seven difficult and happy years that were rich in experience. We should really celebrate that day just like our wedding anniversary. I hope I’ll still be in Long Bay then so that you can visit me. Let’s keep the date in mind.

9.30pm: I have just discovered that some fairy has softly, inaudibly pushed open the bolt of my little room. Through the peep-hole the eye of the fairy looked in and winked. A short military salute and everything was okay. – Later, after ten, when the lights are turned off, a dark figure will flit through the corridor with soft, soundless steps, will quietly push back three bolts in a well practiced manner, two further ghosts will quickly dart across the corridor and disappear just as quickly in No. 10 and then sit together by candlelight whispering softly and listening as the great wheel of time flings around on its axis to begin a new cycle, a new year. And then the four ghosts will raise their mugs with ‘tea’, will spread a little ‘jam’ on their bread and drink to the fulfillment of all the wishes that are in their hearts. Later they will then make a similar noiseless and spectral disappearance, three bolts will again be shut noiselessly while the fourth bolt, which is mine, will stay open. In the morning Rossi’s cell No.1 will be opened first, he will then run like a whirlwind to No. 9 and pretend to open the bolt and (hopefully) no one will notice. The four specters are Rossi, Brose, Janssen and I. We won’t say any more about the fairy because they should not really exist in prisons. A caption for all this: New Year’s Eve Ghosts in Prison. We Germans didn’t have a general celebration but the Italians had caps and whistles and behaved like seven-year-old children. The noise was ear-splitting! Towards evening a new German by the name of Peters was brought in. They had to arrest him on New Year’s Eve of all days. He is nice and sensible and should be a good new ‘acquisition’. Now we are 15 Germans along with the two Jews, the Englishman and the Yugoslav. –

1.1.41 Now it is evening again. The first day of the year is almost over and the first official announcement we have received is that all of us, all 50 except for the two Jews, will be transported off to Orange on Friday morning and that there will be no opportunity to inform you women or to see you beforehand. We are all very upset about it. At our request the Boss is going to ring V.B. and ask whether we can’t at least inform you in time on Friday. I hate the idea of leaving just now when I know that you people at home are not very well and whooping cough is still a threat. Now I suppose you will try to move closer to Orange with the family. Brose knows a nurse who has worked for him and who is supposed to be very nice and would probably like to move to the mountains with you and help you, not only with the children but also the household. Her name is Sister Armour and you can reach her through Mrs. Brose, i.e. her address is: Dorchester House, Macquarie Street. If she can’t come, she would know somebody else. Please try. Employ a help anyway, even if it is expensive. The most important thing is that you stay well and don’t become sick. It will cost more to restore you to health than to forestall a collapse in this way. For please, please, Haseken do everything for yourself to keep yourself well. I am so damned helpless in this camp and you are the one in the family who carries the greatest load of responsibility. Under no circumstances must you collapse. If no one else can be found what about Mrs. Herbert in an emergency? She could do the cooking and the shopping so that you would only have the children. If necessary take Ruth; she’d be better than no one. Of course the best would be Inge. Perhaps she would agree after all. – Please don’t visit me too soon in Orange; first let everybody get well again or settle down in Blackheath or wherever. But please write a few short lines immediately and say how you are and what you are planning and what your intentions are. And write regularly, just briefly, how things are going from time to time. Perhaps brevity will also speed up delivery through the censor. Janssen asked me to send Gisela this powder compact. When you have received it let me know immediately and I will know that you have received this letter. If the letter is in it say: ’I received your beautiful Xmas present, the powder puff with new Year’s greetings. Then that will mean this letter. – Please bring the following things to Orange some time or send them with someone else:

1. Short khaki trousers, if possible two pairs.

2. My red bathers.

3. The Christmas shirt I sent back last time.

4. Photos of the boys. (I sent mine to Mother.) But only if you have copies ready at home.

Mrs. Brose was going to bring vitamin B1 tablets on Friday. Now you will have to get them yourself. But please do so. They work miracles. All work and exertion will be ten times easier for you. – In future I will have my washing done in Orange. They now have a laundry.

5. Ask Moore to pay £10 into my account at Orange.

That’s all I can think of at the moment.

Even though the story about the ghosts of New Year’s Eve was written two hours earlier, it all happened just as expected. Only, when I was locking up Rossi two warders from the women’s prison who were just wishing each other a happy New Year caught sight of me and one of them called out really loudly: ‘What are you doing out of bed!’ – And then when I put my finger to my mouth the other one said: ‘Happy New Year anyway!’ I waved my thanks to her and crept back crouched under the peepholes of the cells. She must have told the nice warder in the morning, for he came in at six and quietly closed the bolt to my cell. ‘No one noticed!’ But we had fun and our mugs with your ‘miserable tea’ were raised to the health of all our loved ones and a speedy reunion.

The lunchtime feast today, for which we wanted to push all the tables together, unfortunately didn’t happen due to the same stinkers as on the occasion of Christmas. But Liciardo, the Italian, had invited Brose, Janssen and me to a home-cooked meal. Brose and Janssen went but I had to stay at the German table, gulped down my food and when everybody had finished and the meal was officially ended  I went over to the Italians, where I had to consume the entire six course meal, which admittedly was extremely tasty. Afterwards I felt like a boa-constrictor who has swallowed an ox by mistake. The fact that I first ate at the German table and then went to the Italians privately was considered to be ‘correct’ and consequently there were, thank goodness, no further repercussions. A moody woman is nothing compared with our stuck-up wingers.

Now I’ll finish off. I hope to see you again in Orange, my love, and don’t come till you can tell me that you are completely well again and there’s no cause for worry about the children either. Once again all good wishes for the New Year to all of you in Collaroy and a thousand greetings and kisses. Your E.

11.2.41 Now I am back in Long Bay. ‘It was like coming home!’ Again the accustomed dirt, about 200 men and the usual racket. Trikojus says correctly: ‘It’s like being on the waterfront in Naples.’ It was so lovely of you to drive the long way to Orange in spite of your stiff neck and cold to see me on Sunday. I felt so sorry for you that you had to drive back all that way alone. It would have been so nice if we could have driven as far as Blackheath together. –  At night we then had a musical evening and around nine I got ready to go to the station and was farewelled with ‘He’s a jolly good fellow’. I had four guards with five cannons. One cannon (alias rifle) was taken along by mistake. I first thought it was intended for me. There was also the usual ‘tea’ and at the station in Sydney the elegant and handsome warrant officer from Bourke Street and two Military Police picked me up; all of them were quite short, even rude. In Long Bay, however, I was welcomed with open arms and enthusiasm. Apart from Tric and the old Jew Herrmann there were four new Germans, unknown entities but very nice, and a revolting Czech. All four of them left for Orange this morning with 7 Italians. There are about 200 men here and the dirt, noise and stench are nobody’s business. The first night I spent on the floor in the cell of Maier who is very nice and very clean and who had just washed out and disinfected his cell. From today I have the cell to myself. – Tric is very nice and is quite sure that he will be released. Lisuscha gave birth to a little boy thirteen weeks ago. They are well. Both are taking Tric’s internment in a sensible and brave spirit. Sadly Tric has told me that he and Brose are lethal enemies, i.e. he against Brose for Brose knows nothing of this and has only good feelings towards Tric. He will probably tell me the reason one day. It is a great shame. Probably Tric will stay here in Long Bay till his court case comes up. Herrmann almost embraced me for joy and now makes coffee for me all the time. I have just been told that you have rung and have arrived safely and without any incidents. Williams is on leave for another fourteen days and Cameron, who wasn’t there when you called, said that if you rang up again tomorrow he would permit you to see me, which is very nice! I am also expecting Moore some time soon. – Do you think you might bring little Peter along with you tomorrow? I can hardly wait! –

There are also six young Jews from England/Hay who are waiting for a ship to Palestine. They showed me about a hundred very good and interesting photographs of the Jewish youth migration movement to Palestine. Three of the Jews were very decent types. – What Tric had to tell me was very interesting too. It is certainly not boring here. – Tomorrow I’ll see you and perhaps little Peter! How I’m looking forward to it! Your Ekke

15.2.40

It was a great pleasure to see you and Xavier yesterday. You looked very sweet and pretty in spite of your cold and your preceding worries about Peter, and I can only assure you that I am proud of having such a beautiful wife whenever I see you. And a wife who is also more or less the most sensible and efficient of all. I haven’t got sick of the little straw hat and your suit and am delighted by them every time I see you. [...] I was also very pleased to see Xavier. He never says much but what he says makes sense or is an experience well told. His description of Uwe who wasn’t allowed to come along to Long Bay was marvelous. I am also really glad that while he first wanted nothing to do with the children and considered them only a nuisance, he is now apparently showing great interest in them. It is also a comfort to me that he has made it his mission to look after you and I also liked his statement that the arch-enemy is a coward. But I do want to mention the matter when I see Moore, without asking him to undertake anything right away. It is also important that he should know who is responsible for the fact that I was imprisoned after ten months. I hope he soon has the opportunity to see Spender. I don’t place high hopes on their discussion, am also a bit worried that Moore is ‘not quite pushy enough’. But perhaps he will achieve something in his own quiet logical way.

I am still on very good terms with Tric. He simply can’t understand why he has been imprisoned because, like Brose, he is not aware of any transgression. But he has the advantage at his trial of the University being on his side and the B.M.A. not against him. He wants nothing to do with Brose and is surprisingly hostile to any attempt at mediation. He is horrified at the idea of perhaps being in the same camp as Brose. He hasn’t told me the reason for this violent personal hatred. Strangely enough, it is Brose’s enemies who are his best friends, those who are responsible not only for him being arrested but also not released. I think that he is under the influence of these people in his assessment. He doesn’t want you to ring his wife or otherwise make contact with her under any circumstances, which I can understand. She and the thirteen-month-old son are well and she is not in need. She is also sensible in the way she has accepted the arrest of her husband. If we go back to Orange it will be difficult for me to be caught between him and Brose, in particular because Brose is not in the least aware of serious enmity on the part of Tric.  On the contrary, Brose is looking forward to seeing him again and expressed regret at his internment.

     

16.2.41 This morning we were told that we will be moved to Liverpool on Monday morning. [...]

It is really terrible that we have to be separated for so long. As we admitted the other day, for a limited time it [separation] was quite good for both of us so that we could each prove ourselves independently. But if it is too long the good effect could be lost. I have the feeling that the children, too, badly need me. Unfortunately, there is nothing to be done and we just have to ‘suffer it’, as the folksong says. I can give you one piece of good news, namely that I am now definitely part of the ‘permanent staff’ at Liverpool. The Captain has organized it with Victoria Barracks. I have to look after the Germans here and apart from that I have the task of providing the camp so amply with firewood  that none has to be bought. For this purpose four of us or of the Italians go out into the bush each morning with a corporal and fell and saw wood which is then brought in with a horse and cart. I have now been out four or five times and find that the heavy labor is doing me a lot of good. The first few times it was difficult to saw a big tree to pieces with the long band-saw. But now I am in training and could go on doing it for hours. [...]

Yesterday a representative of the International Red Cross was here, Dr. Morell, and Rossi and I had a long talk with him. We didn’t have much to complain about for things are fine here and our treatment by the soldiers is decent and can’t be faulted. But we discussed with him the project of finding a way to be with our wives and suggested that he might present our suggestion to General Miles. I once told you about it. I suggested that we could plant pine-trees or do forestry work, perhaps in the Kosciusko region. It is quite possible that we will be able to discuss this with the General in the near future. But keep it to yourself, as we are not talking to others about it at the moment. Anyway, Morell was interested and altogether very nice. What he will achieve is another matter. Usually these visits end with the disappearance of the visitor. 

The Commandant told me that he had asked you to come on Wednesday rather than on Thursday, since Tric and I along with a corporal (Kelly, whom you gave a lift to the other day) have to take poor crazy Barry to hospital on Thursday so that he can be examined there by specialists. For Barry is in a state of mind where he could easily become dangerous. He is obsessed with the delusion that American gangsters have murdered the mother of his bride and for this reason he has to go to America to take revenge. To do so, he is also building the most phantasmagorical rocket-planes with motors as long as the entire camp and he knows down to the last penny what it will all cost. He keeps on drawing plans in the sand. But at night he is busy with the ‘killer’, is constantly running up and down the veranda and imagines stabbing him to death; to make it more realistic, he acts out the scream of the fatally struck ‘killer’. You can imagine that our nights are not undisturbed, particularly as he sleeps on our side of the veranda. It seems to be my job to look after the poor madmen, just the same as with Sally E. a while ago.

27.3.41 Today we were supposed to go to town with our poor loony: Tric, Corporal Kelly and I. The ambulance had been ordered for 1.30 pm and the doctors who were to examine him had been informed a week ago. At 1.30 all of us were standing at the gate ready to leave; what didn’t arrive was the ambulance. After a telephone call we were told that the military hospital was not responsible for internees [..] As though they couldn’t have told us that a week earlier. – There we stood with our madman. It had been difficult to convince him that he needed a physical examination as he had to be declared fit for service if he wanted to go to sea again. It then required even more psychological prowess to convince him that this was now no longer necessary, at least not for the moment. Tric and I, and the madman too, were dressed up, bathed, freshly shaven and had polished our boots. Now we stood there, ‘all dolled up and nowhere to go’.- So we put on our work clothes again and Tric and I proceeded to saw up the huge log which we brought in yesterday while the poor madman walked up and down like an animal that had just been caught in a cage and cursed the ‘killer’ and mentally stabbed him with wild gestures. The organization of the departments that want to have something to do with us and those that don’t is really amazing. If it weren’t so annoying for people like us it would be worthy of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.  With few exceptions, all those with whom I have had anything to do up to now would have got the sack on day one or two if they had been working in my office. – But the excursion may take place after all because Captain Bass is determined to have the poor madman examined and will not rest till he has found the right Department. – Last night our loony gave me a lecture about his philosophy of life for several hours and also told me that he was writing a book that was more substantial than Faust. He then showed me a poem from it and gave me permission to copy it.  It is quite strange and will be of interest to Herbert.

Last night we have had the first new inmate for some time. Again a Belgian from some ship whose crime consists of having attempted to get back to Belgium, where he has an old mother and a wife and children from whom he hasn’t heard anything for ages, and this with the help of the German Consul in New York. The poor fellow is very depressed and on top of that he is sick. He gets on well with our other Belgian.

15.2.41. Old Mr. Finckh, who was locked into cell 13 on the 13th February, is completely bewildered why he, at the age of  74, has been arrested. On the first day we were quite worried about him since he apparently has a weak heart but today he has started to get used to it and is taking it like a young man. He is still amazingly fit for his age and told us  some nice episodes from his life; among other things that his grandmother as a young girl had sat on Goethe’s lap when he read out Hermann und Dorothea in their house. When she then married, she called her first son Hermann and that is his (Finckh’s) father. He also told us that as a boy in Freiburg his father had flown hot air balloons. Once a balloon had drifted into a vineyard on the other side of town. When they wanted to retrieve it an old gentleman, the owner of the vineyard, came rushing out threatening them with a stick and chased them away. This old gentleman was the father of the famous Count Zeppelin.

31.3.41 He [the new arrival] reported that the camp in Tatura is not very pleasant, full of cliques and that the relationship between internees and soldiers is not at all good. They are all really enjoying this camp in comparison. [...] On Sunday 70 Italians came from Hay. The camp is full to bursting. We are now 201 men. But on Tuesday a whole lot will probably leave for Hay and Orange.

[Brose] says that everybody in Orange has the ‘release-complex’ and that all those who have faced the tribunal believe that they will be released. But up to now only Schurz has been freed, rather, he is still here and can only go when his papers arrive. They are travelling the road of red tape and it will probably take a while before they find their way to Liverpool. Janssen has given up hope and Wohlmann has received news that he has to stay inside. Rossi has also been told that ‘he must stay interned’. He is sensible about it.

Barry will probably be taken to an asylum soon. He has put a cudgel in the form of a huge stick next to his bed to defend himself against the ‘killer’. I hope he doesn’t mistake one of us for the killer one of these nights. Schurz is probably being released because of his eyes.

2.4.41 Yesterday Barry was interrogated by a military doctor who could convince himself  that he was cuckoo without any doubt. He will probably be taken to the Reception House in the near future. .

Otherwise there is not much to write about here other than that we are daily annoyed by the fact that we have only three brooms for the entire camp, one ax with an intact handle and one with a broken one. The pitchforks are about as large and useful as dining forks and the shovels as teaspoons. You get annoyed, then you say shit, and that’s the end of it.