From Silke Beinssen-Hesse's unpublished biography of Ekkehard Beinssen: Of German Blood
Ekke was
interned on 12 July 1940, ten months after the beginning of World War II which
saw the arrest of most of his German friends and seventeen months before the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour led to an escalation of Australia’s fear of
foreigners. Initially he suspected that a man called Clarkson who owed HB’s
firm money and against whom a court case was pending had maligned him in the
hope of gaining an advantage for himself. But in February 1941, Xavier Herbert
visited Ekke in prison and told him that he had found out that the traitor was
a fellow German, a neighbour whom Ekke and Irmhild had helped in practical and
financial ways and considered a friend. After his own arrest, Ekke had
expressed surprise that H. was not interned, though he did not begrudge him his
freedom. He also asked Irmhild to warn H. not to visit him in prison. Having
contact with other Germans, having relatives in
Germany and receiving letters from
them, or owning German books of any kind were among the things that could
precipitate arrest.
[1] Ekke and
Irmhild themselves, however, made no effort to reduce these risk factors.
Commonwealth Investigation Branch (CIB)
[2]
records show that often flimsy evidence could have a significant impact on the
fate of suspects. By informing on Ekke and Irmhild, H. seems to have managed to
postpone his and his family’s arrest till after
Pearl Harbour.
When Irmhild’s sister Gisela later confronted him, his excuse was his supposed
concern that Irmhild’s pro-German sentiments might pose a risk to
Australia.
Xavier’s comment was that the ‘arch-enemy is a coward’. Ekke seemed to brush
the matter off.
Since Ekke
had made the decision to retain his dual Australian-German nationality, he
would have been aware of the possibility of internment and not too surprised
when it happened. Detectives from the CIB had by now turned up on his doorstep
more than once. A few of the Beinssen’s Australian neighbours succumbed to the
hysteria of war and spread stories of the family signalling to enemy ships off
the coast. But most Australians were kind and helpful like a Mr Innes, a
business associate who visited Ekke in Long Bay immediately after his
internment offering assistance. Ekke wrote to Irmhild:
He
was extremely nice and offered to do everything he could for me. He also said
his house in Manly or ‘Banff’ was available to you. He didn’t know that you
were allowed to stay on at ‘Edgewater’. (20.7.40)
Ekke took
his internment calmly. It was an unfortunate disruption to his family life and
marriage but this was inevitable in wartime when men were traditionally sent
off to far more distant and dangerous situations. In a letter from the CIB to
the Department of the Treasury, written just before the war, it was stated that
Ekke had chosen to retain both his nationalities.
In
June, 1939 Ekkehard Beinssen was interviewed with a view to ascertaining whether
he desired to divest himself of his British nationality by making a Declaration
of alienage. He stated that he desired to retain his rights of a British born –
so as to safe-guard the interests and rights of his children who are of
Australian birth, but at the same time he has no intention of forfeiting his
German nationality. He further stated that in the event of War in which the
Commonwealth was involved against Germany, that he would not take any active
part but would prefer to be neutral. [3]
Ekke did not again want to be placed in a situation where he
had to fight close friends on the other side. Irmhild’s four brothers were or
would soon be of military age and Gerda’s husband was in the army. Though Ekke
hoped that he would be trusted enough to continue working in the Australian
economy, he knew that this would not necessarily be the case. At his tribunal
appeal hearing he does not seem to have made a real effort to clear his name
saying, among other things, that he wanted the education of his children to
take account of their bi-cultural heritage. He wrote to Irmhild:
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. (30.8.40)
He then more than once approached officials with schemes to
allow men like him to do useful work of some kind, for example forestry work in
the Kosciusko region. Later, when Japan entered the war, he expressed an urgent
desire to assist Australia in a non-combative capacity, frustrated that he was
costing the country unnecessarily and not permitted to be of help.
The
new developments in the Pacific are most alarming and it is worse than ever to
be locked up [...] Now that Australia will want every man, surely the
Government should be able to find some job for us interned Australians with
which they could trust us, and were it only farm work or something like that!
To be condemned to be locked up in idleness is worse than ever now that the war
has come right to our door. (12.12.41)
This
situation eventually changed when he and his family (Irmhild and the children
had been interned on 12 May 1942) were released on 5 September, 1944, a year
before the end of the war and allowed to move to an orchard farm Ekke’s
solicitor had purchased for him. There they were able to support themselves and
grow food for Australia.
While
retaining his German nationality meant that Ekke could not be asked to fight
against Germany,
retaining his Australian nationality meant that his accounts could not be
frozen. HB who lost his Australian business in WWI and had to start again from
scratch after the war had made sure that his shares in the business were now in
Ekke’s name. Since trade with America continued throughout the war, though
eventually all but one of the employees of H. Beinssen Pty. Ltd. were recruited
for the war effort, Ekke always had access to money. This meant that he was
able to lend or give money to other Germans whose wives and children were often
suffering hardship and that he could be generous to fellow internees.
Upon his
arrest, Ekke was initially taken to a section of the women’s prison at Long Bay
Penitentiary.
[4] Later
renamed Malabar Internment Camp, this had been turned into a reception and
transit camp from where batches of prisoners were transferred to Orange, Hay,
Liverpool and eventually Tatura once their appeals were heard. Ekke was sent to
Orange on 23 July, back to Long Bay via Bourke Street Military Gaol on 18
August for his appeal, back to Orange on 4 September, back to Long Bay on 15
September because of the pending court case which was then postponed, back to
Orange on 3 January, back to Long Bay on 9 February, on 17 February to
Liverpool, and on 4 June he was finally transferred to Camp Ia in Tatura where
he stayed till a few weeks after his family were brought to Camp IIIa Tatura.
He tried hard to remain in Sydney for as long as possible so as to be able to
see Irmhild and the children regularly and therefore instructed his lawyer, H.
Hamilton Moore, to have the court case against Clarkson postponed to buy a
little extra time. Later, at Liverpool, he managed to be put in charge of the
Germans and to be given the job of felling wood for the camp which meant that
he was less likely to be transferred soon.
In
September 1941, Irmhild moved the family away from Sydney to the Blue
Mountains. Things became difficult for her when in March 1942 her sister
Gisela, a German national, was arrested and sent to the newly opened family
camp at Tatura. Irmhild did have help from a Sister Bovell and later from an
internee’s wife, Mrs Maier. But in May the rental contract for the house where
they all lived expired and she had trouble finding other accommodation. Many
families from Sydney were moving to the mountains for reasons of safety.
Irmhild then made the decision to approach a politician she had once met, who
had promised help should she need it and ask him whether her internment could
be arranged. It was an officially prohibited move, but it worked. The family
was arrested on 12 May and, after 9 days at Liverpool, arrived in Tatura on 21
May, 1942. Since one of Ekke’s illegal letters to Irmhild had been found during
a police search of the house, he was first punished with a custodial sentence
in the camp prison, ‘the little red house’, before he was allowed to join his
family in their camp.
Ekke had actually written Irmhild dozens of illegal letters.
For the first year of his internment nearly all his correspondence with her was
smuggled out of the camp in cigarette packets that the couple unobtrusively
exchanged. But once in Tatura, he usually made do with the official channels
and also wrote mainly in English which made things easier for the censor and
expedited delivery. After Gisela’s internment it became difficult for Irmhild,
who had the three young children to look after, to make the long trip to Tatura
to see Ekke and discuss her situation with him. Mrs Maier had therefore agreed
to be a courier.
Though Ekke
found it hard to be separated from his wife and his little children (they were
not yet four, not yet three, and nine months when he left) his years of
internment were interesting and in many ways rewarding for him. He was with
many old friends, met many new people, was able to study, draw, write and
eventually play regular sport and he discovered and developed skills he never
realized he had. Internment also offered him the opportunity to come to terms
with his bi-culturality.
There was
another advantage that internees had over enemy aliens on the outside. They
could occasionally send and receive 25 word messages via the Red Cross and the Vatican
to and from their people at home. It was also easier to write and receive
letters if you were in a camp. While letters from Germany
only rarely got through, those from Switzerland fared better, on the
whole. HB wrote from Lugano and Gerda was twice able to visit him there; two of
the four long letters with family news she wrote arrived.
In his
first smuggled letter from prison, written on large, rough sheets of prison
toilet paper, Ekke gave a high-spirited and comic account of his arrest. The
Australian detectives who had come for him had been ‘good sports’, prepared to
show solidarity with a fellow countryman by having more than a few drinks with
him on the way. The inconvenienced prison authorities, who could hardly have
failed to notice what had been going on, were also good sports. And Ekke
himself had managed to remain fairly well in control of a potentially
humiliating situation. He wrote:
My
consort of honour was very nice and my arrest and transportation a comedy.
After seeing 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 asphyxiation
till we arrived at the hotel that is situated just before the bridge where we
stopped, as agreed. There we started off with a few drinks to celebrate my
arrest. Then we went on to the Aaron’s Exchange Hotel [...] 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 thrice 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 [...] The gate
was opened with much rattling of keys and clanking of iron, cell no 26
unlocked, and I was given two minutes to make my bed and unpack. Then the light
went off. There I remained alone until seven in the morning. (14.7.40)
At first sight, it seems strange that Ekke should want to
‘celebrate’ his arrest by drinking with his guards. One has to keep in mind
that in the context of Australian masculinity, drinking together and accepting
shouts was a sign of mateship and trust. The Australian Government had, for
whatever reason, decided to be suspicious of Ekke’s guarantee of neutrality. It
therefore seemed important to prove that ordinary Australians, even if in the
employ of the government, did not share this distrust and were prepared to
fraternize with him in the good old Australian larrikin manner. It was perhaps partly Xavier Herbert’s
influence that aroused in Ekke this love of the larrikin and the decision to
enter into his internment as an ‘Australian’. While Ekke’s German persona had
been earnest and sedate, his Australian persona with which we, his children,
grew up was characterized by a love of fun and slap-stick humour.
Immediately
after his arrest Ekke then decided to by-pass censorship and give Irmhild a
true account both of his own thoughts and feelings and the events, people, and
conditions of his new life. This was another act of insubordination but again
one that was not incompatible with co-operation. Resistance and defiance of
this kind are of course the life-blood of prisoners; what is notable, however,
is that there was almost no criticism of his Australian gaolers in Ekke’s
letters. He used the letters, among other things, to give ‘his people’ the best
possible report card. He also set himself the task to give an accurate report
of things that went on behind locked doors and were not subject to public
scrutiny.
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, and then wash outside in bowls. At 7.30 we go in single
file to the kitchen. Breakfast consists of gruel 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 appeal in court. [...] A reply
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’re well
behaved. The warders are all very decent. I don’t find the whole business in
the slightest onerous 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 us
all good. (14.7.40)
These up-beat reports continue; they were obviously intended
to reassure Irmhild:
I
can’t really complain about anything. 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. [...] Because new people are admitted
every day we also hear a bit about what is going on in the world. (18.7.40)
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. (30.8.40)
Ekke’s
objection to his internment was heard before the Advisory Committee on 27, 28,
and 29 August, 1940 though, due to an oversight, he was then not informed of
the decision to keep him interned till April 1941. The minutes of the trial,
held in the Australian Archives as a restricted access document, comprise some
100 pages. They show that the prosecution team read letters from many periods
of Ekke’s life as well as his book about New Guinea. Letters written to HB and
kept in the office had also been examined.
Accusations
levelled against Ekke were that he had belonged to two German associations (for
business reasons, as he explained), had subscribed to the German newspaper Die Bruecke, had social contact with
members of the German community some of whom were Nazis, had considered himself
entitled to vote in the referendum on the Anschluss
of Austria, and had on the occasion of his father’s 70th birthday accepted
an invitation by the German Consul. It was also pointed out that his sister
Inge was a Nazi sympathizer (though apparently not a member of the party), that
his brother-in-law was a major in the German army, that two of his wife’s
brothers were in the army and that his wife was believed to be pro-Hitler. It
was implied that because Ekke kept up his contacts with the German community in
Australia and had family in Germany, he was likely to be politically
unreliable. It was also pointed out that he had always travelled on a German
passport and that his Australian nationality was due to an accident of birth
and not a considered choice.
Ekke
himself admitted that he had strong loyalties to Germany, though he was an
opponent of Hitler, and that he had been in favour of the return of
German-speaking territories, including the Sudentenland, Austria, and Danzig by
peaceful means. He was asked to explain the role of Otto Strasser and his
movement in its relationship to Hitler’s party. He was also questioned about
his views on a resumption of control by Germany
in New Guinea.
Frobenius’ plans likewise gave rise to suspicion. When asked what his position
was with regard to the current war, Ekke stated that he had fought for Germany
in WWI and would not fight against her now, particularly as his and his wife’s
family were all in Germany, excepting his father who had chosen to reside in
Switzerland. But he said he also had strong loyalties to Australia where he had grown up,
lived for the past five years, and which he had decided to make his home. When
asked about the education of his children he said that he wanted them to speak
both languages. Ekke promised he would never commit an act of disloyalty to Australia
and said he would be prepared to forfeit his entire fortune if he was ever
convicted of treachery. In the war against Germany, he wished to be seen as
neutral but if Japan ever entered the war he would be only too willing to
fight. However, since Ekke insisted that he could not take an oath of loyalty
to the British monarch because it would conflict with his previous oath of
loyalty to Germany and would
mean that he could be forced to fight Germany,
it was pointed out to him that his offer to fight Japan had no substance. He was
repeatedly asked what he would do in a hypothetical situation where there was a
conflict of interest, for example if sailors from a sunken German warship
requested his help, and he replied that if such a conflict arose he would
immediately ask to be interned.
Four
witnesses were called by the defence. The first, a former Under-Secretary of
the Premier’s Department, Agent General in London, and now President of the
Superannuation Board had known HB since 1894. He did not know Ekke well but HB
had told him that he himself viewed ‘the Nazi regime with a great deal of
horror’ and that his son ‘shared his views’.(10) A second witness, the family’s
doctor and a friend, also a returned soldier, said that ‘in all respects I have
found him [Ekke] most courteous, gentlemanly, very quiet and an unassuming sort
of person’ and ‘that he was very fond of the country [Australia], definitely
loyal’ and not in favour of the Nazi’s methods. (24) The third witness had been a major in a Light
Horse Regiment in WWI and was now a director of a farm supplies firm with whom
Ekke had done business. He said that he had found Ekke ‘thoroughly trustworthy
in every respect’, that ‘he always expressed to me his intense loyalty to Australia and his antipathy to the Nazi regime
in Germany’
that ‘he was born here [...] and had all his interests here.’ (55) But he also
spoke of a conversation where Ekke had said that ‘he was an intensely loyal
Australian, but if it came to the point of deciding whether he would fight for
Australia or for Germany, he would be compelled to fight for Germany, but, he
insisted his antipathy to the Nazi regime and all it stood for.’ (56) But, the
witness continued: ‘I formed the opinion that he could not do anything to
injure this country – that he would not do anything subversive to this
country.’ (57) The fourth witness was also a decorated major and squadron
leader in the last war and had had business dealings with Ekke as he was the
factory representative of Junkers aircraft works. He too insisted ‘it was very
evident to me, and also to my wife, that Beinssen was not a Nazi’. (59) He
recounted a conversation: ‘I said, “You have to be one thing or the other; you
fought against us last war, you have Australian children, your assets are here.
What are you going to do this time?” He said, “It would be very difficult from
a blood aspect to fight against Germany”, although his assets were here.’ (60)
But Ekke had apparently said that he would fight against other nations with
which Australia was at war ‘particularly against the Japs.’ Other witnesses
prepared to testify for Ekke were not called. The prosecution called no witnesses.
The
Chairman eventually summed up:
‘What
is in our minds about Dr Beinssen is that we are prepared to accept him
substantially as a truthful witness, and it becomes a matter of testing his
case by the nature of the evidence he himself has given. [...] The position is
peculiar. We have no reason to disbelieve what Dr. Beinssen has stated. The
question is – how do we interpret what he has said in the face of the existing
conditions? What we feel is that if the man is to be taken as primarily German,
and if his attitude is that if compelled to fight he would do so on behalf of
his own country, is he, in those circumstances a potential danger to the
country? [...] Our difficulty is that we are unable to test the extent to which
a loyalty of that description would carry a man.’ (70)
When asked to express his opinion, Ekke’s solicitor said
‘He
is a man of very high character. [...] It is a test of character. (71) [...] I
understood he [Ekke] meant he was prepared to go so far as to fight for this
country against anybody but Germany. He could not fight against Germany for
very obvious reasons. (73)[...] I suggest that a man of his character, and a
man with his interests here – children born here, his business here, and his
future life bound up with this country – he would not be guilty of any acts
which would injure Australia.’ (74)
Given the chance for a final word Ekke summed up his
position:
‘I
appreciate very much the fact that during ten months of the war I was not
interned. In those ten months I did nothing else but look after my family and
my business. I have never once in the ten months done anything which was
subversive or against British war effort, and I would continue to act just the
same if I were allowed my freedom. If I gave my word of honour in that respect,
and if I found I could not keep my word of honour, I would ask to be interned.’
(74-5)
To this the prosecutor later responded:
‘Is
not that the very conflict of duty which he might meet with, and if he met with
it, is not his major duty his duty to Germany? If so, the Committee will
realise that this is not a case for parole or anything like that. I submit to
the Committee that no matter what harm it will be doing to him, and no matter
how unfortunate it will be for him, I submit that his internment should
continue.’ (78)
On 20 September, 1940 Eastern Command wrote:
‘I
am directed to state that following upon a recommendation of the Advisory
Committee the Minister has directed that the internment of Beinssen shall
continue.’
Since
people were interned on the basis of their nationality, it is not surprising
that nationality was important in the internment camps and in his letters Ekke
does not introduce anyone without mentioning their nationality. Apart from the
Germans and Italians and those who considered themselves Australians, Ekke also
mentions an Englishman, two or three Dutchmen, a Belgian, two Norwegians, a
Czech, and a number of Jews. The Jews are always treated as a separate nationality.
In the case of many of the internees the reasons for internment were obvious.
Today
another Norwegian came in [...]. He was the third officer on the Troja that now has a different captain
and he refused to sail to England. [...] He is quite happy about it
[internment]. (12.10.40)
Yesterday
two Dutchmen arrived, apparently Dutch fascists [...] Both nice fellows, one of
them very nice. Both married in Holland with three children each.[...] The
Dutchmen were in Amsterdam for three days after the invasion and had a lot of
interesting things to tell. (20.10.40)
A
few Italians and two young Germans were also 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 to 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 as downcast [...] 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. (1.12.40)
Last
night we have had the first new inmate for some time. Again a Belgian from a
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. (27.3.41)
Twice
groups of Jews passed through the prison. In September, thirteen young men
between sixteen and twenty years of age were sent down from Hay in the care of
their rabbi to work as crew on a boat returning to
England. They had been among those
who arrived on the
Dunera in
September 1940.
[6] Ekke
writes:
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 them (German Jews) though there were some Aryans among them
too. [...] I can’t say that the time of my internment has been
uninteresting.(16.9.40)
The
Arandora Star, which
was carrying ‘enemy aliens’ from Britain for internment in more distant
Commonwealth countries, was mistaken for a troopship, which it resembled, and
torpedoed by the Germans on 2 July, 1940 with the loss of 630 out of 1,216
lives.
[7]
Most of the survivors were among the 2542 then sent to Australia on the
Dunera, a hell-ship that resembled early
convict transports in overcrowding, sanitary conditions, and brutality from the
British guards. The internees had almost all their possessions, including
personal documents, manuscripts, and vital medications, stolen from them. It
was consequently not surprising that the young Jews were terrified of having to
sail back.
Just
after you left, our thirteen Jews were taken off. Rumour 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!’ [...] 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. (17.9.40)
In February, another group was sent down, though this time
it seems to have been a voluntary move:
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 good types. (11.2.41)
Not everyone coped well with internment.
The
Polar Bear has definitely had a mental disturbance these last three weeks. He
is not his old self and subject to fits of rage so that you have to intervene.
(24.10.40)
For others the comradeship extended to them was a lasting
experience.
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. (24.10.40)
Their fellow internees gave them an elaborate send-off.
It
was hard to say goodbye to our nice Dutchmen. [...] 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 [...] They both said that they
would not have missed the time with us and 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 amazed at the
huge change that occurred in the fellows in such a short time, particularly in
one of them. [...] As a farewell feast for the Dutchmen, Brose had a lobster
brought in, as big as a calf. (27.10.24)
The intention seems to have been to run the national groups
at Long Bay as separate but friendly
communities. But it was not always easy to keep the peace.
Unfortunately
there has been friction among those 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 the table 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 and will be excluded if he
doesn’t make an effort. He has all the character flaws that can be combined in
one body. The worst: enviousness and resentment, arrogance mixed with
inferiority complexes. - In the meantime, 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 and settled nicely and now there is complete harmony and I was
unanimously voted in as mediator. A Rütli-oath was sworn by all to keep the
peace, 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 (that’s 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. However, with the dignity of my new office
I will make sure that he doesn’t overdo it. (15.12.40)
The traditional festivals provided diversions in the boredom
of prison life and opportunities for bonding.
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. Apart from the lametta [tinsel] you gave us, all the branches were covered with
cotton wool so that the tree really looked quite handsome and winterly. Then
Brose, Janssen and I set the table nicely and decorated it with chocolates,
nuts etc. 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 worry 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 much desired item) beforehand and he was very appreciative. [...]
Now
we want to celebrate New Year all together. In the meeting I suggested we 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’s, 3
yes’s, 2 indifferent. I was surprised at the result. (27.12.40)
The
injustice done to the interned Jews who had presumably fled persecution in
Germany and Austria but were not classified as ‘friendly aliens’, and who were
then again not accepted by the majority of their German fellow inmates is
blatant. In some cases, if they had originally come from the Hassidic,
Yiddish-speaking East, these people were, of course, also culturally different
from the Germans. Ekke obviously saw the camp as an opportunity for an
experiment in international co-operation and worked hard to bring about his
version of world peace. Peace, however, was possible only if the national
groups themselves were harmonious, something often difficult to achieve given,
among other things, the likely differences in ideology. One of Ekke’s friends
came back from the Hay camp with the following report:
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
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 among the 100 or so Italians and apart from that there are also rows and
disagreements among them. (29.11.40)
With time
on his hands at Long Bay, Ekke used the opportunity to rethink his Arabian
experiences, initially in a talk before internees. Although he had access to
his letters of 1924 when he penned his talk, he made the decision to present
neither a historical lecture nor a memoir but to use the occasion as an
opportunity for a cautionary tale. Ekke now claimed to have been loyal to King
Ali to the end and to have been witness to an armistice ceremony conducted with
medieval pageantry that is obviously a poetic invention. In real life, Ekke was
also not in Jiddah to see the return of the pilgrims trapped in Mecca by the war as he
here claimed.
There
were now three main players. In the first place there was the king, Sharif Ali,
a leader of great dignity, kindness, generosity and integrity, who took a
personal interest in everything in the kingdom and instantly rewarded every service
with a gift of gold, something the impoverished Ali was of course never able to
do. But the centrepiece for Ali’s portrait was an incident not mentioned in the
letters of 1924, probably so as not to worry his mother. Ekke and his colleague
were summoned to the King to demonstrate firearms that had recently arrived and
were to be distributed among faithful retainers, all of whom had gathered
around to watch. But in the crowded room one of the pistols was accidentally
discharged, narrowly missing the king. The men were dismissed. When they
arrived at their lodgings, a delegation was already waiting to reassure them
that the King was aware that the incident was an accident and that he had
already forgotten about it. Ekke concludes: ‘There are probably few rulers who
would brush aside even an unintentional assassination attempt with so much
dignity and kindly understanding.’ In Ekke’s wishful rewriting of history, the
admiration King Ali instilled was such, that even his enemy Ibn Sa’ud
eventually honoured him in defeat.
The
second player in this reworking of events was Taher Effendi, the interpreter
and mediator between the king and the narrator. He is described as a man who
regularly held back between a quarter and half of the money he was required to
hand over, while demanding a receipt for the full amount, one of the many
corrupt servants and administrators of the king who were ultimately responsible
for his inferior arsenal, his bankruptcy, and his defeat.
In
Ekke’s story, the defeat of the king was accounted for in Social-Darwinian
terms. Ibn Sa’ud, the third player in this Arabian drama, was described as a
mighty man with a strong, somewhat brutal face who had been toughened by his
life in the desert. He was the ruler of a hardy people with a fanatical faith,
much like the Nazis might have seen themselves. King Ali, in contrast, was
small, slight, a little degenerate with a weak but exceedingly kindly face,
someone who would rather lose a battle than too many soldiers. His regime
represented a moderate and humane version of Islam. Ekke concluded: ‘Those
weaker must give way to those stronger, the old to the young and new.’ There is never a moment’s doubt that Ekke’s
sympathies were with King Ali and that he mourned the fact that instead of
inspiring loyalty, humane and trusting men like this king attracted sycophants
like Taher Effendi who destroyed him and his country. In the current age of
brutal war, Ekke seemed to be saying, the world had come to accept the Nazi
belief that the laws of nature decree that the stronger must of necessity win.
But there is a peculiar twist to Ekke’s cautionary tale. Upon the death of his
brother Faisal of Mesopotamia, Ekke told his audience, Ali once more ascended a
throne. Strictly speaking this was not correct, though Ali did occasionally
stand in for his brother. In the context of Ekke’s story, however, Ali’s
rehabilitation gives listeners some hope that perhaps kindness and integrity
will one day make a comeback.
The
‘Arabesques’, Ekke’s second attempt at writing up his experiences in Arabia,
were conceived as a collection of sketches and brief stories of which only
about fifteen were actually written (the list of topics has over a hundred
entries). Once again, corruption is highlighted. This time, however, the chain
starts in Germany,
where Arab money is wasted on sumptuous hospitality. Ekke gives a farcical
rendition of the shady German firms who deceived third world buyers with their
sham display of wealth. The theme is picked up again in connection with the
agents in Triest and Suez
and ends with the likes of Taher Effendi.
Along
with corruption it is incompetence and cowardice that undermine the cause of
King Ali and this is displayed not by the technologically untrained Orientals
the letters once talked of disparagingly (‘they know very little’) but by the
European experts. Schulz, when asked to demonstrate German guns to the King and
his retainers is clumsy enough to fire one off. The pilot Mielke from Berlin, contracted to
fly the king’s one remaining plane, is so frightened of the enemy that he takes
off from an inappropriate runway and crashes, writing off the plane but
surviving to go home unscathed, by the grace of King Ali.
In
Triest the narrator still has all the arrogant racial prejudices of the typical
European and talks of the servant of the obese and greedy agent-general, from
whom he has to buy his visa, simply as a ‘racial mix’ and a ‘bastard’ though,
unlike his master, this man does his job with dignity and efficiency. A few
days later in Suez an insistent black African, treated equally disparagingly,
turns out to be a German citizen and to have fought in WWI under Lettow-Vorbeck
who handed out pay-vouchers that were never honoured. The narrator buys up his vouchers; it is the
least he can do.
In
Ekke’s letters, we met the young Moroccan servant Ali who amused the men with
his antics. Like his namesake the king, this Ali too now becomes something of
an exemplary figure. Two of his pranks are told. One day the men come home for
lunch to find a bleating young goat (in some versions it is a lamb) in their
kitchen. Ali has bought it at the market and intends to fatten it so that he
can sell it at Ramadan. The men object; it is the constant bleating that gets
on their nerves. After lengthy negotiations Ali is finally told that the goat
can stay on condition it does not bleat. That night there are two goats in the
kitchen and the bleating has stopped. Ali explains:
One
goat all alone is homesick for its mother and brother and sisters and cries.
But two goats are content and don’t cry. When Ramadan comes I will cut one and
sell the other. Much money is paid for a fat goat at Ramadan.
When the goats are finally
slaughtered, it is the Germans who grieve for their pets while Ali buys a
Browning pistol for the money they have earned him. On another evening, the
narrator comes home to find Ali sitting on the step smoking a cigar saved up
for a special occasion. Asked where he got it, Ali protests innocently: ‘I
encountered it under the bed when I was sweeping this morning.’ We are told
that this happens all the time. Something disappears one day, falls under the
bed or under the mattress, and if it is not missed it will disappear for good.
If it is missed and a big enough fuss is made, it will eventually turn up
again. Your Ali, Achmed or Said will have ‘encountered’ it somewhere. Apart
from making the men laugh, Ali demonstrates a conciliatory and almost
acceptable way of circumventing proprietorship and redistributing wealth. Only
those things are kept that the victim has not missed for some time, and only
those inconveniences are imposed that recompense the victim with their
entertainment value.
Such
street-smart wisdom is submitted for more serious consideration in the tale of
the survival of a Christian monastery in the Arab desert told the narrator by
the King’s Russian doctor on the boat coming to Jiddah. The story goes as
follows: In the early days of Islam, the clever prior of an ancient Christian
monastery, knowing that Muslim armies would soon be at his gates, had a mosque
built within the monastery walls, stocked it with food, and when the attack
came retreated there with his monks. For it is an Islamic law that those that
seek asylum in a mosque cannot be touched. After months of fruitless waiting on
the part of the besieging Muslims an agreement was reached whereby the monks
would maintain the mosque for the use of passing Muslims and in return would be
left unmolested. The moral of the story is that if you are willing to negotiate
there are usually peaceful ways of solving problems in the interests of all
those concerned.
This
was, however, a very different approach to that commonly practised in the
Middle Eastern world. There Said Bey was more representative. In Ekke’s letters
Said was presented to us as his best friend; now we see a darker side to him.
The narrator tells how one day Said called for him to let him witness the
interrogation of a Wahabi captive. It is a horrible scene. Though Said knows
that torture will be useless and there is no chance of the man betraying
secrets, he imposes the bastinado and does not relent till the man’s feet are
no more than bleeding lumps of flesh, at which point he has him executed. It is
cruelty of a kind that the narrator finds quite unacceptable and he claims that
it terminated their friendship. The incident is framed by a walk through the
streets. On it the two men come across a dying beggar, fly-blown and stinking,
one of the many pilgrims left stranded and penniless by the war. The narrator
insists that he must be helped. By whom, Said asks, and challenges him to
demonstrate his Christian charity. He then takes the other through the street
of misery that is crammed with beggars. Are you going to help them all, he
taunts. That night the narrator cannot sleep and decides to go back to the
beggar. Fortunately for him, the beggar has died. Two days later the body has
been removed, probably by the owner of the adjacent house. A dying person in
front of your house must be tolerated, a corpse is unacceptable. It is an
unsentimental approach. Ekke is careful to place Said in the context of a
society that is both helpless and indifferent in view of pervasive suffering.
And yet there were people who were not daunted by the scope of the problem. The King’s personal physician, Dr Max
Makowski, the teller of the tale about the monastery, spent all his salary, we
are told, on alleviating the distress of the poor and must have helped at least
some of them. By the time Ekke wrote the ‘Arabesques’, he had made a firm commitment
that it was the Ali-figures, be they king, servant or physician, whom he would
extol as exemplary.
For many
years, Ekke had seen himself primarily as a German who happened to have been
born in Australia.
But once he was interned that seemed to change. There was probably more than
one reason for this. In the first place, he had now spent five years in Australia
as an independent adult and begun to feel at home there. Possibly more
importantly, Hitler had done what he repeatedly promised he would not do and
unleashed another world war. In Ekke’s eyes, this was inexcusable. Perhaps
another reason was that, so far, Ekke had generally avoided living among a
cross-section of Germans – he had rarely resided in Germany for long and done
his best to stay away from the German clubs in Sydney - and now that he was
surrounded by them it was all too obvious that they were not the ideal people
he had once dreamt of. He found the Italians and the Australians more congenial
and more interesting.
Ekke’s
friend Xavier Herbert, who saw himself very much as an Australian writer
celebrating and criticizing the land of his birth, had aroused Ekke’s interest
in the Australian character. He read a number of novels about Australia, often
recommended by Herbert, during his years of internment, among them Brian
Penton’s Landtakers and Inheritors
, Miles Franklin’s and Dymphna Cusack’s Pioneers
on Parade and Henry Handel Richardson’s trilogy The Fortunes of Richard Mahony.
For his first Christmas, Xavier gave Ekke a collection of poems by Ian
Mudie that had just been published. The title poem ‘Corroboree to the Sun’
expressed Nietzschean ideas that Xavier knew Ekke would applaud. In contrast,
Brian Penton’s Landtakers debunked
the myth of a heroic Australian pioneer personality and depicted early colonial
society, which set overseers against convicts and landtakers against
Aborigines, as one that bred gratuitously brutal, selfish, and depraved men who
were unwilling to trust anyone. Ekke was again trying to understand the
character of a nation with reference to its history:
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.
(29.12.40)
All the
same, he was becoming more and more impressed with the Australians he met with
in the prison system, their matter-of-fact competence, their decency, and the
fact that they were prepared to place their intuitive knowledge and trust of
people above rules and officialdom. This applied particularly to the commandant
at Long Bay, Mr Williams, and the warder in
charge, Mr Farmer.
For a
number of weeks during his stay at Long Bay, Ekke acted as secretary to
Williams. Williams confirmed Ekke’s view that though Australia had fine intellectuals,
society did not seem to value them and they were consequently more reserved and
inhibited than their German counterparts.
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’. (20.10.40)
In spite of international hostilities and the prison
hierarchy, a genuine friendship seems to have developed.
The warder,
Mr Farmer, was another of those Australians who were prepared to bend the rules
if they believed that certain prisoners deserved this. After Ekke and his
friend Henry Brose had started a series of thrice weekly lectures for the
inmates, which proved very popular, Farmer decided to reward the two by
allowing them to be together for a while in the evening. Ekke and four of his
friends were later permitted to celebrate New Year’s Eve together but when Ekke
was locking the others up, as arranged, he was spotted:
[T]wo
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. (1.1.41)
The ‘miserable tea’ and the ‘jam’ were concoctions Irmhild
regularly brought in of which the main ingredient was port wine. On a number of
occasions the ‘tea’ was also shared by Australian guards on the long chilly
train trips from Orange to Sydney and back. No one ever gave away the
secret.
In contrast
to Australian individuals, Ekke didn’t think much of Australian bureaucrats and
at one stage, after a potentially dangerous madman whom he was supposed to
accompany to hospital was rejected by a military institution because he was an
internee, he wrote in frustration:
The
organization of the departments that want to have something to do with us and
those that don’t is really mind-boggling. 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 [bureaucrats] 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. [...] (27.3.41)
A dental appointment which had been arranged for Ekke also
had to be cancelled because a different booking procedure was required. And the
constant loss of warrants, with the inconvenience this caused to all concerned,
or the fact that on one of the trips four guards took along five rifles (one
for their prisoner?) or that three prisoners being transferred ended up with nine
guards were other examples of inefficiency that Germans were perhaps less
likely to be guilty of. The lack of basic equipment in the camps was also due
to poor organization. Ekke complained:
[...]
we are daily annoyed by the fact that we have only three brooms for the entire
[Liverpool] camp, one axe 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 the matter is done with. (2.4.41)
The
Australian military bureaucracy, Victoria Barracks, was, however, not only
inefficient but also less benign than the individual soldiers in charge of
internees.
A
new regulation from Victoria Barracks has forbidden all phone 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 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 the Jew Löwy whose bride (a Viennese
Jewess) is supposed to have claimed at Victoria Barracks that she talked on the
phone with Löwy, which wasn’t true at all. (29.11.40)
Much like Löwy might have, (he was, judging by Ekke’s
reports, a bit of a joker), Löwy’s bride, presuming it was she who caused the
problem, probably gave in to the urge to pull a bureaucrat’s leg and
underestimated the self-importance and the real power of security officials
even in Australia.
The
internees whom Ekke felt most drawn to were Australians with a German
background. One of them, Henry Brose, was interned a fortnight or so after
Ekke’s arrest.
[8] Ekke had
met him before but in the camp the two men developed a very close and
supportive friendship. Brose was born in Adelaide in 1890 of German parents. He
was a gifted pianist and an excellent mathematician who had won a Rhodes
scholarship to Oxford in 1913. In his first holidays he visited relatives in
Germany; on his second trip over, however, he was trapped there with the start
of the hostilities of World War I and interned at Ruhleben near Berlin along
with about 4000 British men and boys. The physical conditions at that camp were
initially extremely poor.
Most
of the prisoners were housed in stables, with six beds in two tiers in each
horse box and one hundred beds side-by-side in the open, upper hay-loft. Each
prisoner received a straw-filled mattress and one thin blanket. The crowding
was ‘almost intolerable’, the stables ‘cold, damp and dark’, the nights ‘filled
with the sound of coughing’, the water ‘icy cold’, the food ‘wretched’, the
latrines ‘a danger’; while the mental hardship ‘pushed some ... to insanity and
suicide’.[9]
But the German authorities made improvements and the
prisoners, 370 of whom were apparently ‘dons and undergraduates’, organized
their own camp life.
Thus
there were shoe-makers, barbers and so on; a Dramatic Society, a Literary and
Debating Society and a Musical Society (including an orchestra), all providing
regular entertainment, an increasingly well-stocked library, daily German
newspapers and internal camp publications, and numerous sporting clubs and
competitions; regular religious services for several denominations; and serious
educational activities under the umbrella of the Arts and Science Union and the
Camp School. The programme of the first was of university standard, of the
latter from elementary level to senior secondary work.[10]
While at Ruhleben, Henry Brose gave an estimated two hundred
scientific lectures on topics like ‘differential and integrated calculus’ and
‘mechanics – the dynamics of a particle’ during the more than two years before
he was released into the custody of a prominent German family as a tutor for
their children. Thus he had considerable experience in the successful running
of an internment camp and, while still at Long Bay,
he started organizing the lectures for the internees mentioned earlier. The
Tatura men’s camp eventually also had an orchestra, a choir, lectures,
theatrical performances, regular sporting events, and the like.
After WWI,
Brose was awarded further degrees from Oxford. Beginning at Ruhleben, he
translated a total of eighteen of the most important works of modern physics
from German into English and, according to Jenkin, ‘his translations are his
enduring memorial’ since they made the writings of important scientists like
Einstein, Max Planck, Erwin Freundlich, Arnold Sommerfeld, Moritz Schlick,
Albert Neuberger and others accessible to an English public. On Einstein’s two
visits to the UK
in 1930 and 1931, Brose acted as his host and translator and he also wrote
newspaper articles to publicize Einstein’s work. By then he had accepted a
position as Reader (1927) and in 1931, Professor of Physics at Nottingham University. But a scandalous affair with
the wife of a clergyman which led to her divorce and the awarding of
considerable costs against Brose forced him to resign and he returned to Australia in
1935. There he worked for Sydney
University’s Cancer
Research Committee on blood tests for the diagnosis of cancer and x-rays for
cancer treatment until the organization was closed down in 1938. His angry
reaction to this move offended powerful colleagues who were to remain his
enemies. He then worked in private practice as a pathologist and biochemist and
eventually became the Australian agent for Bioglan Laboratories. Brose’s
promotion of blood tests for the early diagnosis of cancer and of certain
discredited treatments of cancer aroused disapproval among medical people. His
connections with things German made him subject to suspicion. John Jenkin, his
biographer, writes:
Brose
had made no secret of his affection for Germany throughout his life, and he saw
no reason to change now. In 1936, for example, he gave a lecture to the Sydney
YMCA in which he appealed for a more sympathetic understanding of recent
improvements in Nazi Germany, and he had a wide circle of German friends and
acquaintances, some of whose loyalties would later fall under strong suspicion.
[11]
Though the police report on him admitted that ‘great
difficulty was experienced in endeavouring to obtain evidence of a concrete
nature as to any alleged subversive activities of Brose’ he was arrested and
taken to Long Bay on 30 September, 1940, eleven weeks
after Ekke was interned. His appeal was heard over a period of eight days and,
since he had a considerable number of enemies by now, it failed. The Advisory
Committee concluded:
There
is no evidence on which any affirmative finding of a positive act against the
British Commonwealth could be made ... The Committee has concluded that this
Objector is a thoroughly unscrupulous person, and is quite devoid of moral or
ethical inhibitions. Moreover he is possessed of marked energy and mental
capacity and is in need of money ... given the opportunity, he could
undoubtedly be of great potential danger to this country ... the Committee can
only say that it is not satisfied that it is neither necessary nor desirable
for the safety of the public or the defence of the Commonwealth that his
internment should continue, and recommends that his objection be rejected. [12]
In letters to the Attorney-General H. V. Evatt, both his
barrister and the prosecutor protested against the proceedings, the latter, Mr
Holmes, writing:
At
the time I expressed ... my disgust at the manner in which the proceedings were
conducted ... [and] urged upon Mr Spender ... that he should release this man,
who in my opinion has never had a fair hearing at any stage... In the meantime
it seems to me that one of the greatest injustices which has been done to an
Australian citizen has been imposed on Dr Brose... I have never had any opinion
except that the internee was wrongly kept in internment and that his internment
was an utter disgrace to the very principles which this country has been
fighting for. [13]
Brose kept up his fight for exoneration and rehabilitation
throughout his internment. In November 1943, he was finally released, with
severe restrictions, to work as a farm labourer at Terrigal, north of Sydney. By that time Ekke
had been in the family camp for a year and a half.
The moment
they met at Long Bay, where Ekke was awaiting his appeal,
he and Brose struck up a close friendship. Brose was a fascinating man. He had
an effervescent, energetic, witty, optimistic, sparkling personality with a
great font of knowledge that he was willing to share and an enthusiastic
interest in anything he could learn from others. Since he had never been guilty
of anti-Australian sentiments or activities, he could only surmise that his
enemies at Sydney
University were
determined to wreck his career and reputation and that they were probably
powerful enough to achieve their aims. Consequently, he was at the time also
angry and depressed. To cope with this anger, Brose drew parallels between his
own fate and that of the inventor of the ether anaesthetic, the American
dentist Thomas Morton. Morton had made a discovery that was of incalculable
benefit to mankind but was pursued right up to his death by a jealous and
corrupt medical profession who refused to recognize the achievements of a mere
dentist and gradually succeeded in destroying Morton’s reputation, his source
of income, and eventually even his marriage and his health. In Brose’s view,
something similar had happened to him when the medical establishment refused to
recognise his contribution to cancer research because he was a mere physicist
and plotted his dismissal. The two friends decided to turn this material into a
full length drama that would closely follow the biography of Morton. They
planned the scenes together and shared the writing, though Ekke probably ended
up doing most of the latter. Once the German version was finished, he also set
about translating it into English. Brose had connections with the world of the theatre.
His beautiful and loyal wife, Jean Robertson, was a stage, film, and radio
actress with an international reputation. She was obviously also the ideal
person to play the part of Morton’s loyal, beautiful, and highly principled
wife.
The vicissitudes
suffered by Brose show how awkward it could be, in those years of national
rivalry, to be subject to the accident of having the wrong ‘blood’ in your
veins. Brose had been in no doubt as to his allegiance to Australia. But there
were also cases of genuine cultural and national confusion that came too close
to Ekke’s own perennial problems of cultural ambiguity not to leave him
uncomfortable. The thirteen Jewish refugees from Hay Ekke writes about were a
case in point.
The
biggest joke is that a local Jewish business sent these fellows wind jackets in
a fit of generosity, free of charge 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 defence of the
thirteen and as an honest reporter I do have to mention that they sent them
back. [...] 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. [...] Some of the surnames of the fellows were
amazing.[...] 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. [...] They were so dirty and unkempt that even the
Italians claimed that the prison now not only smelt different, but actually
stank. (17.9.40)
While their religious customs – they were obviously a
Yeshiva group - and their disregard for European standards of hygiene set them
apart from the Germans, the language they spoke was German, they were
contaminated with Nazi ideology and German nationalism, their Nordic first
names bore witness to their parents’ attempts at assimilation, even while their
surnames told of German anti-Semitism. But these boys were at least aware of
the significance of the swastika, in apparent contrast to the Jewish donors of
their jackets. The manufacturers, who had embroidered the sign back to front,
were obviously also confused. In line with his nationalist orientation, Ekke
does not interpret all this as indicative of the ultimate irrelevance of
cultural and national boundaries, and during a nationalistic war this would
perhaps have been foolish, but as indicative of a world gone mad. If one
believed with Woodrow Wilson in an international order based on the neat
concurrence of national and cultural boundaries, the Jews could be seen as a
worrying anomaly which Zionism might remedy. Ekke mentions reading about
Zionism in
Long Bay. As we saw, he was far more positive
about the group of young Jews who had opted to go to Palestine for they at
least had, in his view, a firm understanding of their national and cultural
identity and were prepared to be pioneers of a solution to the Jewish question.
[14]
More
unnerving than the thirteen Yeshiva boys was another Jewish fellow prisoner.
Sally Weston
[15]
initially appeared to be a prosperous and fully westernized gentleman and
joined the circle around Ekke and his friend Henry Brose. Though he was German
speaking, he also saw himself as having Australian loyalties. But as a
personality, people found him difficult to tolerate and it was not long before
his exhibitionism started to irritate Brose and Ekke. When Ekke was warned by
the Commandant that Sally had handed him a submission ‘that blackened all their
names’ and this became widely known he was boycotted by the camp inmates. His
behaviour became more and more bizarre. Eventually Sally allowed Ekke to read
his report.
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.[...] 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 [...]
Sally thereupon decided to do penance by going on a diet of
dry bread and bitter tea and donating the food stuffs his wife had brought in
to the other prisoners in an attempt to retrieve his genuine un-Westernized
self. And then came the tragic ending:
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 Weston 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 ‘Weston’ was flung out of the cell. Then the warder suggested that
Weston be left 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 Weston, 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. (13.11.40)
Sally’s
story, here considerably abridged, is the longest and most moving of all the
narrations in Ekke’s letters, obviously because his feelings towards him were
so ambiguous. Initially, Sally was mainly a nuisance. But the report to the
Boss for which he was seen taking copious notes was no laughing matter. Many of
the men believed they were internees because informers had blackened their
names with inventions and many still had their appeals pending. They could not
tolerate a traitor in their midst. It was perhaps unfortunate that the Boss did
not immediately make it clear that the report was in no way credible. While
Sally’s supposed machinations were unnerving, his split identity into an Eastern,
Hassidic Schmuel and a modern, Western Weston would have brought Ekke’s own
cultural dilemma too close for comfort. If it had not all been too difficult to
untangle, a version of Sally’s story is probably the novel Ekke should have
written in camp.
It is a
measure of how caught up Ekke was in Sally’s story that he decided on the spur
of the moment, ostensibly for reasons of health, to enter upon a week’s fast at
more or less the same time that Sally was trying to castigate himself with
abstinence. It is hard to know to what extent there was an involuntary
identification or to what extent Ekke wanted to set an example of
self-discipline and for whose benefit. His talk to Irmhild about ‘finding his
new path’ suggests there were elements of the former. He wrote to her:
I
more or less stuck to my fast for the seven days. [...] Even though I was a
little disappointed with the mental effects of the fast, I still think I am
making headway with finding my new path. But I can’t be more specific yet.
(17.11.40)
A few
months later, Ekke found himself involved with another psychiatric case and it
is interesting to see how much more relaxed he was writing about Barry.
[...]
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 fantastic rocket-planes with motors as long as
the entire camp and 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 Weston a while ago. (16.2.41)
There was never any doubt about Barry’s madness. He
obviously needed medical help.
Though Barry was probably more dangerous than Sally, he was
presumably less worrying because his personal problems had no relation to those
of Ekke.
Camp life
changed once Ekke was transferred to Tatura in mid 1941, for this was no longer
a transit facility but a purpose-built, long-term camp where the internees had
a good deal of influence on the running of their daily lives.
[16]
In the first of the censored letters, which he would write from now on, Ekke
gives the following report:
This
is a beautiful camp, well laid out and efficiently run. There is any amount of
opportunity for learning, plenty of sports facilities, theatre, picture-shows
every fortnight and a great assortment of interesting people. So far, I have
spent my time greeting old friends and talking. Solti [Soltwedel] was
especially pleased to see me again and so was I. He has not changed since I saw
him ten years ago.[...] I am in a hut with part of the old crowd from Orange
and Liverpool and have rigged my bed next to Brose. - I see now, that it will
be necessary to make a program for the day’s work and to stick to it otherwise
there is the danger of doing a lot and achieving nothing. I am sure it will be
over a week before I settle down. There is another distracting feature, too. It
is a café where one can sit and have a cup of coffee or chocolate and cakes for
next to nothing and where it is very comfortable to sit and talk for hours. I
am determined to finish that play and also the Arabesken and will go on with my sketching. I may also join the
theatre and, apart from that, I may go on with Russian lessons. But as I say,
it will be hard to fit everything into a day.
(orig. 6.6.41)
One of the prominent internees of
Camp1a was Dr Gruber, an Austrian who had the misfortune of being on a concert
tour with his boys’ choir, the Wiener Sängerknaben, when war broke out. Gruber
conducted the camp orchestra and the choir and also gave the occasional
lecture. The concerts were obviously of a very high standard.
We
had a symphony concert by our orchestra Saturday and Sunday night: Beethoven’s
8th and Mozart’s 38th symphony. They played marvellously well. The officers
from outside were our guests for the first time and I think they enjoyed it
immensely. (13.10.41)
Ekke wrote to Gisela asking her to lend him her recorder; he
had hopes of later switching to the clarinet and joining the orchestra. Brose
gave piano recitals. Ekke claimed that
his friend played Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto as well as Backhaus on the
record. Ekke participated in the production of two plays. In the first, Der Kleinstädter, he limited his
contribution to prompting but when Kleist’s Der
Zerbrochene Krug was chosen he accepted the role of Gerichtsrat Walter, the upright court inspector who sees through
the corrupt machinations of the lower court to secure a just verdict for the
plaintiffs. Most of the men had recent court experience; the onus had been on
them to clear their names in the face of secret evidence from unknown informers
so it was not surprising that they chose this particular play. Later, in the
family camp, Ekke was in charge of a very successful production of Lessing’s Minna von Barnhelm, an Enlightenment
comedy of manners in which Gisela played
the part of the heroine.
Ekke spent
most of his time studying various scientific and medical subjects where Brose
could be his mentor. He also continued his Russian studies, repeated his Long
Bay lecture on gliding for a different audience, and drew portraits of his
fellow internees. Once every three weeks the men of each hut were rostered on
for kitchen duty, to peel potatoes, serve at table, wash up and sweep the mess
hall. The group from Ekke’s hut also worked together on a garden around their barrack
and the men of the camp together built a tennis court for themselves where they
played regularly and conducted tournaments during Sports Week. They were
apparently allowed to have a dog, Schaaps, in the camp with them, and two
parrots, one rosella and one grass parrot. Both were caught as ‘naked little
few-day-olds’ and were in the habit of sitting on Ekke’s shoulders as he wrote.
Relations with the guards were obviously good, though the censored letters
could not comment on such things. On one occasion, some internees were treated
to a very enjoyable swim in the Waranga Reservoir. And on New Year’s Eve they
were allowed a pint of beer each. ‘It was quite nice to test the stuff but I
can do without it’, Ekke commented. Apart from having his many old and new
friends, Ekke adopted a young man as his son. He reported:
Yesterday
my son had his birthday: 18 years. Our hut gave him a very nice party from 8
till 9.30 with sandwiches and coffee. We then all told a brief story, [about]
where we celebrated our eighteenth year and it was very interesting and amusing
to hear the different destinies and situations in which the 18 chaps in the hut
were at the time. (orig. 24.11.41)
A few months later, he wrote proudly:
My
adopted son has not been wasting his time. He just got through his exam for sea
captain. He deserved to get through as he was working very hard. (orig.11.4.42)
In many respects, life as an internee could be rich and
pleasant if you were prepared to make the best of it. All the same, it was a
strange life for a man in his early forties. He confessed to Irmhild:
Internment
is somehow as I imagine old age to be: So little happens, apart from the daily
routine, that one lives in old memories of the past. But I’ll be a lad of 17
when I get out! (orig. 6.10.41)
Perhaps the most difficult aspect
of internment was the separation from wife and family. Ekke clearly missed
Irmhild a lot. Every visit was of enormous importance to him and he did his
best to make her feel good:
My
darling! It was so lovely to see you again yesterday. We had such a lot to talk
about that I was hardly able to tell you how lovely and sweet you looked. Those
who saw you thought the same and you were looking well in spite of all your
work. (13.8.41)
Ekke also missed the children and Irmhild brought them along
on a number of visits: to Orange for my fourth birthday, to Long Bay for
Peter’s first and on several other occasions, later to Tatura. From there he
wrote:
I
was astounded how well they speak both languages now and how well they keep
them apart. (25.10.41)
Irmhild and Gisela were making sure that the children had
the bi-cultural upbringing which Ekke envisaged for them and that he had
referred to when he was questioned by the appeals tribunal. He wrote to Irmhild
about it at the time:
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, flocks of them high up in
the sky. That suddenly brought back to me the mood of my first melancholy Weltschmerz when, in my ‘romantic
period’, I lay on the edge of a grain field in Bavaria with my eyes closed in
just the same way. My heart was 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 a ripe wheat field and
flowering meadows also came back. One is really amazingly receptive and
impressionable as a young person. In those days, one’s 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. (25.9.40)
Ekke here seems a little confused about whether sensitivity
to nature is an inherited trait or an acquired one. On the assumption that it
was the latter, Irmhild saw to it that the house she rented in Wentworth Falls
was set in superb expansive gardens and that the children were often taken on
walks in the mountains.
Ekke also preferred news of the
war to be kept from the children.
How
good that the children are still so little that they cannot grasp the
significance of the war with all its terrors. (18.12.41)
He had just received a letter from Gerda indicating that
Irmhild’s brothers had so far survived. Ekke comments:
How
lucky we are that our boys are yet so young! Let us hope that they may devote
their lives to something constructive, not destructive. I think you should
begin to impress this line of thought on Uwe’s mind now. (orig. 15.12.41)
This was particularly important as the family now seemed the
only haven of peace from which the world could renew itself:
You
are right: After this war there will be only hatred and distrust in the world
and the only place to look for love and understanding will be the family. How
lucky I am still to have that! For some of my fellow-internees even this source
of love has been destroyed. (5.12.41)
To continue having an influence on the development of his
children and remain a part of their lives Ekke began writing stories for them.
Irmhild and
the three children were interned on 12 May, 1942, two months after Gisela. Life
‘on the outside’ in Australian society had not been particularly pleasant. In
her detailed post-war letters, Irmhild tried to give her surviving brother and
German friends some idea of what things were like during the years when they
were unable to communicate:
When
Italy entered the war [Ekke] was interned in spite of being Australian by
birth. When things looked as though Japan would come in, Gisela was put in a
camp. Our little Peter had been born in October ‘39 and I found it was almost
beyond my strength to look after the large house and the three little children
by myself. (7.11.46)
Even more than the practical difficulties, Irmhild found the
hostility of some of her neighbours hard to cope with.
We
experienced a good deal that was horrible because of the war, so that once
Gisela had been interned I actively promoted my own internment with the
children. On the other hand, many people and above all the ordinary and
uneducated ones behaved in a wonderfully decent and humane manner. Among the
educated Australians we have only a few, though trusted and very dear friends.
But as a class, I like the lower middle classes here best. (4.10.46)
It took the children quite some
time to adjust to camp conditions, which were Spartan and unhygienic.
[...]
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 draughty 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 marvellous. 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, Irmhild 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 couldn’t 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)
When the family were offered early release in September
1944, they saw this as a mixed blessing.
Ekke
produced three major pieces of writing during internment. There were the
‘Arabesques’, the ‘Thomas Morton’ drama he wrote with Brose, and a set of six
stories he composed for his children.
Ekke’s
stories were set in what was presumably Norway, a ‘Viking’ country with the
sort of challenging, lonely, mountainous landscape that had enabled Ekke to
‘prove’ himself in New Guinea and that was the complete opposite of the
enclosed, over-crowded, flat, dusty and treeless surroundings of the camps.
The
characters in the stories were the equivalent of our own family, with names
that resembled those of us children (Wibke, Ulli and Pitt, for Silke, Uwe and
Peter) and were intended to encourage direct identification. Through his
creative and our reactive imaginations, Ekke would continue to play a
significant part in the lives of his children and influence our emotional
development, our ideals, and future endeavours. The stories also enabled Ekke
to give ‘child friendly’ explanations for such things as a father’s absence
from his family on Christmas Eve, to herald the approach of another sibling,
and eventually, to attempt an explanation of the violence that had racked the
world throughout his children’s lives. They offered us reassurance that we
would be at all times safe because we were supernaturally protected; but they
also showed us how we could rise to a challenge and be fearless, independent,
and courageously helpful, warriors fighting for a good cause in a dangerous
world.
Since we
had no chance of developing the sensitivity to the beauty and spirituality of
nature that Ekke believed was our German heritage in the surroundings of the
camp, we would have to be introduced to them vicariously. Wibke, Ulli and Pitt
roam the forests around their lonely log hut in all seasons. They pick
blueberries for a pie, lose their way and come dangerously close to the sort of
cliffs that were to be found everywhere in the Blue Mountains; they help their
father with his tree-felling work; when the father has an accident Ulli goes
off alone to get assistance and has to brave storms and swollen streams on the
way. Pitt discovers an injured fawn, takes it home, and nurses it back to
health. Wibke can find healing herbs when this is required. These are the
equivalent of experiences Australian children living in the bush might also
have. As truly ‘German’ children, Wibke, Ulli and Pitt are, however, also aware
of the spiritual dimensions of nature, the mythical, religious and fairy-tale
forces that are at work deep within it. They live in a landscape where there
are invisible guardian angels that can be discovered on the canvas of artists
who faithfully copy a landscape, even though these artists do not themselves
believe in angels and have no idea of what they have painted. It is a landscape
through which the Christchild travels on his sleigh at Christmas to spread
happiness in the world and where a little angel from his retinue can become
lost, receive help from the humans and eventually decide to join the family as
a baby brother. It is also a landscape where naughty gnomes hide in the roots
to trip up the passer-by. And it is a landscape that is ruled by the mighty
Winterking, who plays his organ of icicles deep within the glacier that is his
home. Wibke is privileged to visit the king one night. There in the glacier, he
also hides the treasure of gold that men like the ‘Vikings’ covet. Stern, but
also just and generous, the Winterking is prepared to distribute gifts to those
who, like the children, are brave enough to fight the good fight that will
bring peace to the world. Peace is embodied by the Winterking’s lovely
daughter, the goddess of spring, Osatara. For a while she takes on the form of
a fawn; the children are eventually able to rescue her from death at the hands
of the ‘Vikings’. All these encounters with the supernatural are wonderful and
important experiences that ‘sober and rational’ people tend to miss out on and
that help to give a deeper understanding of the world.
Ekke’s last
story, written after his family’s release when I was eight, Uwe seven and Peter
five, is in some ways his most ambitious as it attempts what can be seen as an
explanation of the war. According to it, the Vikings, who were kind to brave
little Ulli when he sought them out in their cave to ask for help for his
injured father, had actually come to the region to rob the Winterking of his
gold. They are environmental vandals, prepared to melt the glacier where the
regulating power of nature resides and to kill sacred animals to satisfy their
greed for the gold that they hope will bring them wealth and power. Their
campaign against the Winterking, characterized by huge fires and wild songs,
continues all winter, bringing unnatural cold to the region. But in the end,
the Vikings have to declare themselves defeated and to bring this about the
children, as messengers of the Winterking, have had a role to play. Because
they fought valiantly and on the condition that they depart from the area, the
Winterking gives the Vikings swords that are useful only as long as the
struggle in which they are engaged is for good: a purely defensive military
capability. The children’s father, who also happens to be of Viking stock and
has some admiration for the strength and courage of his cousins, is however,
appalled by what these vandals were attempting to do and glad to see the last
of them. Though Ekke’s story is most obviously relevant in an environmental
context, it could also refer to Germany’s campaign, for it alludes to the
invasion of a peaceful land for the purposes of looting and destroying, and to
violence motivated by greed. What is entirely missing from Ekke’s version of
Nazi crimes is the whole dimension of racism. When the story was written in the
first half of 1945, Ekke was as yet unaware of the existence of extermination
camps and the massacre of six million Jews. He still interpreted the war in
terms that were, arguably, applicable to World War I. ‘The Red Snowdrops’ was
his last attempt at literature.
One tends
to assume that detention is always a situation people would wish to escape at
any cost and H. Hamilton Moore, Ekke’s solicitor, was certainly of this opinion
when he fought to have his clients released at the earliest possible date. By
mid 1944 an Allied victory in Europe was more
than likely and consequently German patriots were no longer considered a
significant threat. Early release of a family of six also meant a reduction in
tax-payer expenses. Moore found our family an
orchard near Orange
to which we were moved in September 1944, by a circuitous route that avoided
major population centres. It was a region that appealed to Ekke and Irmhild for
its European climate and vegetation. Moreover, its distance from Sydney was almost the
specified 200 miles. Moore’s
intentions had been good but, as Irmhild later explained to her brother,
internment had advantages over a restricted life as enemy aliens in a hostile
society.
For us
children, however, the 70 acre orchard where we arrived at blossom time was a
little paradise. It was named ‘Casmalia’, conjuring up the honeymoon period of
Ekke’s and Irmhild’s life. Ekke threw himself into the farm work with gusto. He
had long been interested in agriculture and soon began experimenting with
innovative and ecologically sound farming methods. We children could be out in the fresh air with
him all day, helping. The schools Ekke and Irmhild eventually chose for us were
run by Sisters of Mercy and the De La Salle Brothers who made sure that we met
with no hostility of any kind, in spite of the fact that we were not Catholic
and arrived there speaking no English. The children of friendly neighbours kept
us company on the two-mile bike ride to town of a morning. Irmhild later wrote:
Ekke celebrated the end of the European war in May 1945 and
the Japanese war in August 1945 with his workers on the farm. Irmhild and
Gisela had less cause to celebrate. Our family were able to return to their old
home of ‘Edgewater’ in Sydney in early 1946.
On March
12, 1946, Irmhild received a letter from Gerda’s husband telling her that her
father and stepmother had committed suicide, obviously to avoid capture by the
Russians and the reprisals against land owners to be expected from Communist
troops. At this stage, she had not been able to make contact with her last
surviving brother, Arnold, who had earlier been seriously wounded. When she
read in the newspapers that a relative of hers, Abraham Frowein, had been
placed in a position of influence in occupied Germany, she used the opportunity
to write to him for help and information:
