See also Julius Kahn 1896-1965.
On September 6, 2010, it was 70 years since the HMT Dunera had called at the port of Sydney in Australia. The ship had on board at that time about 2,000 Jewish refugees who had fled the Nazi regime in Germany and Austria. There were also about 500 German and Italian prisoners of war on the ship. The name “Dunera Scandal” is due to the 8-week crossing from England to Australia, during which the refugees were treated terribly.
As we could see from the German documents, Julius was born in 1896. He was a descendant of two families, both of which had their roots in Themar. Julius had three sisters and five brothers, as well as several nephews and nieces. We also knew that two of Julius’ brothers, Frederick Daniel and Leonard, had been killed in the First World War. It was known that three family members had survived World War II because they emigrated in time. A non-Jewish wife and four children, who were half-Jewish, also survived. Furthermore, we found out that Julius had escaped from Germany to England. However, the German archival material did not reveal anything more.
In the archive material from Australia we have found much more information. Now we know that Julius, like his father and his brother Adolf, was a master butcher.
We also know that Julius moved to Nuremberg in the twenties, where he married Therese Hutzler, with whom he had two daughters. In 1939 he left Germany for England in the hope that Therese and the girls would follow him. However, after the beginning of World War II, all Germans (both German Christians and German Jews) were declared enemy aliens in Britain. Then, when panic broke out in May 1940 that Germany might attack England, Julius was arrested, sent to Kitchener Camp, and subsequently put on the HMT Dunera ship. Even when the British government finally realized its mistake in 1941 and began repatriating the refugees, Julius was not included. At the top of the list were men who were married and whose families were also already in England. Julius’ wife Therese and their two daughters, meanwhile, were stuck in Germany and deported to the Izbica ghetto near Lublin in March 1942. The documents do not say when Julius learned of their deaths; they only say that he was paroled in 1943, remained in Australia after the war, and lived near Sydney in Australia until his death in 1965.