The Evacuated German and Austrian Students and Staff of University College London in Aberystwyth during the Second World War
Part Three: Interned U.C.L. Students In Australia and Canada
The final blog focusing on the evacuated University College London (U.C.L.) students will explore the life stories and experiences of 9 students who ended up being interned in either Australia or Canada, far away from both their safe haven of Aberystwyth and their homelands of Germany and Austria. This blog will consider addressing the questions set out in the first blog in this series. Namely, who were these German and Austrian nationals and importantly how and why did they themselves end up in the seaside town of Aberystwyth, miles from their homelands, and subject to potential internment? What was their fate? Were they subjected to internment or were they found exempt to such a fate? If it is possible to ascertain, what were their individual experiences of the tribunals and judgements they faced? Alongside considering why were internees sent to Australia and Canada as well as the impact of internment on these individuals and those around them and how far these internments impacted or influenced the future decisions and paths taken by these internees.
According to the historian Rachel Pistol, the decision was made by the British Government in 1940 to move some internees away from Britain and to the dominions of the British Empire, namely Australia and Canada, to prevent internees helping the Nazis in the case of the potential invasion of Britain. This decision to move some of those deemed “enemy aliens” to Canada or Australia, was not initially known publicly. This decision to move internees became public however with the sinking of the ship, the Arandora Star on the 2nd of July 1940, according to the political scientist Neil Stammers. This ship was carrying internees to Canada when it was torpedoed leaving only 600 survivors from the 1,900 people onboard. In the British Government’s admission on the radio on the 3rd of July, according to Stammers, they argued that those on board were Nazi sympathisers and Italian fascists. As, the following life stories will demonstrate however it is clear despite the government’s admission, that they also sent internees who had been deemed “enemy aliens” on similar ships to the Arandora Star, who were clearly neither sympathisers nor fascists to be interned in Australia and Canada.
One such internee was Heinrich Eugen Nowottny, the only U.C.L. student who was interned in Australia out of the nine whose life stories will be explored. Heinrich was born on the 11th of June 1912 in Germany. It is unclear how Heinrich fled Germany and ended up becoming a U.C.L. student, but he was evacuated alongside his fellow students to Aberystwyth at the beginning of the 1939 academic year and lived at 5 North Road. It was whilst Heinrich was living there that he was interned on the 25th of June 1940 and later sent to Australia on the S.S. Dunera on the 10th of July. This journey on the S.S. Dunera, according to J.M. Ritchie, a German studies academic, was unbearable and the guards on board reportedly robbed the internees. Heinrich himself appears in a photograph on a webpage of the National Museum Australia, which focuses on these internees who arrived in Australia on the S.S. Dunera. From this photograph, it appears that Heinrich was interned in the Tatura Camp in Victoria. Heinrich remained there for nearly two years before his release was authorised on the 5th of January 1942. He returned to Britain on the S.S. Themistocles and was released on arrival on the 6th of October 1942. Heinrich then lived in Oxfordshire for the rest of his life. There, he married Winifred Dodds in 1948 and then became a naturalised British citizen and changed his name to Henry Eugen Nowottny in September 1959. By the late 1950s, Henry was a technical translator and lecturer. He passed away in 2001 in Oxfordshire.
Heinrich Eugen Nowottny (1912-2001), photo in Police Memorandum Book inscribed ‘Aliens’ Photographs’, H.W.?Owen, MUS/204, Archifdy Ceredigion Archives |
The remaining eight U.C.L. students were all interned in Canada, such as Paul Mandl. Paul was born on the 9th of February 1917 in Vienna, Austria and became a refugee from Nazism in England, where he began studying at U.C.L. From there, he was evacuated to Aberystwyth in 1939 and lived at 32 Portland Street. Paul remarked in a student magazine, according to the social historian Georgina Brewis, that Aberystwyth and Wales more generally reminded him of Austria due to their social and geographical similarities. Whilst in Aberystwyth he also took an active role in student activities there. This time for Paul was one he looked back fondly on, as he recalled in a letter written in March 1943 to the University College of Wales (U.C.W.), Aberystwyth’s student magazine, Y Ddraig, The Dragon that:
I’ll never forget the session 1939-40 in Aber, where staff and students showed such profound sympathy with the victim of Nazi barbarism. I would like to thank you all for everything you did to make me feel at home at the College by the Sea.
However, this safe haven and the fun he was clearly having alongside his studies in Aberystwyth was not to last, as he was interned in June 1940, a week after his university exams had finished. He was then boarded on the S.S. Ettrick for internment in Canada on the 3rd of July 1940 and was interned in ‘A’ Internment Camp in Farnham, Quebec. His release was not authorised until May 1942 and by the Christmas of that year, he was able to continue his university studies albeit a full term behind, on this occasion in Canada itself at the University of Toronto. This came as a great relief to Paul, who recalled in the same letter to The Dragon, that upon his internment he ‘felt that I never again would be able to study at a University’. The University of Toronto soon began to feel like home, much like Aberystwyth had before his internment. However, on this occasion it is clear that this was partly due to the stark contrast of interment and the freedom he now experienced, rather than the similarities of home and the safe haven which Aberystwyth offered, as he remarked, again in the same letter, that:
Obviously this (Toronto) is home cheerfully, as nothing is so dear as one’s personal freedom.
Paul clearly became settled in Canada, as he remained there for the rest of his life, other than sabbaticals in his hometown, at the University of Vienna and at the Institute of Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer at the Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria. Canada however was where he spent most of his academic career, as he gained his BA and MA from the University of Toronto. He then went on to undertake research at the National Research Council in Ottawa between 1945 to 1967, and during this time he gained his PhD from Toronto in 1951. Paul was then the professor of Mathematics at Carelton University in Ottawa from 1967 to 1982. In 1997, the Dr. Paul Mandl bursary was established there by Paul and his colleagues to be awarded annually to students in the Honours Mathematics program at Carelton. Paul passed away in August 2010 in Ottawa, Canada.
Paul Mandl (1911-2010), photo in Police Memorandum Book inscribed ‘Aliens’ Photographs’, H.W.?Owen, MUS/204, Archifdy Ceredigion Archives |
Another U.C.L student who was also interned in Canada via the S.S. Ettrick was Carel Paul Erwin Eichwald. Carel’s life has been greatly recorded by his son in a series of articles in 2005 for the BBC’s WW2 People’s War archive as well as in a 1985 essay that Carel himself wrote recollecting his experiences for a history course at the University of New England in Australia. (The WW2 People’s War is an online archive of wartime memories contributed to by members of the public and gathered by the BBC. The archive can be found at bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar). The information which follows about his life has used these articles from the WW2 People’s war archive and the 1985 essay, alongside other sources from university and government records, to highlight Carel’s experiences and life story. Carel was born on the 11th of March 1920 in Amsterdam, when his mother was travelling through the Netherlands on her way back to Germany from seeing her family in England, where she had been born. Carel spent his childhood in Schonberg, near Frankfurt in Germany. After the rise of Adolf Hitler in 1933, the Eichwalds, a Jewish family, began to make plans for their future as well as their children's futures in England, such as getting paying guests who stayed with them in Germany to pay into an English bank account they set up for this purpose. Carel’s parents sent him to England after finishing school in 1936 to the safety of his mother’s brother and sister-in-law who lived there. Carel attempted to return to Germany that Christmas but was turned back by the Gestapo and was according to an account written by his son in 2005, told that if he returned, he would be sent to a concentration camp. He began his studies at U.C.L in 1937 and by 1939 was reunited with his parents after they fled Frankfurt during the November pogroms, where Jewish businesses and properties were attacked in November 1938. Along with many of his fellow U.C.L. students, Carel was also evacuated to Aberystwyth at the beginning of the 1939 academic year and he initially lived at Glynderwen on Trinity Road. According to Carel’s 1985 essay, his first tribunal he attended at Aberystwyth resulted in him ‘within minutes’ being classified as category ‘C’ due to his connections to England on his mother’s side.
However, much like Paul Mandl this educational safe haven was not to last, as he was interned in June 1940. Carel recalls again in his 1985 essay, the night of the 25th of June when he was taken from his accommodation of Courtlands on Queens Road in Aberystwyth and put into a cell at the local police station, as follows:
(M)y landlady knocked on my bedroom door. “Couple of gentlemen downstairs to see you, Mr. E!” They apologised: “We’ve been instructed to intern you, Fifth Column scare – sorry about it, but it’ll be temporary only; then you’ll be out again. They gave me time to dress and pack, write a note to my parents, then locked me in a police cell at Aberystwyth.
He was then taken via Brecon and Cardiff to Liverpool, where he remained in an internment camp, until along with Paul Mandl and many others he was boarded onto the S.S. Ettrick for interment in Canada on the 3rd of July 1940. It is important to note however that Carel and his fellow passengers on the Ettrick were not informed of their destination, according to Carel, so boarded the ship completely unaware of where they would end up. After arriving in Canada, he was initially interned, until his refugee status was acknowledged, with Luftwaffe and those who had been determined category A at the tribunals. It is important to note that these internees were Nazis and Nazi sympathisers and were the exact kind of people that Carel and his family had fled from in Germany. He was eventually transferred to the same internment camp as Paul Mandl in Farnham, Quebec. Contrary to the claims of the sympathetic police officers who picked up Carel in Aberystwyth however, his interment was in fact not temporary, as his release was not authorised from this internment camp until February 1941 and upon his release, he was 3049 miles away from where he was picked up in Aberystwyth.
Carel was returned on the S.S. Thysville to England and according to an article written by the editor of the U.C.L. student magazine, the New Phineas in the Spring 1941 edition, she shares information from Carel that he is now in the Pioneer Corps and is at their training centre in Ilfracombe, Devon. In this article entitled ‘News of Internees’, Carel also shared the status, locations and camps of fellow U.C.L. students who had been evacuated to Aberystwyth and then were interned in Canada, such as Peter Ulrich Weichmann, Hugo Erhard Rolf Landsberg, George Brandt, Immanuel Goldschmidt and Werner Max Wolf. Through this article, U.C.L. students were encouraged to begin a letter writing campaign to those students who had been interned and to make sure this was done frequently and that the letters should be lengthy. Carel then went onto marry in Kent in 1942, Thalia Allen, a fellow U.C.L. student who had also been evacuated to Aberystwyth in 1939. Around this time, Carel also changed his name to Paul Elwell, which according to Carel was so he could join the fighting units of the war. Paul was then demobbed in July 1946, after serving in reconnaissance and the intelligence corps as well as on the Italian front. He emigrated to Australia in 1948 to work in a department store and removals company in Sydney and worked here until retiring in 1981. His second attempt at a university degree at New England was unsuccessful as he suffered a brain haemorrhage and until he passed away in 2004, he was incapacitated.
Peter Ulrich Weichmann, the first of the four interned students who Paul Elwell shared their locations to the New Phineas, was born on the 9th of November 1921 in Charlottenburg, Berlin. By 1939, Peter and his mother and father, Alfred and Dorothea were living in Stanley Gardens in Notting Hill. Alfred had found a job as a BBC announcer and Peter had begun his studies at U.C.L. It is unclear when the Weichmann's left Germany and had arrived in London. After Peter was evacuated to Aberystwyth later in 1939, he found accommodation at 55 Bridge Street. He was interned from there in June 1940 and unlike Paul and Carel, Peter was boarded on to the S.S. Sobiecki for internment in Canada on the 4th of July 1940. Like Paul and later Carel, he also was interned in Internment Camp A in Farnham, Quebec. His release was not authorised until the 14th of August 1941, and he was not officially released for another six days. Peter returned to Britain and became a naturalised British citizen at the same time as his parents in July 1947, changing his name to Peter Tom Ulrich Wykeman. He went on to marry Daphne Trice in Hampstead in 1961 and moved to Surrey in 1966. Peter worked in the iron and steel industry first in London and then later in Brussels. He passed away in 1987 in Surrey.
Peter Ulrich Weichmann (1921-1987), photo in Police Memorandum Book inscribed ‘Aliens’ Photographs’, H.W.?Owen, MUS/204, Archifdy Ceredigion Archives |
Another interned U.C.L. student whose location was revealed by Paul Elwell, Hugo Erhard Rolf Landsberg, was hard to track beyond his release from interment. Hugo was born on the 28th of February 1920 in Berlin. How and when he came to England is unclear, but he was evacuated as a U.C.L. student in 1939 to Aberystwyth and lived at Fedw in Custom House Street. He was interned from Custom House Street on the 21st of June 1940. Hugo was then moved to Canada but unlike Paul, Carel and Peter, he was interned in Internment Camp I, which was located elsewhere in Quebec. His release and return to Britain were authorised on the 12th of November 1941. Where Hugo’s future led him is unclear from there.
Hugo Erhard Rolf Landsberg (b. 1920), photo in Police Memorandum Book inscribed ‘Aliens’ Photographs’, H.W.?Owen, MUS/204, Archifdy Ceredigion Archive |
In comparison, much more is known about George Brandt, another of those listed by Paul Elwell in the New Phineas. George was born on the 20th of October 1920 in Berlin and his family left Germany in 1933 not long after the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. He began studying as a Modern Languages student at U.C.L. in 1938 and was evacuated to Aberystwyth at the beginning of his second year. George lived at 38 Portland Street during his time in Aberystwyth and became actively involved in student activities, whether that be assisting in the editing of the New Phineas or writing poetry and reporting on societies who had been evacuated to Aberystwyth for the magazine. He was also actively involved in the University College, London, Jewish Students’ Society, who had found a new home in King Street in Aberystwyth. George is reported in the Jewish Chronicle as having been involved in discussions that the society hosted on topics like the Creation Chapter in Genesis and Evolution in October 1939. However, all this hive of activity came to an end when he was interned in June 1940. George however was allowed to take his final exams before his internment. He was then interned in Internment Camp N in Sherbrooke, in the Southern district of Quebec, Canada. George was released as a student from internment on the 4th of October 1941. He carried on his university education in Canada, gaining an MA from the University of Winnipeg in 1945. After completing his MA, he worked at the National Film Board of Canada until he left to return to England in 1949 with his new wife, Toni. In 1951 he joined the drama department of the University of Bristol, George would remain at the university for the rest of his academic career, being appointed to the newly created position of Director of Film Studies in 1971. According to George’s obituary in the Guardian, he was in this position and throughout his academic career, an essential player in introducing practical film and television studies to universities in Britain. He retired from the University of Bristol in 1986 and passed away in September 2007.
George Brandt (1920-2007), photo in Police Memorandum Book inscribed ‘Aliens’ Photographs’, H.W.?Owen, MUS/204, Archifdy Ceredigion Archives |
Immanuel Goldschmidt, who was also interned in Canada, was a fellow member of the U.C.L. Jewish Students’ Society, alongside George. He was born on the 15th of July 1921 in Berlin. By 1939, he had left Berlin and was a law student at U.C.L. and was living in Lingfield, Surrey at the same address as his future wife, Elsie Tanner, who he went onto marry in 1944. When Immanuel was evacuated to Aberystwyth, he initially lived at 67 North Parade and later moved to Aventine on Cliff Terrace. Here one of his roommates was the future sixth president of Israel, Chaim Herzog. He was an active member of the Jewish Students’ Society along with Chaim and George, taking part in discussion topics such as “The Poetry of the Psalms” in October 1939, according to a report in the Jewish Chronicle. Immanuel was later interned in Canada, as recalled in Chaim’s biography in 1996, being boarded on to the S.S. Sobiecki on the same day as Peter Ulrich Weichmann. However, unlike Paul, Carel, Peter, Hugo and George who were all interned in and around Quebec, Immanuel was interned further to the east in Fredericton, New Brunswick in Internment Camp B. He was later released from internment after arriving back in Britain on the S.S. Indrapoera on the 30th of June 1941. Immanuel then graduated from university the following year. He then, much like Carel, went on to serve in the war for the British forces. Immanuel became a naturalised British citizen in 1947, changing his surname to Goldsmith. By 1950, he was admitted to practice law in England. However, in 1959, he along with his wife, Elsie, moved back to Canada, where he was required to take a bar admissions course at Osgoode Hall Law School in Ontario, before he could practice law there. Immanuel then established himself as a lawyer in Canada, becoming a partner in the law firm Caswell & Goldsmith and then in 1970, he was appointed to the Queens Counsel. He also published books on building contracts and personal injuries and death in Canada, which were well received and republished. Immanuel passed away in Toronto, Canada in July 2003.
Werner Max Wolf is the final evacuated U.C.L. student whose life and subsequent internment in Canada will be explored. Werner was born on the 28th of February 1919 in Berlin. By the time of U.C.L. being evacuated to Aberystwyth, Werner was undertaking a BSc there and moved into 8 Eastgate Street. He later moved to 67 North Parade, which may have crossed over with the time Immanuel was living at this address. Before he was interned, Werner was fined £5 for being in possession of information useful to the enemy, it is not clear what this information entailed but it was clearly judged to be serious enough at the time to be fined over. Werner was then interned from 67 North Parade and was moved to Canada in mid-1940 and was not released until September 1941, after being returned to Britain on the S.S. Thysville in January of that year. Werner did not return to Aberystwyth and settled in London, where by 1947 he was working as a research chemist. By 1966, he had moved to Co. Durham in England and was working for Chemical Compounds Ltd.
Werner Max Wolf (b. 1919), photo in Police Memorandum Book inscribed ‘Aliens’ Photographs’, H.W.?Owen, MUS/204, Archifdy Ceredigion Archives |
Overall, internment in Australia and Canada for many of the U.C.L. students, such as Paul, George and Immanuel, meant the sudden and complete ending of their contributions to the wider evacuated U.C.L student life in Aberystwyth, as many had active roles in student journalism for the New Phineas or in various student societies. Also, the fate and reality of internment in Australia or Canada meant being moved thousands of miles, not long after leaving Germany or Austria and their subsequent evacuation to Aberystwyth from London. Many of them also then faced longer periods of interment than their fellow students who had been interned on the Isle of Man, with internment periods for U.C.L. students in Australia and Canada being between 12 to 23 months longer. Internment in Canada in particular also influenced the future paths some of these students took after their release, as a number of them remained or ended up returning to Canada to make and build a life for themselves there. Others returned to Britain and their lives took a variety of different paths, some became naturalised British citizens, many married, a few gained jobs in teaching, chemistry or the iron and steel industry and others emigrated in the pursuit of work and a life elsewhere. None of these students from what can be ascertained about their lives after leaving Aberystwyth and being released from internment, apart from Paul Mandl, returned to Germany or Austria on a semi-permanent or permanent basis. U.C.L. students, staff and their families who were evacuated to Aberystwyth it is important to note, were the largest group of refugees from National Socialism who were either internment tribunal attendees, or who were later interned from Aberystwyth and the surrounding areas. However, they did not make up the whole of this group of refugees, with others who were from the art and agricultural industries as well as the domestic services finding refugee in Aberystwyth and the surrounding areas. Their life stories, internment tribunals decisions and for some their subsequent internments will be addressed in the following blogposts in this series.
Conor Brockbank
With thanks to Aberystwyth University research project Refugees from National Socialism in Wales
Photos used with the permission of Archifdy Ceredigion Archives, Aberystwyth.
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