N. Guinea Germans

Now Released

After Years in Australian Internment Camps

rE majority of the many hundreds of persons of enemy nationality— mostly Germans —who were interned in Australia during the war have now been released A few who were adjudged on their records to be suitable for depor tation to Germany are still in confinement, awaiting transport to Europe.

A large proportion of the internees were residents of New Guinea before World War 11. For a year or so after the war started they were not much interfered with, except that they were under sur veillance; but by the end of 1940, when France had collapsed and the outlook was black, practically every enemy alien had been “pulled in.”

Among those thus arrested was Rudolf Jahnke, a planter, of the Bainings dis trict, in New Britain. He was taken to Tatura in 1943, and he was there until 1944, when he was released, and took a job in Victoria. He is now in Sydney, awaiting transport to his property near Rabaul, to which he is permitted to return.

He takes a philosophical view of his troubles.

“War is not much use to me,” he said to a “PIM” representative. “I have been wiped out twice—in 1914 and in 1940. But I’ve got to go back and make another start—there is nothing else to do.”

Mr. Jahnke has never been away from the South Pacific. He was born in Queensland, of German parents; and in 1906 he and his brother decided to go to Rabaul, and take advantage of the German Government’s offer to settle suit able young men on plantations there.

But they could not get land—they were British by birth. So, on the suggestion of the German Government, they sought German nationalisation, and got their land. It was of little use to them. Eight years later, Kaiser Wilhelm’s armies goose-stepped into Belgium; Europe went to war; the Australians occupied German New Guinea; and the Jahnke brothers lost everything.

After Versailles, Rudolf Jahnke went

back to New Guinea, and started all over again. He was in comfortable circum stances when World War II came, and again his fortunes went into the melting pot.

“Why did you not seek British nation ality?” he was asked. He nodded his head dismally. “1 and others thought of it occasionally,” he said. “But we could not apply there—it had to be done in Australia—and we were seldom in Aus

tralia. It was a long, complicated business, and we just put it off.”

In 1940, he and a score of other men of German nationality were brought to Australia. As soon as they landed in Sydney, they were handcuffed together, in pairs—treatment which startled, and angered them.

“It was so unnecessary,” he said. “We were all elderly civilians and, as far as I know, we were all quite harmless. Yet we were treated like dangerous criminals.

We were kept handcuffed for a long time,

“It was very difficult. It was hard enough to eat with one hand; but when a man wanted to go to the lavatory, and had to tow along with him another man who didn’t want to go, it was—well, it was difficult,”

There were 700 of them in his intern ment camp, and thousands of soldiers told off to guard them. “It was a very great waste of man-power, both in prisoners and in guards,” said Mr. Jahnke.

“I learned to know them well, in that camp, and I would say that at least 80 per cent, of the prisoners were perfectly harmless. They could all have been profitably employed, without risk at all —and so could most of the guards.”

Also recently released, and awaiting a chance to go back to the Territories, are Mr. Emil Paatsch, a former Rabaul resi dent; Mr. Otto Stehr; and a half a dozen Lutheran missionaries. These men, with their practical knowledge of New Guinea, might be useful citizens there. They are of no value in Australia or in Germany,