Oscar Rundnagel Free

Again After 8 Years

A FORMER well-known resident of New Guinea, Mr. Oscar Rundnagel, is residing in Sydney at present, after eight years spent in an Australian internment camp. He does not plan to return to New Guinea he hopes to get away presently to Ecuador, in South America, where remarkable inducements are being offered to Northern Europeans to settle on the land.

The case of Mr. Rundnagel is typical of these unfortunate Germans who settled in New Guinea in the old “German days” —prior to World War 1. He was interned as an enemy alien in 1914, and when that war was over, all his property was ex propriated. He went away to other countries, spent several years in South America, re-established himself economi cally, and returned to New Guinea, to the service of W. R. Carpenter & Co.

During this period, he did not obtain British naturalisation; and so he was one of a considerable number of people of German birth who were gathered in, in 1939-40, and interned as enemy aliens.

When the crisis of World War II was past, many of these enemy aliens were released; others got out when Germany surrendered; but Mr. Rundnagel was one of a small group who were suspected of Nazi sympathies, and were kept in the camp for two years after the war ended, pending deportation. The idea of depor tation apparently has been abandoned, now, and the last of the group were re leased recently.

A visitor to Suva, Fiji, Mr. J. P. Riordan, of Auckland, died suddenly in October at the Metropole Hotel, Suva, while spend ing a holiday there with his wife. He suf fered from heart trouble but up to the time of his death appeared to be in normal health.