“A Jewish scholar once said that blessings should be expressed not only on good and happy occasions such as eating, drinking and weddings, but also – God forgive! – in disastrous and sad events.” – Pinhaus Braun, refugee from Germany, quoted in The Dunera’s Internees

Two ships heading to Australia. It is midsummer and they are gradually approaching the equator. Both have human cargo on board: the British troop transport ship, the HMT Dunera, is completely overcrowded with over 2,500 German and Austrian Jews. Men between 16 and 60, internees who had found temporary exile in England. The container ship Tampa, which sails under the Norwegian flag, has taken on board 483 men, women and children – asylum seekers from Afghanistan. Both ships are hopelessly overloaded and the most necessary things are missing. Far from their homeland, the members of the two refugee groups have been branded as traitors, “fifth column” or terrorists. Both suffered persecution and exile, and both face a highly uncertain future. Their stories take us to the Australian desert, to a kind of no-man’s land.

Comparing these two odysseys, that of the HMT Dunera in 1940 and that of the MS Tampa in 2001, separated by a period of almost exactly 60 years, reveals astonishing parallels. The first trip, a tragicomic trip by some Central Europeans from today’s perspective, is a forgotten episode of the Second World War. The second is part of the exodus of up to 6 million Afghan refugees – an exodus that began in the early 1980s and is still ongoing today, more than three decades later.

Director: John Burgan
Script: John Burgan, Gunter Hanfgarn
Camera: Rainer M. Schulz
Editing: John Burgan, Gunter Hanfgarn
Editorial staff: Burkhard Althoff
Production lead: Andrea Ufer, Sabine Engel
Production: Gunter Hanfgarn
Co-Production-: ZDF Das kleine Fernsehspiel
Station: ZDF
Funding: Filmstiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Filmförderung Hamburg

Best Documentary, New Berlin Film Award, 2006
Duisburger Filmwoche 2005