Lothar's journey

The Markiewicz collection consists of letters and documents which record the survival stories of three family members.
Lotte, married to Max Markiewicz, and two children born in Berlin, Lothar (born 1924) and Ellen (born 1926). Lotte and her husband separated shortly after Ellen’s birth, after which the children had limited contact with their father. In 1939, Lotte arranged to send Lothar, 15, and Ellen, 13, to England on the 'Kindertransport'. They would never live together as a family again.

In early 1943, letters from Lotte to her children stopped arriving - she had escaped into the Berlin Underground. In England, Ellen was looked after by Quakers families for the duration of the war. In May 1940, 16-year-old Lothar was arrested at his school as an ‘enemy alien’ and sent on the HMT Dunera to Australia where he was interned first at Hay and later Tatura. Documents that he kept speak to the conditions on the Dunera, while an album containing photos of his family are an irreplaceable reminder of home. A woodcut print of Hay represents life in the Australian internment camp. Amongst the drawings is an enigmatic cartoon with a chicken and the phrase, ‘To the Egg Trustees and to those who shall become it again'. A Red Cross letter dated September 1942 from his grandmother, Frieda, contains her last words before her deportation - ‘I send you my last greetings … stay healthy. Do not forget me.’ Five months later, she was murdered.

Lothar was released in September 1941 and returned to England. It wasn’t until after the end of the war, in October 1945, that Lothar and Ellen received their first letter from their mother in two years. She had survived in hiding in Berlin. They found out that their father had been murdered in Theresienstadt in 1943.

Some 200 letters survived Lothar's journey from England to Australia, his return to England and his eventual settlement in Australia half a century later when he moved with his wife in 1993 to be closer to his son and grandchildren.