Plaque affixed at moving graveside ceremony
After 83 years, Dunera boy Georg Hans Frohlich’s unmarked grave in Canberra has finally received a plaque.
A “Dunera boy” named Georg Hans Frohlich was the first person to ever have a Jewish burial in Canberra, but for the last 83 years, his grave was unmarked.
As he had died in September 1942 – nine years before the establishment of the ACT Jewish Community – there was no consecrated area for Jewish burials at the capital city’s Woden Cemetery.
In a dedication ceremony at the cemetery on November 16 that was arranged by the Australian Jewish Historical Society (AJHS), a plaque it provided – engraved with his name, a Star of David and “Dunera Boy” – was affixed to Frohlich’s grave, ensuring the young Jewish man’s life and his name will not be forgotten.
The ceremony was held in the presence of Israel’s ambassador to Australia Amir Maimon, the AJHS’s ACT branch president Adele Rosalky, AJHS NSW president Peter Philippsohn, and ACT Jewish Community president Athol Morris.
In her address, Rosalky shed light on Frohlich’s background, and how the Berlin-born World War II refugee arrived in Sydney aboard the HMT Dunera that had carried more than 2000 Jewish refugees deported from Great Britain as enemy aliens.
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