Bern Brent has just turned a hundred.
He’s been close to death a few times – two heart attacks in his 50s when the doctor decided he had six months to live but neglected to tell him.
And he is a “Dunera Boy”, one of 2542 refugees from Germany who were put on the Dunera and sent to Australia. The ship was torpedoed but the weapon failed to explode.
Today, Mr Brent thinks the decision to deport him from Britain, and not let him stay and fight in the British army against Germany, probably meant he was able to survive until his centenary.
“Having been interned in Britain at the beginning of the war, and sent overseas, was the best thing that could have happened to me,” he said.
“I was 17 and I would have joined the British army when I turned 18, and I give myself only a 50/50 chance of surviving the war.”
When he arrived in Australia, he spent some time in a camp and then joined the Australian army, but as a non-citizen, he was not allowed to fight.
He was born Gerd Bernstein and grew up in a Jewish family in Berlin. Nazis had already started persecuting Jews and in 1937, his parents realised that war was on the way so their son should seek safety in Britain.
Read the article by Steve Evans in The Canberra Times.