Liffmann, Erich (Private, b.1914 - d.1987)

Collection relating to the Second World War service of V377494 Private Erich Liffmann, alien internee and 8th Employment Company, Victoria. Private Liffmann's names are alternately spelled Erich, Eric, Liffman and Liffmann.

Liffmann was born in Germany in 1914, the son of a butcher. He showed a prodigious talent for singing at a young age and undertook classical voice training. Of Jewish background, Liffmann fled to England on the eve of the Second World War. He was categorized an enemy alien and transported to Australia on HMT Dunera. Interned at Hay and later Tatura, Liffmann joined the 8th Employment Company of the Australian Army as Private Eric Liffman. This Company was set up to specifically to employ five hundred former Dunera internees. In the Army, Liffmann became a singing sensation following two broadcasts from the Melbourne-based radio station 3KZ. Until the War's end, he combined Army duties with a significant singing career with regular broadcasts from Melbourne radio and other venues. His performance activities raised thousands of pounds for the war effort and patriotic funds. Post-war, Liffman returned to Germany to discover if his family had survived the Holocaust. He performed in several European countries, and won the 1948 Musical Festival prize in Brussels.

The collection consists of two scrapbook albums and assorted playbills and programs.

The first scrapbook album is green cardboard 29cm x 23cm. It contains newspaper clippings dating from October 1943 to January 1946 and relates to Erich Liffmann's singing career, recitals, concert programs and playbills.

The second scrapbook album is tan coloured cardboard measuring 34cm x 24cm. It contains newspaper clippings covering the period 1943 to 1946 and again relates to Erich Liffmann's singing career. This album includes newspaper radio guides, performance reviews, concert programs, tickets and playbills. There is also a photograph of The Beehive Building in Bendigo taken by Liffmann's wife Patricia Margaret Kewish.

Both albums relate to performances given by Liffmann in Melbourne, Geelong, Ballarat and other regional Victorian towns. Included are newspaper clippings from Oslo and a Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation flyer featuring a performance by Liffmann in July 1947.

In addition there is a concert poster from Castlemaine, programs from a Recital in Bendigo Town Hall in July 1949, and a 'Grandfathers Follies' concert program from the Tivoli Theatre.

The son of a village butcher, Eric Liffman was born in Beckrath, Germany on the 22nd September, 1914. Liffman began his working career as a sign writer in Germany and
received training as a singer.
Being of Jewish heritage, he fled Nazi oppression in his homeland, arriving in England during 1938.
Consequently on the 25th June, 1940, he was apprehended and then interned in Liverpool at Huyton Camp, with numerous other stateless refugees.
On the 10th July 1940 he and more than 2000 other internees boarded HMT Dunera at Liverpool, arriving in Australia eight weeks later.
From Sydney Liffman was sent by train to the town of Hay in NSW.
Eric Liffman was interned in Camp 8 at Hay, run on military lines and surrounded by barbed wire.
On the 19th May 1941, Eric Liffman was sent south to Tatura, Victoria where seven Internment and POW Camps had been established.
From January 1942, Dunera internees could join the Australian Army.
As a consequence of wartime labour shortages, Liffman was released from internment on the 7th March 1942, to pick fruit, like many others, in local orchards.
In April 1942, more than 400 internees marched into the recently raised 8th Australian Employment Company, a volunteer Army Labour Unit. Eric Liffman enlisted at Caulfield. Though not Australian nor British citizens, the former internees, as soldiers, were free of the restrictions reserved for other aliens.
The 8th Australian Employment Company was one of 39 similar Units, 11 of which were wholly or in part made up of aliens.
Based at Camp Pell in Melbourne, ‘the 8th’ had attachments at Albury and at Tocumwal. The two principal responsibilities of the Unit were to unload ships at Port Melbourne and to transfer goods between trains in the dual gauge railway yards of the NSW-Victorian border.

With the support of his Commanding Officer, Private Liffman spent much of his military service performing as a celebrity tenor in packed concert halls. Such work raised considerable sums of money in support of the war effort. He was officially discharged from the Australian Army on the 6th March 1946 and was naturalised at the Melbourne Town Hall on the 13th of April in that year.
After the War, Eric Liffman travelled back to Germany in search of surviving family members. Despite the service of his father for Germany during the Great War, both his parents and one of his brothers perished in the holocaust.
He was initially refused entry into Germany, but was able to tour the occupied British zone by joining a Navy entertainment show called the "Tokio Express".

Liffman discovered his parents had died in Auschwitz, but he located his sister, who had survived Dachau and was living in Brussels. His brother Max had also survived the war. His brother Willy had also survived by joining the Free French Foreign Legion. The fate of his brother Alfred is unclear, but he did not survive the war.

After reuniting with the remainder of his family, he toured Belgium and parts of Northern Europe.

Following his return to Australia he married Patricia Margaret Kewish at Gardenvale, Victoria in February 1949.