Silences and Secrets: The Australian Experience of the Weintraubs Syncopators

The Weintraubs Syncopators, international musical celebrities of the 1930s, embarked on a four-year journey across Europe, Russia and the Far East in exile from the antisemitic ideologies of the German Third Reich. This band of mainly Jewish musicians arrived in Sydney, Australia, in 1937. The decision of some of them to stay brought them into conflict with the aggressively protectionist Musicians’ Union of Australia. They gained employment at a high-end Sydney nightclub but when war came, were forced to come to terms with a change in their status – from celebrities to enemy aliens. Denounced for alleged espionage activities in Russia, three were interned and the band broke up.

In this major recounting of the experience of the Weintraubs Syncopators, Kay Dreyfus pieces together the complex personal, social and political forces at work in this story of migration at a time of insecurity, fear and dramatic conflict.