Dr Alfred Samuel: The Alien Doctor of Kununoppin, 1942

The Alien Doctor of Kununoppin, 1942

Born in Silesia in 1894, Dr Alfred Samuel was restricted from practising medicine in 1938 due to Nazi restrictions regarding Jewish doctors. Under rising threat of antisemitic violence, he and his wife Alice escaped Germany in 1938, bound for Australia via Canada.

Upon arriving, the Samuels sought assistance from the Australian Jewish Welfare Society in Victoria, but the Australian medical fraternity was resistant to foreign doctors and opposed their ability to practise medicine. Alfred and Alice set off instead for Western Australia in July 1938, where Alfred’s occupation was listed as ‘electric welder’.

But with the outbreak of WWII in 1939, many medical practitioners across Australia left their positions to enlist in the armed forces, prompting some shires to request ‘alien’ doctors be permitted to practise. One such hospital in the small Wheatbelt town of Kununoppin served four shires, totalling around 20,000 square kilometres. After a short stint at Perth Hospital, Alfred took up the position in December 1941.

Apart from a single incident in which a former patient drunkenly attempted (and failed) to burn down the Samuels home, Alfred and Alice were much loved amongst the community where they lived and worked for nearly a decade. In addition to his work at the hospital, Alfred implemented a widespread immunisation program for children across the region against diphtheria. 

This letter addressed to Eugene Stanley of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry suggests that Alfred remained in contact with the Jewish Welfare Society in Victoria. It is extremely likely they helped him get the position at Kununoppin in the first place.

In 1950, Alfred became the medical officer for the Northam Accommodation Centre, the largest immigration camp for newly arrived Displaced Persons in the State and the third largest in Australia. The Centre housed around 4,000 immigrants…many of whom were secretly pregnant. 

Fearful of being rejected from the ship to Australia, approximately 134 expectant mothers had lied about their pregnancies before boarding. Because of the sudden influx of pregnancies, a maternity hospital was established in October 1950 where Alfred  delivered one baby a day in the first twenty-five days!