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Australia

Hay Internment and POW camps

Low
Verified 28 May 2026
Fresh · 1d ago

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Photograph of Hay Internment and POW camps
Photo by Mattinbgn/talk via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Background

The Hay Internment and POW camps at Hay, New South Wales, Australia were established during World War II as prisoner-of-war and internment centres, due in part to the isolated location of the town. Three high-security camps were constructed in 1940. The first arrivals were 2,542 internees from Nazi Germany and Austria, most of whom were Jewish; they had been interned in the United Kingdom as enemy aliens when the possibility of an Axis invasion of Britain was at its highest. These internees were transported to Australia on board the British passenger ship HMT Dunera. The internees were kept in poor conditions on Dunera, which prompted a public outcry after news of their conditions became public.

Source: Wikipedia article lead, CC-BY-SA.

Capacity

Current population

Occupancy

Year opened

Operational

Facility profile

Operator

Population held

Mixed/unknown

Opened

Region

Security level

Death-row facility

No

Conditions

No conditions summary available yet.

Visiting

No visiting information available.

Mailing

No mailing information available.

Practical info

Contact the operator's website for inmate-specific procedures.

Known issues

No major issues documented in our database.

Contact & address

No public contact details available.

Conditions Risk Score

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Insufficient data
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Data completeness

10%

How many of our profile fields are populated. We surface this so families and researchers know the limits.

Sources