He was adopted by the wealthy German Jewish couple Dr. Sally and Johanna Kaufmann at the age of three.

While his adoptive parents were eventually murdered in Auschwitz, Kaufmann fled to England during the outbreak of the War, and was later deported to Australia on the infamous ship HMT Dunera in 1940.

He was encouraged by writers such as Frank Hardy and David Martin to write a novel based on his own past in Nazi Germany (Voices in the Storm).

Later Kaufmann settled in the East Berlin and continued publishing in English and German.

[2][3] Kaufmann's schematic socialist realistic stories on the struggles of Australian trade unionists and the disenfranchisement of the Aborigines, became very popular in the GDR after his return to East Berlin in 1957.