Newspaper/TV Release:


 [ATTENTION EXHIBIT HOSTS: Be sure to enter the information for your event into the fields in the second paragraph and then delete this reminder BEFORE distributing!]


 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact person: [host’s representative] or [rep’s phone number] at [rep’s email address].


Traveling Exhibit Tells Unknown Story of German-American
Civilian Internment in the United States during World War II


Some disappeared under the cover of night, while others were taken during raids on their place of employment. About a third were kidnapped by U.S. agents in other countries and brought here by force. None had a lawyer, or were charged with, tried for or convicted of a war-related crime. Many were imprisoned for the duration of that global war, and for years after it ended.


Suspected terrorists? Inmates at Guantanamo Bay? No. 15,000 German-American civilians the U.S. Government interned between 1941 and 1948.


Using ten narrative panels, an NBC “Dateline” documentary and a 1945 U.S. Government color film about this story, TRACES’ mobile museum—a retrofitted school bus called the BUS-eum 2—will tour eight Midwest states from mid-March to mid-June 2007, with showings of this innovative exhibit in about 110 communities in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan.


Barring unforeseen difficulties, the BUS-eum 2 will be in [TOWN] from [TIME AM/PM] to [TIME AM/PM] on [DAY OF WEEK], the [DATE] of [MONTH] 2007; it will be parked in front of the [NAME OF INSTITUTION], at [STREET ADDRESS]: the local contact person is [NAME], at [PHONE NUMBER] or [EMAIL ADDRESS].


TRACES Center for History and Culture is a Midwest/WWII-history museum in downtown Saint Paul/MN’s historical Landmark Center (former 1896 Federal Courts Building). Each of it’s more than two dozen exhibits about Midwesterners’ encounters with Germans or Austrians between 1933 and 1948 forms part of a larger mosaic, a fuller image of a war that is often misunderstood or seen in clichés. At TRACES, WWII is a case study to learn from for today's and future generations.


The main goals of this mobile exhibit include presenting an unknown history to a wide audience, stimulating penetrating questions on the part of visitors to the exhibit and then leading them to open discussion. It explores a virtually unknown yet significant historical event—possibly one of the U.S.’s least-known WWII sub-chapters. [The Midwest was the site of 18 internment camps or detention centers, including: Camp (now Ft.) McCoy near Sparta/WI; Home of the Good Shepherd Convents in Milwaukee/WI, Chicago/IL and Cleveland/OH; county or city jails in Milwaukee/WI and St. Louis/MO; detention centers in Kansas City/MO, Chicago, Detroit/MI; and Hotel Gibson and the Hamilton County Workhouse in Cincinnati/OH—as well as numerous others.]

Communities across the region will have an opportunity—in most cases for the first time—to discuss the legacy as well as implications of the U.S. Government’s WWII “enemy alien” internment program. At select showings former internees or their children will appear as guest speakers and share what internment meant to them and their families. At all showings related print and electronic documentation will be available for purchase.

A “community conversation” will accompany many of the BUS-eum 2 showings: in addition to welcoming community members to see the BUS’s ten narrative panels and view two films about this internment, some participating hosts will hold a panel-led open discussion about this topic. Host-selected local leaders (educators, clergy, journalists, public officials, military officials, students, business people, etc.) will discuss the following or other “guiding questions”:

  • Are ethnic background or ideology justifiable grounds for internment (in other words, imprisoning suspects for who they are or what they believe, as opposed to their actions)?
  • Does society “owe” due process only to citizens, or also to legal non-citizen residents?
  • During WWII the U.S. Government forcibly removed 4,058 Latin American Germans from South America to camps in Texas, at Ellis Island and elsewhere [just as it also interned 2,200 Peruvian Japanese alongside indigenous Japanese Americans]: what are some of this action’s legal and moral implications? Was this action effective?
  • “Enemy-alien” internment was a multi-million-dollar, seven-year U.S. Government project: was it effective (i.e., did it reach its intended aims) or not? What other actions might have been taken, rather than to intern some 150,000 Japanese, Italian and German Americans?
  • Both camp staff and most of those interned were sworn to secrecy. In 1988 the U.S. Government acknowledged that it had interned Japanese Americans during WWII, and in 2000 it admitted that it also had imprisoned Italian Americans; to date, however, it has never confessed to having interned German Americans. To what extent, for how long, is a government accountable for its actions? Does it “owe” reparations to those wrongfully harmed? If so, in what form?

Through this project, Midwesterners will see WWII history in a new way, and “re-visit” an event and a period often overly-simplified and obscured by bravado. The community conversations are meant to support democratic involvement and processes.

(Early arrival is encouraged, as the tour is tightly scheduled and showings will begin and end promptly at the times indicated. TRACES seeks volunteers in each community along the route, to help make each stop as effective as possible: would-be volunteers should contact the local hosts in a given town, or TRACES directly.)

To confirm the BUS-eum’s itinerary or learn more this exhibit, see www.TRACES.org. The exhibit’s texts and photos of the exhibit can be previewed at that web site; reading the narrative in advance facilitates speedier visitor flow in the BUS. Educators are welcome to utilize the teaching materials also posted on the same web site.

 

This exhibit is supported, in part, by grants from Humanities Councils in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin, with additional local supporters across the entire 8-state region.

 

The following individuals are willing to be interviewed for pre-showing media features:

Doris Berg Nye <arndoris@hawaii.rr.com>; father was interned at Fort McCoy/Wisconsin

Matthias Borniger (316.942.3790); lived in Wichita/Kansas before and after being interned

Karen Ebel <kebel@yahoo.com>; father was interned at Fort Lincoln/North Dakota

Ted Eckardt <tedcon1955@sbcglobal.net>; family was interned in Toledo/Ohio

Lothar Eiserloh <eiserloh@pacbell.net>; family lived near Cleveland/Ohio upon being interned

Eberhard Fuhr <ebfuhr@earthlink.net>; family lived in Cincinnati/Ohio upon being interned; Eberhard has lived in Minnesota and Chicago since being released

Guenther Greis <ggkoeln@execpc.com>; family lived in Milwaukee/Wisconsin before and after being interned

Siegfried Hamann <siegfried_hamann@juno.com>; father was Latin-American German interned at Fort Lincoln/North Dakota

Art Jacobs <adjacobs@cox.net>; was child internee who later lived in western Kansas

Horst Edmund Schafer (850.482.4691); family lived in Milwaukee/Wisconsin upon being interned

Ursula Vogt Potter <upotter@charter.net>; father was interned at Camp McCoy/Wisconsin and at Fort Lincoln/North Dakota

XXXXXXXXX authors of related books:

John Christgau <jchristgau@aol.com>; author of book about Fort Lincoln, a camp near Bismarck/North Dakota

Stephen Fox <mckeasy@mac.com>; author of book about German-American internment

Arnold Krammer <apkrammer@aol.com>; author of book about German-American internment

Volunteer Description:

TRACES seeks volunteers (for 1-3 hours) in each community where we will be bringing “VANISHED”, a mobile exhibit about German-American civilian internees during WWII. During a given stop such individuals run errands, set up equipment, answer basic questions (i.e., the direction of the panels) or help elderly or disabled visitors in and out of the BUS-eum 2, etc. Might such volunteers be found among your friends or family, in groups to which you belong, work staff, places of worship, etc.? For more information about our organization and planned exhibit tour, see www.TRACES.org. Contact TRACES’ staff at admin@TRACES.org or 651.646.0400 or a showing’s local host. As a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization, all donations to TRACES are welcome and tax-deductible; they make future preservation and programs possible.

END