This article appeared in the Capital Times newspaper in Madison/Wisconsin on April 1, 2006.

MONONA - At 2:30 a.m. on Dec. 8, FBI agents entered Peter and Marie Therberath's home in Milwaukee. The entire Therberath family, including their three children, was arrested. It was 1941, the United States was engulfed in World War II, and the Therberaths were German-Americans.

The family was separated, and Peter and Marie were sent to an internment camp in Georgia while two of their children, Gertrud and Friedrich, went to a Milwaukee County children's home. No one knew where their third child, John, was.
This story is one of many in a traveling exhibit that showcases the little-known history of German-American internment during WWII.

Photo by David Sandell/The Capital Times

Robert Owens of Madison examines a traveling exhibit about the little-known internment of German-Americans during World War II.

The exhibit, "Vanished: German-American Internment 1941-48," is inside a green school bus that will travel throughout Wisconsin, making periodic stops, until May. On Friday afternoon it stopped at Monona Grove High School to provide free tours to the public and present a panel discussion about German-American internment.
Today the exhibit will be at the Waukesha Public Library from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., and on Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. and Monday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. it will be at Turner Hall in Milwaukee. On Wednesday, the exhibit will be at the Sun Prairie Public Library at 1350 Linnerud Drive.

The "bus-eum" is part of TRACES, an educational organization that is dedicated to uncovering and preserving the stories of people from the Midwest and Germany or Austria during WWII, and is part of a larger museum in St. Paul, Minn.
The exhibits include stories of German-Americans who were interned at Fort McCoy in Sparta, Fort Lincoln in South Dakota and Ellis Island in New York.

There is also a portion of the museum devoted to Germans and German-Americans who were taken from Central and South America to be put in internment camps in the United States.

"We're recording histories that normally would be lost," said Michael Luick-Thrams, executive director and founder of TRACES.

Unlike the internment of 120,000 Japanese-Americans during WWII, the estimated 11,000 German-Americans who were interned has not been acknowledged by Congress.

"The government has never acknowledged that it has interned German (Americans)," said Luick-Thrams.

It was not until 1988 that the U.S. recognized the internment of Japanese-Americans. And in 2000 the government acknowledged the 3,800 Italian-Americans who were interned during WWII.

Luick-Thrams said there are multiple reasons that German-American internment has not been more historically prevalent. He said that the shame associated with being German after WWII prevented many people from coming forward with their stories and that the government contributed to the silence by making internees sign affidavits swearing they would not speak about their experiences.

In addition, Luick-Thrams said, the government has not provided any documentation to help piece together this historical occurrence. "The government has not been very helpful," he said.

"The fact that (German-American internment) happened and nobody knows about it is sad," said Kristi Williams, one of the six discussion panelists and a former Monona Grove School Board member. "The public has a right and responsibility to be informed."

"It's a sub-chapter of history that's not well-covered," said Thomas Howe, a former Monona Grove history teacher who moderated the panel discussion and rounded up the people on the panel, which included state Sen. Mark Miller.
"These stories were forgotten and hidden," said Luick-Thrams. But, he said, it is important that they are used to illuminate a dark spot of history so the mistakes are not repeated in the future. "If you don't know these stories, you can't learn from them."