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This article appeared in the Crookston Daily Times /Minnesota on August 31, 2006. TRACES' BUS-eum at UMC on Sept. 6 By Natalie J. Ostgaard, City Editor
World War II was a dark period in history for a number of reasons. Bigotry and ethnic intolerance spread across the world and America was no exception. While many Americans have been made aware through history books of the Japanese-American internment camps prevalent during that era, the story of some 15,000 German-American civilians interned by the U.S. government is still relatively unknown. The non-profit organization TRACES aims to change that. For three hours on Wednesday, the TRACES' BUS-eum 2, a traveling exhibit that illustrates some of these interned German-Americans' stories, will be parked in front of the Student Center on the University of Minnesota, Crookston campus. The multimedia presentation "Vanished: German-American Civilian Internment, 1941-48" will be available for free public viewing in the mobile museum from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. A facilitated community conversation will take place at noon in the Prairie Room, located in the Student Center. Historian Michael Luick-Thrams', executive director of TRACES and curator of the museum, explained that the exhibit uses 10 narrative panels, an NBC "Dateline" documentary and a 1945 U.S. government color film, to show Midwesterners one of WWII's least-known sub-chapters. Organizers of the project said the exhibit aims to stimulate its visitors with penetrating questions and lead them to discussions paralleling happenings in the past with the present. Throughout the experience, they suggest that visitors consider these 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. What are some of this action's legal and moral implications? Was this action effective? Was the multi-million-dollar seven-year "enemy-alien" internment effective or not? What other actions might have been taken, rather than to intern some 150,000 Japanese, Italian and German Americans? While the U.S. government has acknowledged interning Japanese-Americans and imprisoning Italian-Americans during WWII, to date, it has not confessed to interning German-Americans. To what extent and for how long is a government accountable for its actions? Does it "owe" reparations to those wrongfully harmed? The noon hour discussion will provided the opportunity for community members to discuss these and other issues raised by the exhibit. To learn more about the exhibit, visit the website www.TRACES.org. Text and photos from the exhibit can be previewed there, and organizers said that reading the narrative in advance will make the experience richer. This event is part of Constitution Day activities at UMC and sponsored by UMC Concerts and Lectures and the UMC Library. TRACES museum TRACES mission statement says it is a non-profit educational organization created to gather, preserve and present stories of people from the Midwest and Germany or Austria who encountered each other during World War II. The organization realized one of its dreams a few months ago with the opening of TRACES Center for History and Culture in downtown St. Paul's Landmark Center. The museum includes more than two dozen exhibits about Midwesterners' encounters with Germans or Austrians between 1933 and 1948, with stories from both sides of the ocean. One exhibit features a base camp that operated out of Algona, Iowa from 1943 to 1946. One of its 35 branch camps was located at the Crookston Arena. These camps housed as many as 10,000 German POWs. | Home | |
