This article appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel of Milwaukee/Wisconsin on April 4, 2006.

Michael Luick-Thrams 'Takes Five'

Bus tour calls attention to German internment in World War II

On the back of an old school bus, in faded black paint, are the words "Internment. It could happen to you." Michael Luick-Thrams, 43, is curator of the traveling exhibit on the internment of German-Americans during World War II. Luick-Thrams lives in St. Paul, Minn., where he serves as executive director of TRACES, a non-profit educational organization that collects and showcases the stories of what happened to people from the Midwest, Germany and Austria during World War II. TRACES runs a museum in downtown St. Paul; brings multimedia presentations to schools, libraries and museums; publishes books of narrative history; and takes exhibits on the road through its BUS-eum. TRACES has exhibits on the experiences of troops from the Midwest who were sent to German POW camps, refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe who found safe haven near Iowa City and thousands of Americans who experienced the Third Reich firsthand. The bus, sponsored by the Wisconsin Humanities Council, was in Milwaukee on Monday and is scheduled to stop in more than 50 state communities, including Burlington today and Sturtevant tonight. On Monday, Luick-Thrams spoke with Journal Sentinel reporter Mark Johnson.

Q.What is the significance of the word TRACES?

A. These are the last traces of these histories, and when these people die, they take their stories with them. We really only do narrative history. We only do first-person - diaries, letters, photos, interviews, articles, artifacts. We're not really interested in Hitler and Roosevelt and Churchill and Stalin.

Q.What is the idea behind the BUS-eum?

A. Our goals are twofold. One is that we take history and culture to the most out-of-the-way places. We've been to towns of 500 people. We've been to summer camps. Secondly, we want to make history relevant to peoples' lives. Our logo is "We bring history to life," and we really do.

Q.Why do you think the internment of German-Americans has received so much less attention than the internment of Japanese-Americans?

A. I don't know. The Japanese-Americans were all released by the summer of 1945. German-American internees sat, some of them until September of 1948. I don't know why. I know we deported some even after the war was over. What we hope to do in our bus and in our museum is to ask some of the right questions. We don't have many of the answers, but we think it's really important to ask.

Q.Has the U.S. government ever offered an explanation for some of the questions you just asked?

A. No. What I do know is that the Japanese-Americans were given redress in 1988, $20,000 a head; but take note that the Peruvian Japanese who we brought here by force, they got $2,000 a head. There were 2,200 of them. . . . But the Germans have never been acknowledged, and I don't think any of them want compensation. They just want the truth to be told, and the government will not acknowledge it.

Q.What were the conditions like for the German-Americans in these camps?

A. Well, it seems that they were treated quite well. There's film that you can watch, this U.S. government film; it makes it look like Club Med in the desert. The woman says, "There's the gentle breeze of the Gulf." In the day, the temperatures were 120 degrees in the sunshine. So they were treated relatively well, but who cares? They were behind 12 feet of fence with guards in guard towers with guns.

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