Project Director Michael Luick-Thrams, who holds a doctorate in modern European history with an emphasis in Nazi history from Humboldt Universitaet in Berlin, will accompany "Vanished." This Iowa native oversaw the design and construction of the BUS-eum 2 exhibit.
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.

On Tuesday, April 17, from 3 to 6 p.m, the Nevada Public Library will host the TRACES Mobile Museum depicting the history of interned German civilians who were living in the Unites States as immigrant aliens and were interned in the United States for the duration of that global war, and for years after it ended.

According to The TRACES Center for History, the Midwest was the site of 18 internment camps or detention centers, including: Camp McCoy near Sparta, Wis.; Home of the Good Shepherd Convents in Milwaukee, Wis., Chicago, Ill. and Cleveland, Ohio; county or city jails in Milwaukee, Wis. and St. Louis, Mo.; detention centers in Kansas City. Mo., Chicago, Detroit, Mich.; and Hotel Gibson and the Hamilton County Workhouse in Cincinnati, Ohio, as well as numerous others.

"We all know that Japanese-Americans were interned, but many don't know that 15,000 German civilians living in America were interned between 1941 and 1948," Susan McBeth, Nevada Public Library director said. "This traveling exhibit documents that event in our history. And, as many know, we had German POWs here at Camp Clark as well."

Sponsored by the Nevada Public Library, the bus or BUS-eum as it is called, will be in the library parking lot for tours free of charge. Using 10 narrative panels, an NBC "Dateline" documentary and a 1945 government film about this story, the TRACES' mobile museum will tour eight Midwest states from mid-March to mid-June with showings of this innovative exhibit in about 110 communities in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan.

The BUS-eum 2 will be in Missouri April 15-22 and will stop in St. Joseph, Marshall, Clinton, Nevada, Camdenton, Columbia, Moberly, Jefferson City, and will spend two days in St. Louis.

The TRACES Center for History and Culture is a Midwest/World War II history museum in downtown Saint Paul, Minn.