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Thousands of individuals viewed The Captive Eye: German POW Art and Artifacts while it travled to the below venues. It is TRACES’ goal that additional thousands might gain from viewing many of the more than 1,500 items entrusted to us by the 55 German POWs our research teams met with during seven interview tours across Germany. Understanding the indelible humanity of “the enemy” is a powerful antidote to war. 2002-2005
German-POW Traveling Exhibit Schedule: Muscatine/Iowa dates: Sunday, 6 October 2002
through Sunday, 5 January 2003 opening reception: 1-5 Sunday
afternoon, 6 October 2002 general hours: 10-5PM Tuesdays—Fridays;
7-9PM Thursdays; 1-5PM Saturdays and Sundays museum: Muscatine Art Center location: 1314 Mulberry Avenue, Muscatine/Iowa 52761 contact
person: Barbara Longtin
phone number/email address: 563.263.8282 art@muscanet.com web
site: www.muscatineartcenter.org Charles
City/Iowa
dates: Saturday, 1 February 2003
through Saturday, 15 March 2003 opening reception: 1-3 Saturday
afternoon, 1 February 2003 general hours: 1-5PM
Wednesdays—Saturdays museum: Charles City Art Center location: 301 North Jackson, Charles
City/Iowa 50616 contact person: Tracy Sweet
phone number/email address: 641.228.6752 arts@rconnect.com web site: www.masoncitynet.com/charlescity/ Mason City/Iowa dates: Saturday, 22 March 2003
through Monday, 1 September 2003 opening reception: 1-5PM Saturday, 22 March; German Culture Fest guided tours: 1-3PM Monday, 26 May general hours: 1-5PM daily except Easter museum: Music Man Square location: 308 Pennsylvania Avenue
South, Mason City/Iowa 50401 contact person: Mandy Johnson
phone number/email address: 641.424.2852 musicman@mach3ww.com web site: www.themusicmansquare.org Waverly/Iowa dates:
Saturday, 20 September 2003
through Friday, 31 October 2003 opening reception:
3:00PM Sunday, 7
September 2003 general hours: 7.30AM-midnight
Mondays—Thursdays; 7.30AM-6PM Fridays; 9AM-6PM Saturdays; 1PM-midnight
Sundays library: Wartburg College’s Vogel
Library location: 100 Wartburg Boulevard,
Waverly/Iowa 50677 contact person: Edie Waldstein
phone number/email address: 800.772.2085 edith.waldstein@wartburg.edu web site: www.wartburg.edu Cherokee/Iowa dates: Saturday, 8 November 2003
through Sunday, 4 January 2004 opening reception: 7.30-10PM Saturday,
8 November 2003 general hours: 9AM-5PM Mondays—Fridays;
noon-5PM Saturdays and Sundays museum: Sanford Museum and
Planetarium location: 117 East Willow Street,
Cherokee/Iowa 51012 contact person: Linda Burkhart
phone number/email address:712.225.3922 sanford@cherokee.k12.ia.us web site: www.mail.cherokee.k12.ia.us/~sanford/
Moorhead/Minnesota
dates:
Sunday, 11 January 2004 opening reception:
noon-1PM Sunday, 11 January 2004 general hours:
10AM-5PM Mondays—Saturdays (Tuesdays till 9PM); noon-5PM Sundays museum: Clay County Historical Society location: 202 First Avenue North, Moorhead/Minnesota 56561 contact person: Mark Peihl phone number/email address:218.299.5520 mark.peihl@ci.moorhead.mn.us web site: www.info.co.clay.mn.us/history contact person: Kathleen Backer phone number/email address:507.354.8850 kbhfest@newulmtel.net web site: www.heritagefest.net
Grand
Rapids/Minnesota dates:
late summer through late winter 2004 opening reception: summer 2004 general hours:
9.30AM-5PM Mondays—Fridays; 10AM-4PM Saturdays and 10AM-3PM Sundays museum: Itasca County Historical Society location: Central School Building, 10 Fifth Street Northwest, Grand Rapids/Minnesota 55744 contact person:
Lilah Crowe
phone number/email address: 218.326.6431 ichs@paulbunyan.net web site: www.itascahistorical.org Pembina/North Dakota dates: Saturday, March 19 2005 through Friday, September 30 2005 opening reception: Saturday, March 19 2005, 11 am general
hours:
museum: Pembina State Museum location: Highway 59, Pembina, North Dakota 58271 contact
person:
Jeff Blanchard
phone number/email address: 701.825.6840 jblanchard@state.nd.us web site: www.state.nd.us/hist/mus/pembmus.htm Related Press Release, June 2003: For IMMEDIATE RELEASE: POW Exhibit Extended Due to Public Response contact person: BUSeumTour@yahoo.com telephone 641.423.8000 web site: www.TRACES.org The response has been overwhelming—and unexpected. Last March the non-profit, educational organization TRACES opened its exhibit A Captive Eye: German POW Art and Artifacts at the Music Man Square Museum in Mason City, Iowa. While TRACES hoped for at least modest turnout and passing interest, its showing of some 1,000 photos, letters, journals, paintings, wood carvings, camp-issued clothes and money, books, musical instruments, tools and much more from Camp Algona or its 35 branch camps across Iowa, Minnesota and the Dakotas has sparked rare audience response. Above all, the exhibit is reminding its viewers of Upper Midwesterners’ own WWII-homefront experiences. Bill Berg of Minnesota—who has donated a wooden U.S. Army truck and jeep handcrafted by a POW working with his soldier father at Fort Snelling—recalls: “During WWII Mother and I lived with her parents in Minneapolis, just off Hiawatha Avenue; Dad and the POW would often stop by to visit. One day the POW gave me the two vehicles. That is all I know of him: there is no name or photo of him, but I remember that he was kind and loved children.” Jim Fitzgerald, a native Mason Citian now leading a Dixie band in Las Vegas, shares: “As a nine year old walking home from school we would pass the poultry house in Mason City and see POWs working, loading trucks and the like. We thought they were monsters until we started waving at them and they waved back. I became friends with a POW named Hans and when I asked him how Germany could do all the terrible things it was doing, he said ‘The same thing could happen here if Dillinger was President.’ I never forgot that. After some time we got permission to have him over to the house for dinner one Sunday. It was quite an experience for a young boy who was filled with all the propaganda of the times.” Well-received by visitors from across the nation, the exhibit was scheduled to conclude on Memorial Day but by popular demand will run through Labor Day, before moving to Wartburg College’s Vogel Library in Waverly, Iowa and then to the Sanford Museum in Cherokee, Iowa. In early 2004 the collection will move to Moorhead, Grand Rapids and likely New Ulm, Minnesota: except for Cherokee, all of those communities hosted POW branch camps during the war—as did Fairmont, Minnesota. Retired lawyer and writer Byron Holcomb remembers: “It was D-Day, June 6, 1944, and everyone was in downtown Fairmont to find out how the boys were doing on the beaches of Normandy. The merchants had placed radios above entry doors to hear the continuing news coverage, and semi-circles of hundreds of people stood outside together at each store. I was nine at the time. In front of Paulson’s Drug Store I looked at the man to my right along with his buddies—a German soldier, in uniform, listening as intently as the rest of us. I nudged him with my elbow and defiantly chided him with my finger thumping on my chest, ‘I am Byron.’ He nodded quickly and responded without gesture, ‘Jerry.’ A solitary tear effortlessly flowed down his cheek. “A German soldier crying—what is this? ‘Jerry’ was one of the remnants of Rommel’s fierce Afrika Korps brought in regiment strength as POWs to do the work of Fairmont while her sons were away. He wanted to know like everyone else that day what was happening. The war had come down to the two of us on this momentous day, and there I stood next to the enemy ready to defend Fairmont against them, even at my age!” The story of the 435,000 Axis POWs imprisoned in the United States at the end of WWII is a rich one—but fading fast. Michael Luick-Thrams’ project, however, is working feverishly to preserve the last “traces” of it before they disappear forever. He says: “We never dreamt that people here would be so fascinated by their own, mostly forgotten history. Quite literally TRACES is bringing that legacy back to life, so that we might learn about the treatment of POWs and other related issues during this time of renewed global war. Thankfully, the six decades’ distance from that chapter of our collective past helps people more rationally look at aspects of war than if we were traveling the Midwest and dissecting our nation’s current experiences. This exhibit is a learning tool—and it works exceptionally well.” Because of the tremendous response TRACES has been given many new artifacts, which will be integrated into the exhibit before its official rededication this coming Father’s Day. In fact, numerous changes and improvements will be made—including the introduction of two related short videos, one being the recently aired Iowa Public Television segment about this story. Luick-Thrams will give a personal tour of what he joking refers to as the “new, improved” exhibit from 1-3:30 Sunday afternoon, the 15th of June. Luick-Thrams is excited that summer tourist traffic will bring thousands of visitors to Mason City to see the exhibit: “TRACES research teams criss-crossed Germany seven times to interview 55 surviving former German POWs; this is their story and we have vividly documented the human side of their wartime experiences.” These unique war tales each have at least two sides—as Mary Siems Manau writes in her moving account of one Midwest family’s encounter with “the enemy”: "It was late summer on a farm south of Fairmont, Minnesota. A group of POWs had some to help my father harvest his grain. Father said these men were to be treated and fed just like any other thrashing crew. That meant that they ate inside, around the old oak table laden with a lot of home-cooked food. My mother recalls that some of the POWs wouldn't come into the house to eat, but most of the men did and enjoyed the food—and the polka and waltz music played on the record player. Some of them said it was the first 'real' music they had heard in over a year. “One young man, in his early 20’s, spoke pretty good English. He said that he was from Austria and that this wasn’t ‘his’ fight—that the German army came through the towns and villages and ‘took’ anyone who could fight. He said he left his young wife and an infant son, and was so worried about them and wondered if he would find them after the war. “I was
about six months old at that time. This young man asked if he could just
reach out and touch me. Without saying a word, Mother picked me and handed
me to him. She said he staid there rocking and patting me, with tears
streaming down his face. And, she recalled what was so remarkable about it
was that I was not crying when this stranger picked me up, but contentedly
smiling up at him. I was too little to remember WWII, but it had a profound
effect on me. To me it was about people and how it effected the families of
soldiers on both sides. I never knew his name, but I will always remember
the young man who held me in that summer of '44 and cried for his lost
family.”
For more information about this exhibit, or the history and project
behind it, visit www.TRACES.org. - END - | Home | |