Exhibit Exploring German-American Civilian Internment During World War II to Visit Kansas

Date: October 4, 2006

TOPEKA – During World War II, the United States government registered some 300,000 Germans in America as “enemy aliens” and interned approximately 15,000 German-Americans.

Beginning October 16, an exhibit examining this period in American history will tour 11 Kansas communities. The statewide tour is sponsored by the Kansas Humanities Council, a nonprofit organization that conducts and supports community-based cultural programs. The free traveling exhibit explores the stories of German-Americans living in the Midwest prior to America’s entry into WWII.

Even though they were American citizens, those German-Americans targeted by the federal government lost their homes and livelihoods to war hysteria. Families were arrested by authorities on the basis of tips that spurred phone taps, intercepted mail and illegal searches. Family members were sometimes separated. Some were deported back to wartime Germany. Others were sent to more than 60 detention centers around the country. Of those imprisoned, not one was permitted legal representation, was charged with, tried for or convicted of a war-related crime, according to project director Michael Luick-Thrams.

Housed in a retrofitted school bus with a 21-seat theater, the exhibit Vanished: German-American Civilian Internment, 1941-1948 will cross Kansas as part of a six-state Midwest tour, stopping at libraries and museums.

A sample of the exhibit includes stories about the following:
• Walter Greis, an American from Milwaukee, served in WWII. His two American brothers, German parents and German-born brother spent more than two years in internment camps.
• Art Jacobs, an American from Brooklyn, was interned with his American brother and German parents and eventually "repatriated" to Germany, where the U.S. Army imprisoned him at age 12.
• Eddie Friede, a German-Jewish lawyer, fled the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany only to be arrested in San Francisco and held for six months at Fort Lincoln near Bismarck, N.D.

Luick-Thrams said understanding how the federal government could mistreat its own citizens is key to understanding today's civil liberties debate over the war on terrorism. "If U.S. citizens could be interned with no legal representation in the 1940s," he said, "we see no reason why it couldn't happen again."

The exhibit was created by TRACES Center for History and Culture in Saint Paul, Minnesota in partnership with Friends University in Wichita. For more information, contact info@kansashumanities.org or call 785/357-0359.

TOUR SCHEDULE

10/16 10 AM-1 PM
Garden City Community College, 801 Campus Drive
Contact Trent Smith, 620/276-9510

10/16 4-7 PM
Great Bend Public Library, 1409 Williams
Contact Terri Hurley, 620/792-2409

10/17 3-8 PM
Friends University, 2100 W. University St., Wichita
Contact Wayne Howdeshell, 316/295-5812

10/18 10 AM-1 PM
Hutchinson Public Library, 901 N. Main
Contact Annette Smith, 620/663-5441

10/18 3-6 PM
McPherson Museum, 1130 E. Euclid
Contact Carla Barber, 620/241-8464

10/19 10 AM-1 PM
Heritage Center of Dickinson County, 412 S. Campbell, Abilene
Contact Jeff Sheets, 785/263-2681

10/19 5:30-8:30 PM
Geary County Historical Museum, 530 N. Adams, Junction City
Contact Bill McKale, 785/239-8230

10/20 10 AM-1 PM
Emporia Public Library, 110 E. 6th
Contact Sue Blechl, 620/340-6462

10/20 3-6 PM
Topeka/Shawnee County Public Library, 1515 SW 10th Ave.
Contact Brad Allen, 785/580-4561

10/21 10 AM-5 PM
Lawrence Public Library, 707 Vermont
Contact Maria Butler, 785/843-3833

10/23 11 AM-7 PM
Kansas City Public Library, 625 Minnesota
Contact Barbara Jolley, 913/279-2341

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