Books and Journal Articles on German American Internment

We Were Not the Enemy: Remembering the United States’ Latin-American Civilian Internment Program of World War II by Heidi Gurcke Donald

The United States clandestinely funds the operation of a huge prison in Cuba. Men, women, and children are spirited away from their homes and imprisoned indefinitely. No charges are made; no legal counsel is allowed. Newspapers fill with stories of espionage and enemies. Current events? No.

During World War II, the United States used tactics remarkably similar to those in use today against presumed terrorists. By 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt had covertly authorized J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret Intelligence Service to begin surveillance of Axis nationals in Latin America. Believing that “all German nationals without exception [are] dangerous,” the United States surreptitiously pressured Latin-American countries to arrest and deport more than four thousand civilians of German ethnicity to the United States. There, many languished in internment camps, while others were shipped to war-torn Germany.

Heidi Donald is a native of Costa Rica who was deported to the United States with six family members and interned at Crystal City, Texas during World War II. We Were Not the Enemy, her recently published memoir, is a personal look at the pain this indiscriminate civilian internment program inflicted on her family.

Brief reviews:

The story Donald tells—of blacklists, of her father’s abduction from Costa Rica, of the family’s eventual internment for over a year in Crystal City, Texas—is shocking and heart-wrenching. … For historians, We Were Not the Enemy will stand as a shocking antecedent to our government’s present policy of extreme rendition. For others, this gripping memoir will stand as a reminder of the heartache engendered by wartime fear and panic.

—John Christgau, author of Enemies, World War II Alien Internment

Heidi Gurcke Donald’s family was among those who, with little or no evidence and no legal procedures, were forced from their homes and shipped to the United States. … This is a cautionary tale. It is a chapter of American history that is not taught in school. But it happened. And it could happen again, if we do not vigilantly safeguard our civil liberties.

—Jay Feldman, author of When the Mississippi Ran Backwards and

Suitcase Sefton and the American Dream

$12.95

ISBN: 0-595-39333-0

Publisher: iUniverse.com, 2006.

Available at bookstores or on-line through Barnes & Noble, Amazon, or iUniverse

Loyalty on Trial: One American's Battle with the FBI, Erik V. Wolter with Robert J. Masters. Loyalty on Trial provides a case study of how the government responded to what it perceived to be disloyal German American citizens during WWII, which parallels the way the government acts today as it struggles to find a balance between safeguarding civil liberties and assuring national security. The author offers an analysis of the issues raised then and now with a careful comparison of what is at stake for all Americans.

Where the Clouds Meet the Water by Contag, Kimberly E. and James A. Grabowska, follows the historical journey of the German Ecuadorian widower, Ernst Contag, and his four young children from their home in the South American Andes to Nazi Germany in 1942. Blacklisted as an enemy alien, Ernst Contag and his children are forcibly repatriated to the country of Ernst's grandparents as part of a diplomatic exchange arranged by the United States' State Department and cooperating countries. In Nazi Germany, Ernst and his children must deny their Ecuadorian past and learn to live as Germans. The Contag family strives to keep the ray of hope in their hearts when the Nazi oath of "blood and honor" leads to fear, abandonment, and death. The children and their father navigate an ever-shifting horizon as they face despair and fear in internment and refugee sites, separation, devastation and loss in Germany (1942-45), hunger and hopelessness in post-war France (1945-46), and hostility in their own Andean homeland. Through it all, the strength of family serves as the glue that holds them all together.

The book is available at Borders Books, Barnes 'n Noble and through Inkwater (www.inkwaterpress.com). Inkwater Press, 2004. ISBN 1-59299-073-8

The Misplaced American by Ursula Potter (Ursula Vogt Potter), published by and available through 1stBooks.com This story begins on December 9,1941, when Karl Vogt, a German national residing in the United States, was abruptly taken from his home near Plaza, Washington by agents of the F.B.I. and eventually sent to internment camps located in North Dakota, Wisconsin, Oklahoma and finally Montana. For nearly two years he was not told what the “evidence” was against him and he was never told who his accusers were. Left behind on the family farm, and also subjected to harassment by the United States government, were his wife, Elsie, and his two young children, all American citizens. Meanwhile, in war-torn Germany, Karl’s father and siblings endured and survived the horrors of the Nazi regime and the devastation of World War II. In the end, this is really a story about enduring love---the unconditional love of God; the love of a husband and wife for each other; the sustaining love of family members separated by the worst of circumstances; and also, amazingly, the love that Karl and Elsie continued to have for the United States, a country whose government betrayed them in the most onerous way.

"Enemies" , by John Christgau, A new edition ENEMIES has been released by iUniverse.com. It's available through their website, as well as the major chain bookstores. This book, one of the first, if not the first book, to open the door to many researchers and others, noting that others, besides Japanese Americans were interned in the United States during the Second World War.

The documents for this work were obtained as the result of more than ten years of research. The majority of the material in this volume was obtained from the National Archives and Records Administration, Immigration and Naturalization Service of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A few of the documents were obtained from the private files of former internees. The research of this work was enhanced by the help from former internees, Americans of German heritage. The research continues. It is a slow process because the time it takes for many of the government agencies to respond to Freedom of Information and Privacy Act (FOI/PA) request.

Years of Silence, reprinted from the Summer 1997, University of Dayton Quarterly