The following article is from our June 2009 issue.

What, a U-Boat on the Ohio River? The fate of German immigrants during WW II in the U.S. finally gets a hearing - By Uwe Siemon-Netto

After war broke out between the U.S. and Germany 67 years ago, 11,000 German immigrants, including women and children, were sent to detention camps. Unlike ex-detainees of Japanese descent, they never received an apology. Finally, a Congressional subcommittee has begun looking into their fate. Eberhard E. Fuhr, who spent nearly five years in confinement, is one of them still around.

When you talk to Eberhard E. Fuhr, he sounds just like what he is: an elderly gentleman from the Midwest; educated, articulate, humorous, contented with his past career as a corporate executive; proud of his three children, eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren; and pleased with his ranch-style home in Palatine, Illinois. In short, he is very American but when pressed he admits: "Sometimes I still feel like an outsider here."

Fuhr can't remember the German village of Wiesdorf near Leverkusen where he was born as a baker's son 84 years ago. Nor does he recall crossing the Atlantic, wearing a sailor's uniform as little European boys did in those days, back in 1928.

What he will not forget was that day in August 1942 when U.S. agents came to the Fuhrs' brick house on Baymiller Street in Cincinnati to detain his parents and his younger brother, Gerhard. Neither can he forget his own arrest seven months later, nor the years of captivity that followed.

Fuhr lost his freedom while he was a senior at Woodward High School in Cincinnati, where he had been an excellent student and coveted athlete. He was quick-witted, too. With a chortle, he relates the inane question put to him by the Civilian Alien Hearing Board: "What would you say to your German cousin if he came to you for sanctuary after coming up the Ohio River in his German U-boat?" Fuhr shot back: "The Ohio River drafts only four feet; it's not deep enough for submarines."

With sadness, he reminisces about the behavior of the Lutheran parish to which the Fuhr family belonged. After his parents' arrest, he and his older brother Julius continued to live in their modest family home for a while. "The church elders stopped by demanding our parents' pledge - when we could not make payment, our parents were dropped from the church's rolls," said Fuhr, now a practicing member of a Lutheran congregation in Palatine.

When Fuhr and his brother were eventually led away in handcuffs, they were 17 and 18, respectively. The were first incarcerated in Hamilton County Prison where felons yelled threats at them from neighboring cells, calling them Nazis, Krauts and Huns. "Worse than this experience was the humiliating and painful way by which we were driven from Cincinnati to Chicago - in the backseat of a car, handcuffed all the way to my belt and to my brother in a manner forcing us to face each other all the time, even when nature called," he recalled. "It was excruciating."

He insists that he and his family had nothing to do with the Nazis, who came to power in Germany after the Fuhrs had left. "My parents were faithful Christians, and if they had any political leanings at all they felt nostalgia for the monarchy," he said. In the scorpion-infested detention camp in Crystal City, Texas, where the Fuhr family was finally reunited, Fuhr did become aware of some captives celebrating Hitler's birthday on April 20. "But on the whole, I rarely heard German inmates expressing sympathy for the Nazis," he said.

In the Crystal City camp, the Fuhrs learned that their Cincinnati home had been ransacked. "Everything was taken, our furniture, stamp collection, piano, violin, even our family photographs and all private memorabilia whose loss my mother mourned until she died in 1961," Fuhr said. "My father asked the camp authorities to grant him leave so that he could secure his house. They said, 'Sure, if you are prepared to pay for the time and travel of three armed guards.' My father did not have that kind of money; as a baker he had never made more than $35 per week." The Fuhrs lost their house to foreclosure as did many other detainees.

In the Crystal City camp, the Fuhrs lived side-by-side with Japanese families. "German and Japanese babies were born on the same table," he recalled. "The only difference between them was that after the war the Japanese children received restitution and the Germans did not." But the relationship between the two groups was friendly. "We played baseball together," he added. "Later, when Peruvian detainees of Japanese extraction joined us, they proved to be great soccer partners."

The U.S. government had persuaded Latin American governments to arrest some of their citizens and residents of German, Austrian and Japanese extractions and send them to the U.S. for internment. About 4,050 Germans, including Jews, were transported north in dark, dank holds of ships and were rarely allowed on deck. "Some were of dark complexion, suggesting Hispanic ancestry," Fuhr recalled. "We welcomed their arrival because they brought their wonderful music with them, making life in the camp more bearable."

Such distraction was much appreciated in Crystal City, a hellishly hot place just north of the Mexican border teeming with thousands of inmates living in family units, watched over by armed guards in lookout towers. "We were not mistreated," he said. "Our guards simply did their jobs. Still, in a way we civilians were worse off than German prisoners of war who were allowed out of their camps and often lived on farms."

The inmates' mail was censored; they were cut off from the outside world. They had no real dollars, which they could have used beyond their barbed wire fence but were paid in SCRIP, a substitute currency without legal tender. It was accepted only in the camp's own store and at its farm that grew vegetables.

The best thing that happened to Fuhr in Crystal City was meeting his future wife, Barbara, the daughter of a German wire service correspondent who refused to be repatriated when war broke out and instead, insisted on remaining in the United States with his American wife and child. So they were interned. But marriage between Fuhr and Barbara had to wait well beyond the end of World War II in 1945. First the Fuhrs had to stay on in Crystal City to help dismantle the camp. Then they were transferred to Ellis Island, N.Y. where conditions were worse, where the food was barely edible and where the detainees were allowed only brief moments in the open air every day.

It wasn't until 1948 that the last German-American detainees were released from Ellis Island due to efforts of Republican Senator William Langer from North Dakota. Before they were allowed to go, most were made to sign secrecy oaths. "Many (were) threatened with deportation with no prospect of return if they spoke of their ordeal," according to Karen E. Ebel, an internee's daughter heading the German American Internee Coalition. "Many internees, always fearful, (took) their secret to their graves [...] Reportedly, camp employees (were also made to) sign oaths of secrecy."

After their release, most detainees faced destitution. Their bank accounts were frozen, their properties gone. Worse still, their wartime experience of humiliation and stigmatization left them with "deep psychological scars," said Fuhr. "This is why we must encourage these people to tell their story without fear of recrimination. They are not criminals but persons caught in the web of wartime hysteria."

Largely due to organizations such as Ebel's, the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law began debating their fate this spring. In a hearing, it focused on the U.S. treatment of European Americans, Latin Americans, Japanese Latin Americans and Jewish refugees during World War II.

Whether in years to come German-American victims of U.S. detention policies in World War II will receive compensation as did their Japanese and Italian counterparts, is doubtful, according to Fuhr. "At any rate, even if money was offered to me I wouldn't take it. I was not the one who lost everything: my father was and he is dead."

Despite losing years of his youth, Fuhr did well in life. Working as a secretary, his wife Barbara paid for his education, which allowed him to finish high school, graduate from college with honors, and then obtain an MBA. Then followed a successful career in industry: His last position was that of national sales manager of Pioneer Plastics Corporation, a leading producer of high quality laminates.

"I was blessed with a wonderful marriage of 56 years," said Fuhr, whose wife died a few years ago. "I have been to Germany six times and developed a sense of belonging there." But of course he knows that this is no option for him. He will doubtlessly live out his days in America, loved by his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren - and to live with his memories but not in the way other former detainees did. They suffered their shame silently. Fuhr is determined to continue speaking out.


Picture above: It couldn't happen here? An aerial view of the Crystal City internment camp (top). Above, Eberhard Fuhr at a traveling exhibition of the German detention experience in the U.S. Below, internees at Crystal City gather.


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