The Graber Story ©2001
Mid-April 1945. It was a relatively sunny day in Gernsbach, a
small town
in the Black Forest of
around the small vegetable garden
interspersed with fruit trees. Our
father and grandfather were
digging up the ground to prepare new vegetable
beds. At first, we heard only a
very low hum but it quickly became louder
and louder. Then the air raid
sirens started shrieking. By that time,
airplanes were visible. I was a
toddler, so I could not count much past
20, but there were many more than
that anyway. I was fascinated as small
objects started to fall out of
the airplanes, not realizing they were
bombs that could kill me.
Everyone ran in panic. Our father
grabbed us. We tried to crawl under the
slightly elevated floor of a
garden tool shed for protection, as we were
told. We didn't have time to make
it to the air raid shelter. My biggest
concern in the rush was the piece
of bread I had dropped. I was
determined to go back out there
to retrieve it. A piece of bread was food,
and food was not easy to come by
in those days. The bombs were laying a
carpet of destruction through
Gernsbach. I was not allowed to get the
bread. Only a few days earlier,
we discovered what the air raid shelter
was. We were living in our
grandparents' house when it was blown away
during a vicious tank attack by
the French. With nothing but our lives
we
made it to the air raid shelter.
My brothers and I did not understand.
We were American-born children in
war-torn
war, destruction, hunger, lack of
shelter and the misery surrounding us
everywhere
Today, 55 years later, Werner and
I are still trying to understand how he,
my other brother, Teddy, and I
ended up in ravaged
of the most vicious fighting of
WWII having bombs dropped on us by our own
people. Germans couldn't
understand that we were refugees from
They did not know what to make of
us. But since we spoke German, we were
accepted without much thought.
Fortunately, living in the towns of our
respective grandparents,
townspeople still remembered Mom and Dad. Dad had
emigrated to the
married in February 1939, recent
immigrants filled with hope and looking
forward to their new lives in
country my parents loved crushed
their hopes and dreams, as well as their
family.
Early September 1942. Theo
Graber, 29, Emmy, 22, Werner, 3 and Gunther,
1 1/2 were living
residential street. We just had moved there from
in a two-family house owned by
Mr. Stenzinsky. He had emigrated from
Grabers for all the misery
suffered in
became unbearable, so my parents
decided to move to
Polish landlord also was
responsible for the FBI's increasing interest in
the Grabers.
The International Nickel Company
employed my father in
working with "war sensitive
technology." One day when he came home from
work, my mother, Emmy, told him
about the two new men who had moved into
the neighborhood. She observed
that they were well dressed and very neat
in their hats, ties and gray
suits. They had been there for two days
and
had not even thrown any paper in
the gutter. Dad, suspicions aroused,
peeked through the curtains at
the dark green Chevy sedan parked across
the street and wondered what they
wanted.
We found out all too soon. On September 25, there were several hard
knocks on the door and the two
well dressed, armed men bolted through the
door. They asked Dad if he was Theo Graber. He said
he was and asked them
to identify themselves. "FBI" was their response and they
flashed their
badges. With little regard for small children, they
informed Theo and
Emmy that they had to go with
them to the local FBI bureau for
questioning. When Mom asked who would watch the children,
they told her
to get a sitter. New to the area, my parents didn't know
anyone who would
watch us. Mom suggested they take Dad alone, but said
she'd come looking
for him if he didn't show up in a
few hours. After some convincing, they
took Theo and left Mom home with
us.
Theo was interrogated for several
hours, questioned about his job, his
finances, what German
organizations he belonged to, his relatives and
friends. All throughout, however,
he had the feeling the agents knew the
answers before they asked the
questions. They returned Theo back to his
family. He was never given any
reason for being interrogated or told what
crimes he was suspected of having
committed. He was only an "enemy
alien"
not worthy of fair treatment.
In late November they were back.
Bang, bang. Theo answered the door.
"You are under arrest,"
he was told, as the agents pushed him into the
kitchen. Emmy, upstairs coming out of the bedroom, saw
this, fainted and
fell down the stairs. One of the agents asked who she was. Theo said it
was his wife. They wondered what her problem was. Theo told them she
was pregnant and tried to help
her. Another agent in the meantime was
going through all the closets,
dressers and whatever else he could turn
over, never revealing what they
were looking for. They told us that they'd
be back to get us after
Christmas.
As a result of the fall, on
December 2, 1942, Teddy was born 2 months
premature. His right leg was
deformed and he suffered from spinabifida. My
parents were told that he would
never walk by the doctor at Elizabeth
General Hospital. On December 31, 1942, Dad had even written to
President
Roosevelt plead his case, but it
was to no avail. The local FBI bureau
told him that since we boys were
American citizens we would not have to go
to prison. Dad's feeling was that we were a
family—-either we all go or
nobody goes.
On January 16, 1943, without
notice, FBI Inspector Stern and two Elizabeth
City Cops came to get us. We were
allowed to bring only what we could
carry in hastily packed
suitcases. They swung past the Elizabeth General
Hospital to pick up Teddy who had
been there ever since he was born.
They took us to the Ferry landing
to go to Ellis Island. We huddled there
freezing on the pier under close
watch waiting for the ferry. Mom and we
three very young children shared
a small room with another woman with two
young children. Teddy was still
very sick. The men were in rooms, each
occupied by about 30 men. During the day, everyone was in the large
reception hall. We had little time together as a family.
On January 19, 1943, we were told
to pack and taken under guard by Coast
Guard Cutter to Jersey City. We had no idea where we were going. The
military had just completed a
makeshift landing dock where we stepped on
land. It was conducted like a clandestine
operation, perhaps to keep
their treatment of us a secret.
In the train station, we waited several
hours for a train. We were kept
separate from everyone else, closely
guarded by several plainclothes
agents. Everyone kept staring at us like
we were criminals. Husband, wife
and three small children, they must have
wondered, what did they do? The train finally came and we were given a
compartment for ourselves to keep
us separate from other passengers. I
guess they thought we were
dangerous or would try to escape.
Finally,
they told us that we were going
to Texas.
After endless 4 days, we wound up
in Seagoville, Texas. In that camp, a
former women's jail complex, we
were assigned 2 rooms to live in. The
buildings were bungalow style
with around 10 rooms each. Armed agents on
horseback controlled the complex.
The complex also housed a contingent of
Japanese. Life in general was
miserable. Mom and Teddy were mostly in the
hospital. Teddy, of course,
required continuous care, and Mom was pretty
much always sick. To this day, I cannot imagine how my mother
and father
managed all this misery.
Dad was trying to find out why he
was in the camp and what he had done
that he deserved to be here.
There were no answers. There were no court
hearings, there were no
accusations, there was never any reason given why
he and his family were so
brutally removed from their daily lives and sent
to this desolate, miserable
place. He kept thinking that the reason
he
left Germany in first place was
to live in a country were freedom and
above all, civil liberties and
rights, had a meaning. Instead, here he
and his family were imprisoned
with no prospect of leaving, only endless
time, self-doubt and torment.
Approximately a year and a half
later, on June 7, 1944, we were shipped to
Crystal City, 20 miles from the
Mexican border. There we could live in a
bungalow and function as a family
again. There even was a kitchen where
Emmy could cook family
meals. There were no trees, however, and
it was
unbelievably hot. Teddy still
spent most of his time in the hospital. Dad
worked in the power room, just to
keep his sanity. One day, some
officials visited and he was
asked if he wanted to return to Germany. He
decided that returning to Germany
was better then being in jail.
Understandably, by that time, all
Dad wanted to do was to get out. Life
in the prison camps was
unbearable. Choosing so-called
"voluntary"
repatriation to war torn Germany
is ample evidence of how miserable,
embittered and discouraged my
father was. Let no one say that under
such
circumstances, repatriation was
in any way truly voluntary.
Tuesday January 2, 1945. Six
months later, we were taken back to the train
station. In Crystal City, Dad had constructed wooden
crates in which our
meager belongings were placed.
Dad's brother partially sold the belongings
we left behind in Elizabeth. Others
had been stolen. (My uncle had been a
citizen for a number of years.
But he was German by birth, so he still he
had several sessions with the
FBI. However, as a citizen they could
not
imprison him on mere suspicion
like they did to my father.) After 4 long
days, we were back in Ellis
Island. From there it was a short trip
to the
Swedish ocean liner
"Gripsholm." On January 6, 1945, we departed from New
York harbor, my parents and 3
young boys, 5 and under, one an invalid. We
were headed for Germany across
the Atlantic during January at a time of
some of the heaviest fighting of
the war.
The Gripsholm was painted all
white and even at night, she was brightly
lit for everyone to see. There
were 800 civilians, including many
children, and 200 prisoners of
war on board. These were to be exchanged
for the same number of American
citizens caught in Germany by the outbreak
of war. On January 18, we sailed
past Gibraltar and on January 21 into the
harbor of Marseilles. The ship struck a mine and we all panicked. The
ship took on water, but
thankfully was able to deliver its human cargo
intact.
There was a very large contingent
of non-English speaking people on this
shipment. As it turns out, these
were citizens of Bolivia, Columbia and
several other Latin American
countries. The people were German immigrants
living in Latin America where
they had been kidnapped by Latin American
governments, at the urging of the
US. They were shipped under inhumane
conditions to the US to be used
in the exchange program. Only later, as I
got older, did I understand that
these people had nothing to do with the
US and certainly had not
volunteered for this exchange. One such
individual, a Senor Gustave Dobe,
wound up in Winnenden, my father's
hometown, where we ultimately
lived. We would see him periodically.
A train was waiting in the harbor
and all of us were loaded on. The wagons
were normal passenger cars. Under
heavy American security, we made it in 2
1/2 days to Geneva, Switzerland.
With a cog train we were taken up the
mountain to the hotel "Les
Amons" in Montreux. It was one of
the worst
winters in recorded history, so
it was very cold and there was lots of
snow on the ground. Some of the
Latin Americans never had seen any snow.
The Swiss were not happy to have
all these people there. After a week, on
January 30, we continued by train
to Bregenz. From there, on February 3,
1945, we crossed in
Friedrichshafen into Germany. There the one for one
exchange took place. Germans (or,
in the case of many family members like
we children, Americans of German
ancestry) walked into dictatorship and
bombs, and Americans, whose life
America seemed to value more than ours,
walked out to freedom. Anyone could see that we were walking
innocently
toward potential death from the
bombs of the country where we were born.
Strangely, the exchange itself
was anticlimactic after all we had been
through. The average German
citizen did not seem to know what was going
on. In any event, just trying to survive,
they certainly did not care. Dad
was able to call his family in
Winnenden, a small town near Stuttgart, to
tell them we were coming. They were shocked and couldn't imagine why we
had returned. They didn't know how we would eat or where we
would live.
The Americans didn't care about
such things once we were exchanged and the
German government didn't concern
itself with us. We were merely pawns in
a cruel game. When we arrived, there still was lot of war
activity and
German flak trying to shoot down
American and British aircraft. The
soldiers at one of the flak
batteries were happy to exchange bread for the
cigarettes Dad still had. Other than that, not much other food was
available.
On February 10, 1945, we made it
to Winnenden by train. Train service was
sporadic. In some instances, we
had to walk a few miles since the track
was destroyed. Mystified people
always asked us why we come back? It was
very evident that Germany had
lost. There was only destruction and misery
there. My parents and three very young children were
walking the tracks
with all their belongings through
a war zone. And my father has never
even knew what he had done wrong,
except perhaps that he was German.
On February 19, my parents
decided to go to Gernsbach in the Black Forest,
my mother's hometown. Gernsbach is located only a few miles from
Baden
Baden. The situation there was
the same, mostly destruction. They did not
expect us. Again we were asked,
why did you come back to this? German men
had no choice but to fight. Mom
lost a brother on the Russian Front.
Mom's brother-in-law was a
prisoner of war in the US, of all places.
Dad decided that he needed to
find work. The best possibility was back in
Winnenden at his father's tool shop.
Werner, 5 1/2 years old, and Dad
started out hitchhiking.
Periodically they got lucky. Mostly they walked.
During this journey, they were
stopped by a French patrol. The commander
ripped up Dad's American ID card
and spat at him. Only the fact that
Werner was an American citizen
saved our father from being thrown into the
French Foreign Legion. (The
French troops had no sympathies for German
enemy aliens just arrived from
the US.) They also did not care for the
Americans in general.
There were many East German and
Eastern European refugees arriving in
Winnenden, so the social system
was stretched. The locals had nothing and
the refugees had even less. Dad
was able to get a two-room living area in
a wooden barrack. Toilets were
outside and there was one communal water
faucet, outside as well. It was a
long way from Elizabeth, NJ, but in many
ways like being back in
internment camp.
When applying for social help in
Town Hall, Father found out that he did
not qualify as a refugee. He was told that there were no refugees
coming
from the West, especially not
from the US. So much for kindness,
understanding and support. If you
came from the East, running from the
Russian Army, even if you were
not German and did not speak the language,
you were considered a refugee
worthy of getting social aid. But if you
were a destitute German from
America, you were a refugee who no one wanted
or cared about. Our father was very bitter and stayed bitter
for a long
time. In mid-April, our home was destroyed in the
tank attack. We found
someplace else to live, but
survival was difficult.
Finally, the war was over. The rebuilding began, but our trials
continued. Werner and I started
school. They called us "Ami"
for
American. We were accepted like any
East European refugee. Always sickly,
Teddy died of pneumonia in 1948
because there was no medication available.
Father took over his father's
tooling business. This is natural for a
son, but only happened because my
grandfather was killed when struck by a
US Army truck one evening. He was going to get fresh milk from a farmer
he knew for his American
grandchildren. Later, another son, Hans,
was
born. Life was extremely difficult in postwar
Germany. We had the bare
necessities and not much else,
but life went on, as it must.
When Werner and I turned 18, we
had to make a decision. Do we become
German citizens or should we
exercise our birthright and remain Americans?
We both decided to remain
Americans. There really was never a
question as
to what citizenship we were going
to choose. This required a trip to the
US Consulate in Stuttgart where
we were duly signed up for Selective
Service and received a passport.
Werner returned to the US in 1958, I
returned in 1959. Having learned
the toolmaking trade, finding a good job
was not a problem. Mom and Dad
never expressed how they felt when we left.
It was extremely difficult, but I
think they understood our decision.
It took them a long time to
reconcile with the past. To their very end, my
parents tried to find out why
they had to endure such an experience.
For
many years, Dad tried to justify
to himself that he had made the right
decision asking for repatriation.
Did he deprive his children having a
normal life? Would it have been
different had he waited out the war in the
camp and then gone back to New
Jersey? There was, of course, no way of
knowing how much longer the war
would last or how much longer we would
have been in prison. Sadly, he was never free of the self-doubt
and
bitterness all his life. This
constant self-examination is another cruel
legacy of internment.
To this day, when Werner and I
mention our experiences to anyone here in
the US, it is met with total
disbelief. It would be impossible to make up
such an experience and story. For
several years, Werner and I have worked
to get our government to admit
that not only the Japanese were mistreated
during WWII. We want it to admit that there were also many
Germans
affected. We simply want an
admission of wrongdoing and an apology. This
is for our parents, although they
are both dead now. They deserve it for
what they went through. We also want assurances that something like
this
will never be repeated for anyone
of a different nationality.
My brothers and I still believe
in the American democratic system. This
belief could be seriously
undermined, however, if the US does not
acknowledge all the ethnicities,
including German Americans, which were
affected by its wartime
policies. If my country can send me back
to
Germany and drop bombs on me, it
should be able to admit to this very ugly
period in the history of the
United States.
By Gunther Graber with assistance
from Karen Ebel
August 15, 2001