They just disappeared...


They disappeared in the night!

It was in the middle of a dark cold winter night. While the children were sleeping, their parents disappeared. When they woke up the next morning they had no idea what had happened.
The neighbors didn’t know either.
A couple of weeks later the two younger children were taken away by the police. They didn’t know what had happened to their older brother.

This didn’t happen in Nazi Germany… or Imperialist Japan… or some other foreign dictatorship.
It happened in the U.S. A… in the heartland… in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The youngest child was now visiting the recent exhibit at the Cannon Falls Library about the imprisonment of approximately 15,000 German-American civilians between 1941-48. Fred Theberath lives outside of Northfield, MN.
He and his wife, Fern, found his name in one of the photo panels in the display.

Fred recalled that night back on December 8, 1941. He was 11 years old when the FBI came around 2:30 a.m. and took his parents, Peter and Marie away. The children woke up to find them gone. “No one told us.” he explained. His sister Gertrude was about 13 and his oldest brother, John, was 16.
The neighbors had no idea what had happened either and helped the children by feeding them along with their own families.

Two weeks later, Fred and Gertrude were taken by the police to a detention center were they were housed in separate buildings. Fred recalled that his room was like a bare 8 x 10 foot jail cell with a cot and a metal stool. This is where he spent Christmas.

The next two years he stayed in a Home for Dependent Children (Orphanage) and then was put into foster care.
Fred didn’t know what had happened to his older brother. John had to find a job and a place to stay. He found work at a bakery and a lady there had a son near his age and invited him to stay with their family.
Fred’s mother was released in early February but the only job she could find was as a cook and she couldn’t earn enough money to keep the children with her.

Family history in pictures displayed by Fred Theberath include his wedding picture in 1953. His wife, Fern, met him when she worked for the FBI and he had been drafted into the Army.

The center photo is of his father, Peter, in 1944 and on the right as a soldier in WWI. Peter had emigrated to the U.S. in 1928. Fern explained that her father-in-law felt war with Germany was imminent in the 1940’s so he had applied to the German Embassy for his disability check from being wounded while in the German Army in WWI. He apparently figured it would not be available later. But this might have caused a problem for Peter Theberath and his family later.

Fred's father was sent to Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia and then on to Bismarck, N.D. These were among over 50 detention centers or internment camps in the U.S. Although Germany surrendured in May 1945, Peter wasn’t released until after Japan surrendered in August.
Their personal property had been stored in a warehouse but years later when they were able to retrieve it they found most of it was missing.

Ironically, when Fred was 22 years old he got a draft notice for the Army. He said he wondered how the government could trust him then when at 11 years old he was a danger to the country?

The book, Vanished, reports internee’s stories like Fred's. It is edited by Michael Luick-Thrams, Executive Director of TRACES, a non-profit educational organization in St. Paul, MN created to gather and preserve stories of people during WWII with German heritage from the Midwest and make their history known.

.