Sigrid Banzhaf Toye shares some of her family’s experiences during WW II with us. Her father, Eugen, mother, Emmy, and Sigrid were visiting her grandmother in Germany when war broke out. Scrambling to find passage back to the U.S., where her parents were legal residents, the French boarded the ship once it was in international water and […]
My parents Emmy Elfriede and Eugen Banzhaf’s lives included two world wars, the severe inflation in Europe during the period between the wars, the depression in the United States, and the isolation and marginalization that came with interment during the second World War. This is their story. Eugen Banzhaf, came to the United States […]
30 Aug 1993 Department of Justice’s “Office of Redress Administration Announces Two New Eligibility Categories for World War II Internees” issues a press release authorizing redress payments for Japanese Americans born in internment camps to “volunteer internee” mothers.
An internet search found two interesting WWII “Blacklists” on the Fraser Federal Reserve Archive website. The first includes The Proclaimed List of Certain Blocked Nationals: July 17, 1941, the Presidential Proclamation 2497 authorizing the list, and information for the press. A second list, a United States Printing Office publication of The Proclaimed List of Certain Blocked Nationals: Revision II, […]
Internment camp deaths and photographs of the three headstones at the Edgewood Cemetery in Crystal City are now on-line, thanks to Werner Ulrich, a former internee, who worked with Carmen Sanchez Diaz and Jose F. Cazares, residents of Crystal City, Texas, to collect the death certificates of all internees who died while imprisoned at the Crystal City, Texas, Family Internment […]
The headstones from four internee graves were photographed by Werner Ulrich, a former internee, at the Edgewood Cemetery, Crystal City, Texas. He found no others. All of these internee families were from Latin America. (An earlier article mis-identified the cemetery as Benito Juarez.) The Schuster Medina family Ludwig Schuster Medina was born and died on June 16, 1945. His […]
Crystal City, Texas Internment Camp list of deaths—from information provided by Carmen Sanchez Diaz and Jose F. Cazares, residents of Crystal City, Texas. List courtesy of Werner Ulrich, a former internee. (2016)
Riley, Karen L. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield. 2002. Often overlooked in the infamous history of U.S. internment during World War II is the plight of internee children. Drawn from personal interviews and multiple primary source materials, Schools behind Barbed Wire is the first book to uncover this unique chapter in American history. Previous to the […]
On April 17, 2016, “The Train To Crystal City”, written by Jan Jarboe Russell, won the prize for best non-fiction book of the year at the Texas Institute of Letters banquet. There were 40 entries this year so the competition was steep.
Veno, Carl A. Pilgrims of War: a Love Story. Fedeli Publishing Inc., 2011. (a novel) Beautiful Italian doctor Magdalena Russo is headed to a medical conference when the ship she’s on is seized at the Panama Canal. World War II is raging, and the passengers aboard the Italian ship are deemed a threat to the United States. […]