The E-Sylum:  Volume 6, Number 23, June 8, 2003, Article 13

CRYSTAL CITY RECOLLECTIONS

  Although we have discussed this before, I wanted to
  publish this note from Art Jacobs, a former internee
  at Crystal City, Texas.  He wrote to us correcting an
  earlier E-Sylum item that only mentioned the Japanese-
  American occupants of the facility:

  "The Crystal City Internment camp held Japanese Americans,
  German Americans and Italian Americans, as well as Latin
  Americans of these three nationalities.  Japanese Americans
  from the West Coast were among the internees--they, like all
  internees in the Crystal City Camp, used the same tokens.
  For more on internment of German Americans see
  http://www.foitimes.com."

  In a similar vein Harold Eiserloh writes: "I forwarded the
  recent E-Sylum items about the Crystal City Internment
  Camp to some distant relatives who lived there with their
  interned father.

  When their father, Mathias Eiserloh, was "arrested" for
  being a German alien (he had lived in this country for over
  15 years, and never bothered to become a citizen, but
  married and had three children, the youngest just 1 year
  old).  He was a mechanical engineer, they had built their
  own house and the mother did sewing and other things to
  add to their family income.  When the father was interned
  they lost his income, and her customers figured that if he
  was interned they must be guilty of espionage or something,
  so they had no more dealings with the mother.  The younger
  children were mistreated by other children in their
  neighborhood.

  Soon the family, without income, lost their home and had
  to  move from Cleveland to join the father in the camp at
  Crystal City, Texas.  Although there was no mistreatment
  at the camp, they felt like prisoners.  In January of 1945,
  just a few months before Germany surrendered, the family
  was sent to Germany in exchange for some American
  internees there.   The father thought that he would be
  welcomed by relatives, but they weren't given rations by the
  German government and the relatives hadn't enough for
  themselves. The Gestapo figured the father was an
  American spy and imprisoned him.

  When the war was over they immediately applied to return
  to the United States.  It was nine years before they were
  permitted to return, even though the mother and three
  children were United States citizens.  When they finally
  were able to return, the father was in sixty years old and
  couldn't find a job.    The mother supported the family
  with sewing and other odd jobs. The father died a couple
  of years later.

  Although the government has officially acknowledged the
  Japanese internees and given them some reparations, they
  haven't even officially acknowledged that Germans and
  Italians were also interred, much less offered any reparations."

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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