American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [198]
Most of the detainees would be transferred from Ellis Island to other internment camps throughout the country. Many would be joined by their spouses and children—some of whom were American citizens like Rose Marie—who voluntarily agreed to be detained with their family. The Neuperts were sent to a camp in Crystal City, Texas. Other Ellis Island detainees, including William Gerald Bishop, were taken to Fort Lincoln in Bismarck, North Dakota.
The end of the war in the summer of 1945 should have meant the release of the remaining enemy aliens. However, that was not to be. In July 1945, President Harry S. Truman issued Presidential Proclamation 2655, which ordered that all enemy aliens presently detained and found “to be dangerous to the public peace and safety of the United States” be deported. Most of these so-called enemy aliens challenged their deportation orders.
By March 1946, Ellis Island was again filled with enemy aliens, as the government closed down other internment camps around the country and shipped the remaining detainees back to New York, where they waited for the resolution of their cases. Officials from the Red Cross and the State Department inspected the facilities at Ellis Island and found them wanting. The old inspection station was inadequate to hold so many people for such an indefinite period. Morale among detainees was low, their futures uncertain, and a growing number were in need of psychiatric help.
One of those not holding up well under the strain was Helene Hackenberg. She had arrived in the United States from Germany in 1926 and married a fellow immigrant named Rudolf in 1937. Both were accused of belonging to pro-Nazi organizations. Rudolf was arrested in January 1943 and Helene in November of that year, and both taken to Ellis Island. From there they were sent to the Crystal City camp and then transferred back to Ellis Island in early 1946. They would remain there for two and a half years while they fought their deportation orders. Although that time was punctuated by a number of paroles to arrange personal affairs, as well shopping trips for female detainees to Fifth Avenue stores, Helene’s depression deepened and she began talking of suicide.
Hundreds of these enemy aliens remained at Ellis Island while they petitioned the courts to cancel their deportation back to war-ravaged Germany. As months went by, their cases lingered in the courts. At the beginning of 1947, almost a year and a half after the cessation of all military conflict, over three hundred still remained at Ellis Island, including William Gerald Bishop, who had been transferred back to New York from North Dakota after the war. For some of them, repatriation would have meant living in Soviet-occupied Germany where, one detained couple feared, they would “be placed in a concentration camp where we will be held indefinitely.”
The Fuhr family arrived at Ellis Island from Crystal City in 1947. Carl and Anna Fuhr had come to America from Germany in the 1920s, bringing their sons, Julius and Eberhard. They settled in Cincinnati, Ohio, where the family added a third son, Gerhard. The Fuhrs never became U.S. citizens. Like a number of nonnaturalized Germans, they came to the attention of the FBI in 1940, when informants, many of them anonymous, accused Carl of being a member of the GermanAmerican Bund and the Friends of New Germany, of being a strong critic of the United States and supporter of Hitler, and, of saying that his oldest son would return to Germany to “fight for Hitler.”
The Fuhrs remained free until the summer of 1942, but more reports had filtered into the FBI by that time. Carl and Anna were arrested in August 1942 and sent to an internment camp in Texas along with their youngest son, the American-born Gerhard. Julius and Eberhard joined the family at the camp in March 1943.
While in custody, the family