American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [199]
However, the family had changed its mind about America and decided to fight the deportation order. They argued that their recalcitrance while in custody was due in part to their anger at the internment. They slowly came to discover that they were more American than German and wanted to remain in the country. The uncertainty of returning to war-devastated Germany no doubt also played into the family’s desire to remain in the United States.
By 1947, the family was transferred to Ellis Island to await deportation. Eberhard Fuhr remembers the facility as “cramped, dirty and stultifying.” Despite the poor conditions, the Fuhrs made a favorable impression on authorities. “A definite reformation has taken place,” according to one report. By now, it was more than two years after the end of hostilities in Europe and more than two hundred individuals, including the Fuhrs, were still being held in custody.
These men and women found a champion in the form of Senator William Langer of North Dakota, who convinced Justice Department officials to form a committee to hear the cases of those still stuck in political and legal limbo at Ellis Island. Throughout the summer of 1947, Langer made several trips to Ellis Island with the committee and held hearings for every single German detainee.
Langer introduced a bill in Congress to cancel the deportation orders of 207 German detainees, including Rudolf and Helene Hackenberg, George Neupert, and the Fuhr family. The bill stalled in Congress, but at the end of the summer of 1947 the Fuhrs managed to secure their release from Ellis Island and headed back to Cincinnati to rebuild their lives. They were the exception. Despite Langer’s efforts, by the fall of 1947, some two hundred German enemy alien detainees were still stuck at Ellis Island.
One of those not on Langer’s list was William Gerald Bishop. In fact, Langer had already introduced a separate bill in April 1947 calling for the cancellation of Bishop’s deportation. Not only did Langer believe that Bishop had been deprived of his rights during five years of detention, but he argued that sending enemy aliens like Bishop “to Communist controlled territory would subject them to the purge, enslavement or liquidation, which according to reports being received daily from Europe affect all persons disliked by Communists.” Langer’s efforts failed and Bishop was finally deported back to Austria in October 1947.
As for the remaining German detainees at Ellis Island, in June 1948 the Supreme Court rejected their petitions for release from custody. Defense attorneys had argued that Truman’s proclamation was invalid since the United States was no longer at war with Germany. The Court’s majority was not interested in that issue, but instead decided the case on much narrower grounds, concluding that the habeas corpus petitions were invalid since they were filed in Washington, while the detainees were held in New York.
At the end of June 1948, three years after the end of the war, 182 Germans were still held at Ellis Island, including 9 “voluntary detainees,” American citizens who had joined family members in detention. One couple, Marie and Eugen Zimmerman had actually conceived a child, George, while in detention at Ellis Island.
In the following weeks, government officials would work to settle the cases of these unfortunate individuals. On July 8, fifty-seven detainees lost their fight and were sent back to Germany. A few, including Helene and Rudolf Hackenberg, avoided repatriation by voluntarily leaving for a new life in Argentina. (They would finally receive visas to reenter the United