LATIN AMERICAN RESIDENT INTERNEES
Brazil
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My paternal uncle Joachim F. Rehbock was born in Karlsruhe, Land of Baden-Wuertenberg, Germany on April 7, 1910. He was the third son (my father Arnold was the second) of Theodor Rehbock, professor in Hydraulic Engineering at the University of Karlsruhe. After finishing the High School Gymnasium ....read more
Columbia
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My name is Rosita Welcker. I am German citizen and live in Bogota, Colombia. My father's name was Friedrich Paul Welcker. He was born in Moenchengladbach, Germany on April 4, 1902. He moved to South America in 1931 and first lived in Caracas, Venezuela. In April 1937 he came to Baranquilla, Colombia and married my mother, a Columbian citizen, on 3 September 1937. They lived in Barranquilla, and he worked in a trade company. ....read more
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My father's name was Herbert Erich Mantel. He was a diesel mechanic, born in Hamburg, Germany on August 17, 1898. He traveled to Barranquilla, Colombia in the 1920’s, I think. He was Chief Engineer on a riverboat on the Magdalena River at first, and later he managed the German Club in Puerto Colombia. He married my mother, Clara Eugenia Struss, a native Colombian of German and Spanish descent. She was born in Ocaña. ...read more
Costa Rica
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Our family was one of thousands in Latin America caught in the far flung net cast by U.S. authorities seeking "the enemy" during World War II. My father, Werner Gurcke, and his brother, Karl Oskar, lived through World War I as children in Hamburg, Germany. Costa Rica was their chosen country—a place to be free and happy, to work hard and get ahead. It was supposed to be a place where war would not touch them again. ....read more
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Ewald and Veronica vom Schemm were friends of my parents, brought together by the hardships both couples faced during World War II in Costa Rica. Veronica told me a bit of their internment story in 2000, when I was searching for more information about my parents, Werner and Starr Gurcke. She also sent me the answers to several pages of questions I had. ....read more
Guatemala
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Hugo Droege emigrated from Germany to the Guatemalan highlands to find a better life. He married and lived quietly for 20 years far from Germany. He established and managed a coffee farm as he raised his family. One night, six Guatemalan police arrived with guns drawn to take him away. Mr. Droege told his wife, Oda Lutzow, to save the farm. Forty-eight hours later, the Guatemalan government forced her to abandon it. Pregnant with their third child, she, her two children and a mule ....read more
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On the sunny morning of January 6, 1942, Joseph “Joe” Leber was arrested at the Guatemala City Tennis Club by Guatemalan police agents. Joe had left Germany in 1920 for the USA. He lived in New York for some six years before he moved to Latin America to work for US companies involved in export. He settled in Guatemala around 1929, where he continued to represent US and British export companies. In addition, he bought into a shoe factory owned by another German. He later bought out his partner and became the sole owner of the factory. ....read more
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Leading up to the war, the United States government became suspicious of families of German ancestry. Around 1942, under the direction of the United States State Department, our family was evicted from our home and the plantation was taken away, forcing us to rent a house nearby. Soon after, father was taken, at gunpoint and put on a U.S. plane. He recalls that all the windows to the plane were closed. We had no idea where they were taking him. ....read more
Haiti
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"Suche sie ein"… "Choose one" my grandfather's father answered to his brother. Otto Schütt had been running the family business in Haiti and felt as he got old he needed to "assurer la reléve". He had no children and his brother had three sons. On a trip to Germany he asked his brother if he would accept to send one of his sons to be trained to eventually take over the family business in the Caribbean island of Haiti. He chose the nephew that was named Otto just like him. The year was 1929 and my grandfather accepted immediately his uncle's proposal. ....read more
Panama
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We were summoned to Panama City and subsequently arrested on the 16th June 1942. (This took place after my Dad died in 1938.) My mother was allowed to go back for a few belongings while my sister and I were held hostage. We were given cots to sleep on overnight alongside occupied prison cells...before being turned over to the U.S. authorities of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, (INS) and interned in Balboa, U. S. Canal Zone, in Panama. ....read more
Peru
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My father, Adolf Hamann, was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1884. His father was pastor of a Lutheran church, and his mother died while he was still young. My grandfather married again and that caused some unhappiness with my father when he was young. So in 1904, at about the age of 20, he took a ship for South America. ....read more
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