Published: October 26, 2009 11:06 am      

'Held on the Homefront' exhibit comes to Ada

ADA — Ada Public Library hosts the exhibit "Held on the Homefront" on Tuesday, Nov. 3, from 3-6 p.m. The exhibit fee is paid for by Ada Library Friends.

TRACES mobile museum is a retrofitted school bus, which uses 10 narrative panel and films to tell the unknown story of German POWs held in camps all over the United States during World War II. The exhibit is free and open to the public. TRACES exhibit driver, Irving Kellman, will tour with the exhibit. The bus will be in the library parking lot.

By the end of World War II, 425,000 German, Italian and Japanese prisoners of War (POWs) found themselves imprisoned in more than 660 base and branch POW camps in almost all of the then 48 United States and territory of Alaska. Millions more Axis and Allied POWs were held in other camps in Europe, the Soviet Union, Canada, Australia and Africa. While axis and Soviet POWs were both perpetrators as well as victims of dictatorial governments and state-sponsored violence, POW experiences on all sides emobody ageless and timely themes of war and peace, justice under arms and issues regarding human rights, international reconciliation and future conflict. avoidance.

The roughly 372,000 German POWs held in U.S. Army-operated camps across the United States were sent out to harvest or process crops, build roads and waterways, fell trees, roof barns, erect silos, work in light non- military industry, lay city sewers and construct tract housing, wash U.S. army laundry and do other practical wartime tasks. With the high rate of 19th Century German immigration to America, many of those who worked with POWs spoke to them in their native tongue; some even had relatives or former neighbors among them. In the process, they formed decades-long friendships with "the enemy" and underwent considerable changes as individuals and as a group — thus fundamentally influencing postwar German values and institutions, as well as American-German relations. A number of POWs chose to immigrate to the United State after the war.

For more information, contact Jennifer Greenstreet at 580-436-8121 or visit TRACES exhibit website at www.traces.org.