Immigrant’s daughter brings her father’s war story to Congress

By Associated Press

A New Hampshire woman has taken her father’s plight as a prisoner in an American internment camp during World War II to Congress. Karen Ebel of New London applauds a bill introduced last week designed to open a complete investigation of wartime treatment of European Americans and refugees.

Some 120,000 Japanese Americans were interned during the war. With the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, Congress offered them an apology and granted compensation of $20,000 to each. It also brought national attention to this period of history.

Few, however, know about the 30,000 European Americans who were also interned in the American camps during the war.

Karen Ebel’s father, Max Ebel, was a boy when he fled his native Germany. He later went to live with his father in New York. In 1942, Ebel was arrested as a so-called “alien enemy” and sent to an internment camp in Boston.

Ebel, now 81, said he hopes the pain he suffered during the war is finally recognized by Congress.

“What they did to me was wrong,” he said, adding that it has taken a half century and much prodding by his daughter to speak up about the past.

Last year, the president signed into law the Wartime Violation of Italian American Civil Liberties Act, which charged the Justice Department with investigating injustices suffered by Italian Americans

The Ebels, however, say more should be done by the American government to make up for the wrongs of the past.

Karen Ebel has been on a mission to get the current bill before the Senate.

She contacted every German American organization she could find and urged those who were interned to tell their stories.

With the help of a woman she met through the Internet, Ebel drafted a bill, publicized her efforts and secured bipartisan support from several key senators.

Ebel said the bill has been expanded beyond what she first envisioned. Along with the internment of ethnic groups, it addressed the government’s policy of taking Japanese Latin Americans from their own countries to trade for American prisoners, and the tight immigration regulations that kept thousands of fleeing Jews from finding safe harbor in America.

Ebel said she realizes the bill has a long way to go before it is passed, but she is glad the country will finally hear what her father went through.

“A few people really can make a difference in this country,” she said.