Out of Ecuador, into Germany

Contag book

details 'bargain national' story

By FRITZ BUSCH

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- Separation, hopelessness, hunger, intrigue and survival are just part of the story of the Contag family that became "bargain nationals" in the middle of World War II.

This little-known facet of the war is still largely a secret in the United States. The story is not as hidden in some foreign countries.

Minnesota State University at Mankato Department of Modern Language Professors Kimberley E. Contag and her husband James Grabowska will sign their book, "Where the Clouds Meet the Water," from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 9, at First United Methodist Church, 1 N. Broadway, New Ulm.

The book, printed by Inkwater Press of Portland, Ore., is the culmination of years of research that took the couple to large and small cities in the United States and abroad.

Contag said she felt like a detective and investigative reporter at times during her research.

The story details the journey of her grandfather, German Ecuadoran widower Ernst Contag and his family from the South American Andes mountains to Nazi Germany in 1942.

Blacklisted as an enemy alien, Ernst Contag and his four small children -- one of whom was Carlos Contag, a retired New Ulm veterinarian -- became "bargain nationals" and were forcibly repatriated to Germany, his grandparents' homeland. It was all part of a diplomatic exchange arranged by the U.S. State Department and cooperating countries.

Growing up in New Ulm, Kimberley Contag, Carlos' daughter, heard her father's stories about the blacklist. An Ecuadoran and U.S. agent visited the Contag family and told them they had to leave Ecuador.

Some bargain nationals committed suicide. Others escaped agents who tried to herd them onto ships for voyages overseas. Some repatriation camp survivors never made it back home after the war.

"This was wartime," Kimberley Contag explained. "Extraordinary things happened to ordinary people. It was a very important story to me, a passion."

The story included the exchange of North and South Americans in Europe and Africa, surviving the American bombing of Germany and the housing of South American citizens at the Greenbrier, a golf resort in the forested mountains at White Sulphur Springs, W. Va.

The research began nearly a decade ago when Contag and her husband began tracing her family story. Their curiosity accelerated when they stopped at the Greenbrier Hotel to buy a memento for her father.

At the hotel front desk, Contag mentioned that her ancestors were detained there in 1942. The clerk immediately told her not to leave and summoned the hotel historian who asked her many questions.

The Greenbrier was part of the fashionable society resort circuit that stretched from Palm Beach, Fla., to Newport, R.I., in the 1920s.

After the United States entered World War II, The Greenbrier was leased to the State Department to intern German, Japanese and Italian diplomatic personnel and their families until they could be exchanged for American diplomats stranded overseas.

Kimberley Contag said the United States leased The Greenbrier because it wanted to show Axis countries how well they could treat enemy aliens.

In September 1942, the U.S. Army bought the Greenbrier and converted it into a 2,000-bed hospital known as Ashford General Hospital. Nearly 25,000 soldiers were treated there.

In later years, Sam Snead and Jack Nicklaus helped re-establish The Greenbrier as one of the foremost golf resorts in the world. An underground shelter for Congress was closed at the resort in 1995.

Researching the "bargain national" policy provided a challenge. During her research, Contag could only find information about it in the U.S. in New York Times newspaper between 1939 and 1947 on microfilm.

Because the U.S. media couldn't get within 300 feet of bargain nationals 60 years ago, Contag and Grabowska went to Ecuador to interview survivors, view historical documents and read Ecuadoran newspapers. They found many articles, names and photos in deteriorating Ecuadoran newspapers.

Contacts with blacklisted Ecuadoran citizens and official documents provided clues that helped unfold more of the story.

Interviews with the most obvious survivor, Ann's father Carlos, were limited by his 1997 stroke that hindered his speaking ability.

As if he had a vision the day before his stroke, Carlos said he wanted to talk to his brother Werner about what happened in Ecuador and in Germany during World War II. Werner Contag died of cancer not long after that.

Contag wrote her uncle's widow Myriam and asked her what she knew about Ernst Contag's World War II experiences and if she had any items that may help them continue their research.

Myriam sent photographs, letters and 1942 to 1946 date books that told the story of family life and school experiences in Quito, Ecuador, and family separation in Germany.

Because Ernst Contag was unable to take care of his family and work at the same time, the two older children were sent to a boarding school for foreign-born Germans in Hohenelse, near Berlin.

The younger children were placed in a foster home and later moved to Schlaborn House, a boarding house for children separated from parents during the war.

Twelve-year-old Carlos was placed in a home in Kassel, far from the rest of the family. After a brief reunion in the summer of 1943, the children were separated again for three years.

For Carlos, war-time experiences included dealing with starvation and the bombing of the house in Kassel.

The story didn't end happily as soon as the war was over. The Contag family's return to Ecuador was a difficult and winding road via repatriation camps in France and a long stop in New York before saving enough money to return to Ecuador.

The family worked hard to scrape together some of what they had lost in Ecuador after they were blacklisted.

Carlos Contag left Ecuador to study veterinary medicine at Iowa State University in 1954. Two years later, he married Ann Schwermann in New Ulm. They raised five children, and Carlos practiced veterinary medicine with Dr. Henry Schwermann.

Kimberley Contag has been contacted by people in California interested in making a movie about the story, but she has no interest in making a profit from the research and resulting book.

"It's been a wonderful project, but the book is the end of it," she said. "Tracing your family roots is good for anybody so the story can be told to your children and grandchildren. If you don't do anything, the story may be lost."

(Fritz Busch can be reached at fbusch@nujournal.com).