We Were Not the Enemy

The United States clandestinely funds the operation of a huge prison in Cuba. Men women and children are spirited away from their homes and imprisoned indefinitely. No charges are made; no legal counsel is allowed. Newspapers fill with stories of espionage and enemies. Current events? No. </P><P>During World War II the United States used tactics remarkably similar to those in use today against presumed terrorists. By 1939 President Franklin Roosevelt had covertly authorized J. Edgar Hoover's Secret Intelligence Service to begin surveillance of Axis nationals in Latin America. Believing that all German nationals without exception [are] dangerous the United States surreptitiously pressured Latin-American countries to arrest and deport more than four thousand civilians of German ethnicity to the United States. There many languished in internment camps while others were shipped to war-torn Germany. </P><P>As my parents German-born Werner Gurcke and his American wife Starr began their lives together in Costa Rica he was falsely labeled one of the country's most dangerous enemy aliens. Soon she too was considered dangerous to the . safety of the United Nations. From newlyweds to parents innocent civilians to dangerous enemies prisoners to internees <I>We Were Not the Enemy</I> tells their story. </P>