Traveling days may soon end for WWII exhibit

The end of the road may be near for Iowa’s traveling World War Two exhibit. Traces, the Iowa organization that’s collected relics and stories of POWs here and in Germany, sent traveling exhibits around to schools and libraries on its “Bus-eum,” but the bus broke down this summer. Traces creator Michael Luick-Thrams says the motor on the bus burned up, putting an end to its traveling programs. Luick-Thrams says “We have to make a decision, or a miracle has to happen,” because it’ll take $18,000 to repair the bus. Lacking that, within the next calendar year he says they’ll have to discontinue the organization. Programs will continue through this school year, as Humanities Iowa will fund visits to schools which only have to pay fifty dollars as their share of the cost. They’ve started booking programs about the favorite topics — the German POWs held in Iowa during the war, the Iowa POWs imprisoned in Germany at that time, the refugees at the Scattergood hostel — many fascinating stories he’s eager to tell. Iowa Quaker farmers began the Scattergood hostel as a refuge for Germans fleeing the Holocaust, and their stories as well as journals and drawings by German, Iowan and other POWs during the war have been published as books by Traces. The logical development of the organization would be to settle as a permanent museum. Luick-Thrams says there’s interest in Iowa in preserving the story of the Iowa men held as POWs, and the 20-thousand Germans held in Clarinda, Algona, and “btranch camps” of those two prison bases. He says the problem is money. The “miracle” the founder hopes for would be a onetime or continuing donation that could fix the bus and keep the exhibits traveling. Short of that, he says some local group could adopt it and make the exhibits part of a permanent museum, preferably somewhere in central Iowa. If somebody wanted to adopt the bus and put its traveling exhibits into a county historical society or local military museum, he declares the students would come, as would senior-citizen groups, casual tourists and others. Lacking a miracle the traveling shows will continue this year, but this will be the last year. To see the traveling collections, books, and events organized by Traces, surf to www.traces-dot-org