Katie Schroeer
Spring 2022
Juergen Schroeer is many things: an immigrant and onetime refugee, a U.S. citizen, a German native, a physicist, a husband, a father and grandfather. As he told me his story, however, he described himself most often not as a certain identity or nationality, but as lucky.
Born in 1933, Juergen grew up in and near Berlin with his four siblings. His father, an engineer, commuted by streetcar to his work at the German Air Force Ministry. That all changed at the end of World War II, when the family fled the encroaching Russian troops and became refugees in a small town in southeast Germany. While their “chief occupation there was survival,” Juergen says they were “very lucky” to be assigned their own cottage rather than being housed with other refugee families, and lucky to be in a farming village and therefore near sources of food. His father, unable to find work as an engineer, traveled around selling medical equipment, and the family gathered leftover food from nearby fields to supplement their heavily limited rations. Juergen commuted by foot, train, and bicycle to attend school, first in the back room of a restaurant, and later in temporary wooden barracks. The war ended not long after they arrived, but for Juergen and his family, “things didn’t really change. You know, we continued living the way we did” before the end of the war. Still, he mentions how fortunate they were to find themselves in the American occupation zone.
Some years later, however, after hearing from a number of his father’s colleagues and their families who were now happily settled in the United States, the family decided to relocate to America. There, they hoped to find meaningful work for Juergen’s father, better educational opportunities for the children, improved economic conditions, and relief from the stress of living in a geopolitically precarious area. As a part of Operation Paperclip, the U.S. military’s recruitment program for German scientists and engineers, the family traveled through Germany, across the Atlantic on a U.S. troop ship, and finally to an Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, where Juergen lived for the next two years before enrolling in Ohio State University.
“I had no idea what to expect from the U.S. I really had no idea. It was just an adventure.”
It is this stage of his story that Juergen considers to be particularly atypical among immigrants. He recognizes that not only is it “pretty unusual that immigrants arrive on a U.S. troop ship,” but that “the minute we arrived in the U.S., we had a job, we had a place to live, and we had friends already.” The presence of colleagues and friends on the base, including both pre-war connections and those they got to know on the trip across the ocean, was helpful for practical concerns like buying a car. More importantly, however, it provided them a community immediately upon arrival in the United States
Even at his American high school, outside the bubble of the air base, Juergen says he “wasn’t treated any different… I was treated as an individual rather than as German.” It helped that he and his family came later during the period of military recruitment, so he was far from the first German student in school. In areas with fewer immigrants, he and other German students “were a novelty, but not in our own schools.”
For the family, life on the base was “a definite improvement” from life in postwar Germany. They had access to a library, hospital, pool, and an indoor toilet, a change from their refugee housing. Juergen’s father could once again work as an engineer, and Juergen had no trouble finding summer or other part-time work, whether as a paper boy or working for a carpenter on the base. Juergen imagines that his parents wondered what might have happened had they stayed in Germany, as some of their friends did, and whether “if we had stayed behind it might have gotten better.” For himself, though, he does not remember feeling homesick. Instead, he emphasizes that “it was really an adventure coming to the U.S.”
That adventure would lead him to graduate school, where he met his wife, Meredith, to a career as a professor of physics, and eventually to a home in Normal, Illinois, where he has lived with his family for over forty years. He kept in touch with a number of friends from Germany for decades after immigrating, but he says it was not until long after the end of the war that he became close with his extended family in Germany.
He first returned in 1973, 22 years after he left. Though it was a professional trip and he did not have a chance to visit many friends or family, he describes the trip as “quite amazing” and says that “just being back felt sort of emotional,” especially considering how much conditions in Germany had improved since he left. Two years later, when he, his wife, and their (then) three children spent his sabbatical year in Germany, he was finally able to visit many of his relatives for the first time in decades.
He also visited his cousins in East Germany, and recounts how as a U.S. citizen, he was lucky to be able to cross the border so easily—more easily than his West German relatives. Despite this freedom of movement, however, he says returning to the East “felt very, very strange.” Having migrated first into the West after the war and then to the U.S., he “was two steps removed from the East,” and so felt like “an outsider in two ways.”
He also visited his cousins in East Germany, and recounts how as a U.S. citizen, he was lucky to be able to cross the border so easily—more easily than his West German relatives. Despite this freedom of movement, however, he says returning to the East “felt very, very strange.” Having migrated first into the West after the war and then to the U.S., he “was two steps removed from the East,” and so felt like “an outsider in two ways.”
Even while back in the U.S., maintaining a cultural connection to Germany remained important. Juergen “made a huge effort to introduce our children and grandchildren… to Germany and [German] customs… to the extent of having live candles on the Christmas tree.” Now, the main connection is through one of his children, who “has emigrated to Germany and has settled there as an architect, has married a German woman, [and] has a German family.” He says “[having] German children and grandchildren living in Germany makes a huge difference,” and it makes him very happy that “all of our children and grandchildren like to go back to Germany, not just because they have relatives there that they like to visit in Germany.” Despite all that, though, he doesn’t ever plan to move back, mainly because his friends and most of his family are here in the U.S. now.
“I consider myself primarily as a citizen of the world. Whatever I do, I cannot just think about whether it is good for me or the U.S., but also what effect it will have on the whole world.”
Asked if he considers himself an American, he responds, “I consider myself mostly a citizen of the world. But of course, I have affection for Germany. And being a citizen of the U.S., I feel responsible. I should make this as good a place as possible, so be engaged politically in the community.” What kind of change would he like to see in the U.S.? He says the U.S. should “take better care of [its] citizens,” and lists health care and economic equality as things the U.S. could learn to do better from Germany.
“I think Americans on an individual basis are very generous… As a nation, less so.”
While his family had a relatively smooth transition to the United States, Juergen knows that not all immigrants are so fortunate. He emphasizes the importance of hard work in succeeding as an immigrant in the U.S. To be sure, he and his family have worked hard—he is “still somewhat proud” of being salutatorian of his Ohio high school. Still, he readily points out that his family “definitely had advantages to get started,” since they arrived in America as white, military-sponsored immigrants who already knew some English. Asked whether he sees the U.S. as welcoming to immigrants, he responds, “I think Americans on an individual basis are very generous… As a nation, less so.” He explains that if you “have close personal contact with another immigrant, you probably feel rather positive. You want to help them out.” However, he cites the U.S.’s relatively low allocation of foreign aid as evidence of a different national attitude, and remarks that “everybody in the US is agreed that the immigration system is broken, but they are not agreed what to do about it.”
As Juergen talks about stereotypical differences between the U.S. and Germany, and about the immigrant experience at large, he focuses mainly on the concept of hard work. Throughout his own story, however, different themes emerge: those of adventure, family, community, and a whole lot of luck. He reflects on his fondness for his various homes: “…we [he and his wife] like the history and the quaint geography and city life and so on in Germany. We also like the open spaces of the US… especially after having lived in Wyoming.” With family, friends, and memories spread over multiple continents and the ability to visit them all, Juergen knows how fortunate he has been. And though he says he doesn’t know the solution to the national gridlock on immigration issues, as he describes his wishes for today’s immigrants—a path to citizenship, access to social services, and efforts to improve conditions in the countries of those who have not yet migrated—I hear his hope that others, too, can be so lucky.
