(WCCO) He liked her smile. She liked his hair. It was enough to spark a wartime romance, in Germany. But two weeks later, Kurt Pechmann was captured and shipped to the United States. It would be five years before he held his girlfriend again.
Most people don't know it, but during World War II, there were more than 20,000 German prisoners held in camps all over Minnesota and Wisconsin. There's a good chance there was a POW camp near your home.
Pechmann says, "til about June, July, i got it all written down, i was in American camps."
He stayed in POW camps all over Wisconsin: in Columbus, Hartford, Barron and Lodi. His notebook lists every camp and every letter he received, most from that girl he had just met, the one he wouldn't see for another five years, Emmi.
Kurt missed his girlfriend and his home, but he liked America and its people. In Germany, Kurt was a granite-cutter, a monument-maker. He knew hard work, it didn't scare him.
Pechmann says, "I have to work no matter where. No work, no food, as simple as that." Prisoners earned 80 cents a day doing what needed to be done: logging, farming, factory and plant labor.
"I never ever heard one farmer or any of the helpers say, 'you're a dirty nazi or something like that,' not once. They were happy to talk to us," he says.
The Geneva Convention outlines rules for the care of prisoners of war and, historians say, during World War II, most German prisoners held here were fed well and treated decently. Pechmann says his personal experience as a POW in America was "A-1".
After three years in Wisconsin, Kurt spent two more years in a French POW camp. "I got a letter from her, inviting me to her sister's wedding in Germany, oh yeah, how do you do that as a prisoner of war?", Peechman says. So Kurt escaped the French prison camp, reunited with Emmi and then he went to that wedding.
He'd gained his freedom, but in a sense, he'd lost his hometown. It was now part of Poland. Then, Kurt asked Emmi to marry him and go back to America. She turned him down.
"When i came on American soil, i loved it there. She cried, she didn't want to go,˛ Pechmann says. Fortunately she had a change of heart. Two weeks later she agreed to go with him to America.
That was 1948. They married a year later. Kurt continued his trade in America and opened his own business in Madison, Wisconsin -- Pechmann Memorials.
He has helped people remember their loved ones, and he's helped Wisconsinites remember their veterans.
"I have to give something back, they treated me so well as a prisoner of war, as an Ex-German enemy, that i have to give something back to them", Pechmann says.
Pechmann's company has constructed war monuments all over Wisconsin. Because he feels so strongly about America, he charges less than he should.
The Vietnam memorial on the lakefront in Milwaukee features three pillars, for veterans who died, those still missing, and those who made it home.
The memorial in Waunakee is especially close to Kurt's heart. As a thank-you to his former captors, he built this one -- at cost.
There is irony in this stonework, that a former German soldier would salute the men he fought against; every William, August, Wilfred and James. But it makes sense to Kurt Pechmann. "I'm American now," he says.
His war memorials have earned thanks and praise from veterans groups. And the girl who gave up so much to be with him, Emmi, she's proud of him, too. "He did all this nice stuff for country, and he helps the veterans out, stuff like that...and he's a nice grandpa", she says.
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