My American Childhood in Iran & My German Ancestors in Wartime America

A Childhood Memory That Connected Me to My German Ancestors

A memory from my childhood, one marked by fear and confusion, has recently helped me understand my ancestors in a way I never expected.

As a child living in Iran during the late 1970s, I learned to be afraid of being American. That fear, rooted in a place I didn’t fully understand at the time, stayed with me. My family was only in Iran because of my dad’s job, we weren’t immigrants, and we never intended to become citizens of Iran. We were just living there for a short time. But still, I felt the weight of being different, of being foreign. And only recently did I realize: this fear might echo what my German ancestors felt living in America during the World Wars. Unlike us, they had come to the U.S. to stay and had dreams to become citizens and build a life. Yet despite that, they were feared and judged, not for what they had done, but for who they were.

That’s when it hit me. My childhood experience gave me an emotional bridge to a part of my family history I might otherwise have struggled to grasp.

The Memory That Lingers

I lived in Iran in 1977, just before the Iranian Revolution began to unfold. Some of the memories are hazy, but others, especially the ones marked by fear, remain vivid. I was six years old, riding a school bus with my brother. Oddly, I don’t remember his presence on that bus, but I remember being there, day after day, with other kids.

We practiced drills. Not fire drills or earthquake drills. These were drills for what to do if the Iranian military pointed a tank at our school bus, because we were Americans.

We were told to duck our heads between our legs, as if that would somehow protect us. Even as a six-year-old, I knew better. I knew ducking wouldn't save me. And I knew that being American, something I hadn’t chosen, something I didn’t fully understand yet it made me a target.

That fear, that awareness, planted something deep in me: a complicated relationship with identity and belonging.

My German Ancestors in Wartime America

Recently, I’ve been researching my German ancestors, those who came to America generations ago and settling in Grand Rapids, Michigan and Rochester, New York. As I read more about their lives, especially during World War I and II, I was struck by how German Americans were treated.

In both wars, fear and suspicion ran high. During World War I, over 8,000 German Americans were arrested and held in internment camps. German language newspapers shut down. Schools stopped teaching the language. Some Germans changed the spelling and pronunciation of their names - Schmidt became Smith, Müller became Miller. Sauerkraut was even renamed “liberty cabbage,” and people were pressured to prove their patriotism publicly or risk being labeled disloyal.

During World War II, while Japanese Americans were more heavily targeted, thousands of German Americans, especially those born abroad, were again placed under surveillance, and some were detained or deported. Even those who weren’t imprisoned often lived under a cloud of suspicion.

They were citizens, neighbors, friends. But suddenly, their heritage made them suspect and targets.

And I thought, they must have felt what I felt as a child in Iran. That same fear of being "the other." That sense that who you are, your heritage, your background, might make others see you as a threat. They weren’t enemies. They were just people trying to live, raise families, and belong.

It made me ache for them in a way I hadn’t before.

The Power of Empathy in Family History

Without that childhood experience, I might never have truly understood the emotional weight my German ancestors carried. It’s one thing to read about discrimination or social pressure, it’s another to feel something similar in your own life.

That’s the power of experience: it doesn’t just shape us. It can connect us across generations.

Of course, we’ll never fully understand what our ancestors felt. But we can pull from our own lives, our fears, our joys, our longings and get a little closer to understanding their lives.

Connecting Through Memory

If you’ve ever felt like an outsider, if you’ve ever feared being who you are in a certain place or moment, take a second look at your family history. That feeling may be a key to understanding someone who came before you.

Our stories, even the painful ones, can be bridges, not just to the past, but to deeper empathy and connection. You don’t need perfect records or full family trees to feel your way into your heritage.

Sometimes, the memory of a scared six-year-old on a school bus is enough to start the journey.