"There were a bunch of Negroes in the tanks..."

"I had just taken my little brother to the barber shop as the first tanks entered our town, and I saw that there were a bunch of Negroes in them, a lot of colored people. I thought I would have a heart attack. This was before television - I had never seen a Negro in my life. Of course, we hadn't gotten any information about this from the Nazis. This was such a shock - there were so many really big black men, all of them heavily armed and they had their weapons out and ready to fire. Even though we had hung out the white flags, they didn't know whether or not they would face some kind of resistance.

And for several hours, tanks and jeeps, one after the other, drove through the town, and it was impossible for my brother and me to go home. Then, some time around 6 o'clock in the evening, we suddenly noticed that it had become quiet out on the street. Then I ran home - not on the main street, but along the back alleys. Everyone was excited - my mother and all my brothers and sisters were almost beside themselves."

Gertrude B., born 1930, at the end of the war a 15 year old schoolgirl in Radstadt/Salzburg (Boltzmann-Institut/Steinocher-Fonds Interview Archive, Salzburg )