"Man, they look just like us..."

"At the end of the war, I was 14 years old and we lived on a main street leading into the city. So I could watch the American tanks rolling by right in front of my window. I can still clearly remember my first thoughts: `Man, they look just like us.' I don't know what kind of preconceptions I had in my mind. And they all chewed gum.

Naturally, we were all a little bit suspicious at first. After all, they were different. We couldn't understand their language. But then we suddenly realized that most of them were laughing and grinning."

Elisabeth C., born in 1931, was a schoolgirl in Salzburg in 1945. (Boltzmann-Institut/Steinocher-Fonds Interview Archive, Salzburg)