"We regarded them as liberators..."

"Our father was drafted into the army during the war and never returned. So my mother had raise five children alone. And then, as the end of the war neared, we heard that the Americans were coming. And suddenly, there they were, standing there with their rifles, going through every house, even in the cellars, to see if pictures of Hitler were hanging on the walls or were hidden somewhere. We sure didn't have any - my mother was certainly no Nazi.

They didn't do anything to us. And I must say, we regarded them as liberators. We were truly glad that the Americans were there. They were terrible, the Nazis."

Interview with Pauline G., born in 1933, she experienced the end of the war as a schoolgirl in Upper Austria and was 12 years old in 1945. (Boltzmann- Institut/Steinocher-Fonds Interview Archive, Salzburg)