"Sometimes, I passed out from hunger"

"I'll tell you something. The hunger in those days was terrible. I was still a young girl, so I would go by foot out into the country to the farmers and beg for food. Sometimes I would get a little bit of butter or a potato. We were always so hungry then, we would even eat the potato peels. Somehow, the Americans appeared to me like saviors. Then we always knew - now, at last, we'll have something to eat again. I was so undernourished that sometimes I passed out from hunger."

Pauline G., born 1933, spent the years following the end of the war in Upper Austria (Boltzmann-Institut/Steinocher-Fonds Interview Archive, Salzburg)