"The Swing, that was liberation for us..."

"The American lifestyle was fascinating for us young boys. You have to try to imagine what a contrast that was. During the Nazi years, there had been a ban on gatherings of all kinds - and suddenly there were dances and music that you had only heard before if you had dared to listen to banned foreign radio stations: Glenn Miller, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Arty Shaw.

We were big fans of Swing music. It was more than just music, that was a feeling of really living after all those years of hunger. Before, there were air raid alarms, complete blackouts, everything was dark, and then we suddenly had the feeling that it was light again. The Swing, that was liberation for us. That was the signal that there was `another future', the possibility of seeing the world, America, Canada."

Wilhelm W., born in 1930, at the time a railway worker who was also employed as a translator for the US Army (Boltzmann-Institut/Steinocher- Fonds Interview Archive, Salzburg)