"That would have been unthinkable during the Nazi years..."

"I can still remember a scene that was incomprehensible for me: I was sitting somewhere with my friend Dick, a Captain in the US Army who was just a few years older than I was. And he said to one of his soldiers, `Get me a cup of coffee.' - `Get it yourself. I'm not getting up,' he replied. That was incomprehensible for me. "That would have been unthinkable during the Nazi years. That just did not fit into our picture. In situations like that, I was always overcome by the same feelings: emigrate to America on the spot. And 1955, the withdrawal of the Americans from Austria was a great loss for me. Not so much in the material sense but in the sense of having lost a feeling, a way of life."

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)