Gisela Bandurraga

Gisela Bandurraga

CENTER FOR ORAL AND PUBLIC HISTORY

CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, FULLERTON

NARRATOR: GISELA BANDURRAGA

INTERVIEWER: Jennifer Keil

DATE: March 6, 2013

LOCATION: Garden Grove, California

PROJECT: Hitler’s Europe to the Golden State

JK: This is Jennifer Keil with Gisela Bandurraga on Wednesday March 6, 2013.  We are conducting an oral history project with the Center for Oral and Public History at Cal State Fullerton.  My first question for you is that Germany created a mothering service in 1934.  I was wondering if you remember Germany’s mothering schools and the ideas of the ideal mother?

GB: Are we talking about modeling?

JK: Uh, no, in the thirties and the forties, Germany created a mothering department.  I was wondering if you recall those.

GB: Not that I know of.

JK: Oh, you’re not familiar with those?

GB: I have never heard of this [school to teach or breed mothers, married or single.  In 1934 I was ten years old.  Up until now I have never heard of a mothering school. Our own mothers were models of motherhood, but when I was about twenty (in 1944) I heard rumors of Hitler wanting to create a blond hair, blue eyed ideal German state.  I believe rumors were all that it was, and if Hitler had such a crazy idea it died in its birth.  Maybe he would have thought of a blond hair, blue eyed marriage to be ideal, but I was too young to be allowed such discussion.  Hitler was said to approve of blond hair, blue eyes as a real German, but look who he and his girlfriend, Eva Braun, were.]  

JK: Oh, okay.  They taught women how to be an ideal mother with classes, so I was wondering if your town had something like that.

GB: [A department for ‘yes to children’ is closer. Pregnancies were to be carried out, children were welcome, and abortions not heard of (publically) because of Hitler’s fake or real love for children.  We had kindergartens, but not even marriage counseling as we know it.  I was ten years old, and how to become a mother was not spoken of like this during World War II.  World War II was 1939-1945.

JK: That’s when they started it.  All throughout the war—

GB: I would have been about ten years old.

JK: You’d have been very young.

GB: Not that I know of that they ever taught anything like that.

JK: Oh, like a home economics course like or anything?

GB: In fact, the way we were born we didn’t even have doctors.  We had midwives.  [We never discussed birth.  Single mothers were frowned on and disrespected, even by Hitler, to my knowledge.  We figured out by the strictness and restrictions of our parents when and how to become mothers.]

JK: Right.

GB: Yeah.  And, I don’t think that any of that was to teach mothers how to mother.

JK: (laughs)  Right.  

GB: And then, later on, when Hitler came in he told them how to mother?  (laughs)  [This ‘freak’ could not even tell his girlfriend, Eva Braun, about motherhood.]

JK: Okay.  What did he tell the women with that in mind?

GB: Well, in those days, you know, women were there to wash and cook for the husbands.  The husband was there to earn a living and came home for a good meal.  Like I said in the other interview, you know, we had little entertainment so to speak of because our entertainment were nature and going on long walks into the forest, bringing home bushels of dried leaves, and things like this.  My mother would bake cake on Saturday nights, and that was our idea of a home life for mothers.  And, the father would be there to—every father had either a little piece of land that he was growing vegetable or fruit or they get involved in things like doing little tables and little chairs.  It was woodwork, and they had their own little space so to speak of.  Of course, all the women, they learned how to knit and how to sew.  And, we played board games.  I still have some of those.

JK: Wow!

GB: We had Scrabble then.  I’m playing Scrabble now with people that live where I do in assisted living.  We had another game called Halma.  As children we had the jump ropes and the very, very simple entertainment, not like today where you have to have electrical outlets for everything that you get it to go.  Electric—nothing handmade and manmade you know, yeah, that is today’s toy.

JK: Right.  Did your father instruct your brother how to do woodworking and other things like that and your mother teach you to knit?  Was that kind of typical?

GB: As long as we had my father, but it never came to this.  My brother was born in 1927.  He was almost four years younger than I am.  Let’s see, ’27 and World War II started in 1939, so we are having there like twelve years or so.  My father had his practice, and he was busy.  Then the war started.  He got hauled off, and my brother got drafted.  He was seventeen years old.  He got drafted into the anti-aircraft, and after the war the people that were occupied by the Russians, Americans, British and, uh, what was the fourth one?  I can’t think right now.  [French.]  By the occupation armies—uh, I can’t connect this right now.  If I live that much longer I’m going to have Alzheimer’s like the rest of them.  (laughs)  Oh, gee!

JK: (laughs)  You’re doing wonderfully.  You really have quite a memory here.

GB: Um, my brother was sent up to the northern cities of Hamburg and what have you, and after the war the Occupation Armies let these people go home because they were drafted.  The war was over.  My brother tried to walk his way home, and he found some Marines that had on full Marine uniforms on the way home.  They said, You can go with us.  We have legal papers from the American Occupation Army that we are released from the war.  The war was over, and we could go home.  So, he slipped in one of these Marine uniforms, and he walked with them.  They were on their way home by foot.  Meanwhile I was working.  That was before I was sent there to the city of Frankfurt to start the International Press Office.  I was working for about three months or so in an American Officers Mess Hall which was occupying the home of a doctor in my hometown.  I was supposed to be a cook there.  I didn’t know the first thing about cooking, but they liked it.

So, I was there, and I told these officers about my brother being on the way home.  We didn’t know what shape he was in.  So, they said to me, Bring him over here.  They fed him.  He was very, very thin, and he didn’t have enough to eat.  They were trying to make their way back by foot.  So, he befriended these officers.  He knew the forest region in my hometown, and he took them out to hunt, to hunt the young quail and deer.  And, they stayed lifelong friends.  Some of them came back to the States.  Captain Cavalier was the name of one of them, and my brother was in contact with him for a long time.

JK: Wow, that’s incredible.  Uh, I’m wondering if you recall Gertrud Scholtz-Klink and the Frauen work in the Women’s Bureau during the war.  She lead the Woman’s Auxiliary in Germany and just kind of promoted the ideal woman.

GB: Never heard about it.  And, if I never heard about it you can be sure that Hitler didn’t want us to know.  [More women worked in the fields, as I recall.  I was never familiar with that name nor organization.  I had no use for anything connected with Hitler’s Army.] 

JK: (laughs)  Okay.  What do you think Germany’s ideals were for its women and mothers during the war?  What do you think Hitler intended that a woman do?

GB: Well, he figured the woman were there to be doing housework and take over every job that the men he ordered to be in war normally had.  Women had to go out as well and they had to plow the fields and do all the things that usually their husbands did.  That is in farmland.  Now in my hometown, when my dad was hauled off the street and my mother was left alone, she rented my father’s clinic out to another dentist.

[00:10:08]

JK: Right.  Once the war was over were the women expected just to stay at home if they took over, maybe, their husband’s office?  Were they not supposed to operate there anymore and just return home?  Do you recall family friends that—

GB: No, they couldn’t because they had no income.  They had to either go out to work, or they would get a small widow’s pension if their husbands didn’t come back from the war, but not enough to live on so they had to work.  Or, they march so, like here, you know, unemployment.

JK: Uh-huh.  So, it became common for women to work right after the war?  Like during and even after you saw the change?

GB: Oh, yeah.  They picked right up where they left off.  And even now, sure.  Like I said before, my whole family goes way back.  I don’t know if they all went into the medical field, but my brother’s two daughters, one of them became a pharmacist, and the other one was a doctor.  She married a man that was an architect that built hospitals, and he built a hospital for her in the city of Berlin.  Just recently, about a year ago or so, he died.  He was only fifty-seven years old.  My brother had sent both of his daughters to Switzerland, and they were not allowed to date or anything, just work and get their degree and go back home.  So, my oldest one niece was twenty-two years old when she became an M.D.

JK: Wow!

GB: And the other niece worked for the Bayer, for the aspirin people as a pharmacist.  But when, my oldest niece’s husband died she switched.  She was no longer a pharmacist.  She became a doctor as well to go in to the hospital with her sister.  And, her sister has two girls she also sent to Switzerland, and the four ladies are now running this hospital in the city of Berlin.

JK: Wow.  My goodness.

GB: It’s still there.  I wrote—I don’t know, did I ever give you the short story that I wrote for Thanksgiving two years ago?

JK: Yes, I do have that, yes.

GB: Yeah, that speaks about this.  That was dedicated to those four ladies.

JK: I see.  Yeah, it’s incredible.  What was Germany like after World War II?  So, you have women going to work in maybe positions in continuing—

GB: Horrible.  It was horrible.  People had no religion.  They had no God.  They had no outlook for the future.  They were just down.  Everything was more so even in the big cities.  Everything was destroyed.  The cities were bombed.  I took a train to Eastern Germany because I was engaged to a young man whose mother died there.  The Americans had just taken occupation of the part of Germany where I was living.  So, on the way back there I took a train that was also occupied by the Americans, and they allowed us to be there.  That’s where I got the first slice of bread after many months, you know.  I remember this like today.  It was that white bread, the fluffy one that you wouldn’t eat today because it’s no good for you.  But, there they had—I don’t know what they had on there, some ham or something.  I was really grateful that we were occupied by the Americans instead of the Russians because that was a sheer disaster.  I have one girlfriend here that was living in the city of Berlin that had to hide in the attic for weeks and weeks because of rapes that occurred by the Russian Occupation.  So, that part after the war was okay for us because, like I said, actually, it was the Americans that offered a labor office for us to go to and find a new job, and that sent me there to the city of Frankfurt.

JK: You said you were trained to be a journalist before you started at the Press Office?  So, you were comfortable doing that, uh—

GB: Yeah.  I was not enough trained, or I don’t think I was enough trained, but I said yes when they sent me.  And, I could do it.  But yeah, I went to a reporters school that was across from where I lived and oddly enough it was run by some Catholic nuns.  It was like a cloister school by nuns that would teach us, and they taught all kinds of things.  Amongst this they taught journalism and things like this, and that is still in existence.  It’s still across from where I was living, that I told you in the other interview?  That was across from the old patrician home—

JK: Right.

GB: —which had the trap door to go into the cellar and all this.

JK: Yes, yes, okay.

GB: That’s still in existence.  [I think it’s at the Mühlwehrstrasse.] 

JK: Wow.  And, you just discovered that you enjoyed reporting through this process once you were at the school, or how did that happen that you found yourself enjoying reporting and becoming a journalist?

GB: Can you phrase this differently?

JK: Sure.  How did you discover journalism to be one of your passions, something that you enjoyed doing?  Was it—

GB: Oh, when I was three years old.  [My interest was in everything called news when I was real young, like school age, to be a corrected and inquisitive time stealer of the teachers.  My interests were in all I could read, see, and hear. I already wanted to know everything in detail.  Sometimes that made be a pain in the neck.] 

JK: Oh, really?  (laughs)

GB: Well, I was an A-1 student everywhere, but on the bottom of each of my papers—in fact, I still have one paper from grammar school.

JK: Really?

GB: And, on the bottom of all of this it said that I was A-1 student except for I was too inquisitive and took too much time of the teacher.  You couldn’t tell me that the bees pollinated the flowers.  That wasn’t good enough.  I had to know why were they pollinating the flowers?  And what flowers were they?  And was the serum sweet or was it sour?  (laughs)  And where did they give birth to the young bees and all of this.  I would get into lengthy, lengthy—and I would write this down.  And, in front of me there was a girl that had pigtails, and we had the old fashioned, uh, what do you call it?  

JK: Ink wells? 

GB: Ink wells and the thing with the Federhalter quill. 

JK: Quill?

GB: With the tip of this—

JK: With the quills?  With the—

GB: No, they were iron.  They were single.  You stuck the quill in the end of it, yeah.

JK: Oh, okay.

GB: And, I would take a pigtail and dunk them in.

JK: Oh, put her hair in there to dye it?  (laughs)

GB: In the ink, yeah.  [Not to dye but just to be sheepish and funny, not always appreciated.]

JK: Wow.

GB: And then, I had friends.  I would hang out with the boys, you know, with the eight, nine-year-old boys, and we’d have to [go] to the castle.  Where I lived we had a secret way going from the town hall underneath the whole city to this castle, which was by the end roads. It was still there, but they had nailed the entrances shut.  And these boys and I would go there, and we would look at this.  They pushed me in there.  I had to go and see what it was like.

JK: Oh, wow!

GB: That was really dangerous.

JK: I’m sure.

GB: Yeah, I did a lot of things there.  I remember we had a lot of walnut trees around.  I must have been about maybe ten or eleven.  I had to go up and get the walnuts.  They were standing watching for the police, and then they would give me away.  It was her, you know?  [They told the officer who was, luckily, my father’s patient.]

JK: Oh, my goodness.  In our prior interview you mentioned that you practically became German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer’s Press Secretary because you are involved with the press office.  What was that like?

GB: I started that.  That was where the American Occupation Labor Office sent me.  It was then called Economic Council.

JK: Okay.

[00:20:00]

GB: Now they have to have a way of communicating, you know, so they had to do it through newspapers those days.  I had to go into meetings just like they do here.  Sometimes the meetings lasted all night and half of the next day, and then we had three days off or what have you.  But, during the meetings I had to write it down in speed writing, which is like here the court typing, but by hand.  Everything was by hand.   And then, upstairs we had a room with about twenty-six or so typists.  I would have to dictate that for my sheets that I took in twenty minutes for them to type it by hand in a hand typewriter.  And, when it was typed, after an hour or so, one of us three girls that went down there and took this—when I was up there the other girl was down there that took the minutes.  Then after an hour or so, I had to go on the phone, which we had little phones then, too.  My father had one of the first phones in my hometown.  You had to phone it to the newspapers by telephone, like number three or four, new taxes for small business or something like this, whatever the issue was.  And, when this was all over and I had followed my plan and did go to America, we were two thousand and forty something number.  And, I could name you about everything you asked me then.  They would say like, uh, Remember when it was forbidden to smoke on the lawn or on the beach or something like this.  And, I said, “Yes, that was number 417, or 320 or whatever.”

JK: Wow!

GB: I could—

JK: Recall that. 

GB: I could go—and the girl you saw there with me in the picture was a friend in the archives, and she would get it for me.  We had speaker phones on our desks, but not telephones to communicate.  She was in the next office.  Annegret Bahr was her name.  And, I would say, “Annegret, go and get number 714 or number 825 or whatever,”  and she would get it for me if it was needed to publish or for some reason to discuss or any other way.  That’s how they did newspapers.  It was sent in by phone to the publishers, and then they printed it.  They probably spent half of the night to make sure to get it out early in the morning.  That’s why we had to report it every twenty minutes, so that it got in the earliest papers.

JK: Wow!

GB: Really, it was very primitive, but it was effective.

JK: It was, certainly.  Did you have the opportunity to meet the chancellor since you were working within that environment?

GB: All the time.  I was working there.  I was sitting in when he spoke, when he had discussions, like here, on the parliament.  

JK: What were your impressions of him?

GB: He was a very kind man.  He was a Christian Democrat, you know?  He believed in God and he believed in the country and he believed strongly that he could do it and build German up again.  He gets credit for a good deal of building up so fast because Germany was just about totally destroyed after the war.  I drove through the city of Dresden when they threw like little bombs, phosphorus, on a burning city.  I could see from the train where the mothers pulled their children through the streets, through the tar, and they got stuck in the burning tar.  That’s where they succumbed.  Hundreds and hundreds of people died in Dresden.

And, just not too long ago—several years ago—and I was looking for this to see if I could find it for you.  I cut out of a German newspaper something that I had written in America—but mostly, I wrote the minutes for different German clubs that they had here in the Alpine Village and what have you.  I would go down there, and I would take the minutes and then write articles in the German paper about what was said and what was discussed.  But, I couldn’t find it.  I don’t know what I did with it.  Some of it was written by somebody else, and she also wrote about how Germany was doing during and after the war.  But, it was somebody that didn’t have enough of Hitler because actually all of that was going on in the search for fallen and killed people.  And, I was having such a horrible youth helping destroy Germany, losing my father because of the cause of the Jews impact, you know.  For the hell of me I cannot see how anyone can have one good word of a mass murderer like Adolf Hitler.  I just—I cannot see it, but there are people that still praise him.  I remember years ago that in the Old World, their festivity hall was rented out to what they call the Skinheads at that time.  They would be there en masse and have fights and knife fights in the parking lot.  I remember the police came there one time because they knifed somebody that—they guy who almost died.  I never was able to follow this up.  I would be afraid to go down there because I was so strictly against those ideologies that I couldn’t keep my mouth shut and I started fights with—I mean, verbal fights with the owner.  And, I told him that he had made all of his money here, and he should just take it and go back to Germany, to what he’s praising so much.  He always had an answer.  He would tell me, “Oh no, I’m going to stay here because I’m going to show the people here that a German can get rich here too, you know, and keep the money, and they don’t have to pay taxes.”  I don’t know what he did with his money, but I do know that he bought a lot of property in Germany also.

JK: With [you] being so close to the chancellor, did you believe in his message of restoration?  Did you accept that this economy recovery and did that really—

GB: Well, he, Adenhauer, created it.

JK: Right.

GB: Yeah, his parliament got together and created this.

JK: So, you saw him as an effective leader, and you really embraced the new Germany?

GB: He’s actually—he was the recreator of Germany.

JK: Right.

GB: In the Old World there was a crystal place at one time. I think they have a hair stylist upstairs now.  They have a picture of the city from where Adenauer comes, and they call it Adenauer Way or something like that.

JK: Oh, okay. 

GB: Yeah, he was well known.  I met people here in my church that knew about Konrad Adenauer because that was all over the world that Germany had found somebody again that led the Germans—which are very crafty and quick in rebuilding something, because five years after the war, you know, they were practically rebuilt.

JK: Exactly, right.

GB: And, there were buildings like cathedrals and old stuff that they had to renew and repaint and all of this.  It wasn’t easy, but that was Konrad Adenauer’s voice.  He did that.  I was proud to be there, you know, to be part of it.  And then, later on, when I was already in America, I went because that was the principle, because I wanted to go, and I couldn’t because my papers were gone earlier.  Then when my papers came back, I went to the U.S.A. in spite of knowing that it’s going to be a lot harder for me over here to start.  Like I told you before, I was washing dishes in the Hotel Utah, you know, in Salt Lake City.  There was no welfare and no, well, if you come in here then you can be given your small business loan and all this.  No, when I came in 1952, you worked or you starved.  

[00:31:00]

JK: What was America like in general in 1952?  What was the feeling if you can recall?

GB: When I came here?  

JK: Yeah? 

GB: Well, it was a wonderful country because everything was whole.  The buildings were not damaged.  I lived in Los Angeles, which I hitched my way over from Salt Lake City, and then I wanted to live at the beach.  We never had enough money to live at the beach, so I told my husband, “If we cannot buy a house, we’ll just buy a mobile home.  But, I’m going to go to the beach.”  I had thirty-three wonderful years in Westminster where I lived in my mobile home.  And just recently, I finally sold it, you know, except after thirty some odd years there is not much money you get out of it because there is a lot of repairs to be done and fees and real estates. 

JK: Right.  Did it feel like home when you moved here?  You sensed the freedom.  That’s what you were pursuing.  So, you said it wasn’t economic, but when you arrived in America did you feel like it embraced you, the country itself?  Was it welcoming, like to make a new home?

GB: I embraced the country because I could speak there without having to look in the corner [to see] if a microphone was there.  But, some of the Americans and some of the German-Americans attitude was different, and I’m not so sure if we were so welcomed because I was asked many times on the street, Oh well, you’re German.  Are you a Nazi?  I cannot stand in the middle of Pershing Square and tell the world, That’s what I fled from, and this is why I’m here.  I could have been long retired if I had stayed over there and all this.  But no, I felt the freedom here, and that’s why I’m here. 

JK: Do you think women felt more freedom in America in general?

GB: Absolutely.

JK: In what ways did that manifest?

GB: Many ways: dressing and giving opinions on different things and having time out for women alone.  You know, going to a tea party with a girlfriend or to a movie and give the men space to get together and go bowling or do whatever the men do.  But, women have a lot more freedom over here.  In Germany—I don’t know how it is today.  I haven’t been there in years, but at my time you were a work horse, let’s say, that served on the husband.  That’s in short terms.  You did your thing as a wife and a mother, and you had four children for your husband.  And then, you washed the dishes for him and you cooked for him and you cut the firewood and a few other things, you know?  There was a lot of difference between women of America and over there.

I remember I came home, uh, after I was here thirteen years, and I bought a pink suit with black around the collar and all this.  My mother and my sister were on the railroad station to await me, and they walked home.  And I said, “Where were you?  Why would I have to go alone when you were at the railroad?”  They said, We wouldn’t walk with you through the city with a shocking pink suit on.  No way.

JK: Wow!  You mentioned the differences of American and German households.  When you got married did you expect to follow an American model or a German model in running your home?

GB: My own.  Mostly, I did things that probably other people wouldn’t do.  Like when we bought our first home, it was a four bedroom home, and I remember the payments were only $67.  Of course, you made only twenty-six a week or so.  (laughs)  So, I got to thinking, You have this house that was four bedrooms.  What are you going to do with them?  You don’t have any furniture.  And, I was never a person for future plans, like, oh well, maybe by next year I can buy a couch.  And then, the year after I buy one bedroom set, and then I save the money to get a refrigerator.  No, I had to have it all right there now.  I lived there, and I wanted to live.  So, I got to one of these places where they sell for bedroom and living room and all of this.

JK: Room sets?

GB: Furniture.

JK: Oh, okay.

GB: In one, bundle furniture.  Like I would say, uh, bedroom, living room, and kitchen which would include the refrigerator and the stove and whatever you need, you know, all in one and then it was advertised for $1200.  So, in my head I figure out, well, if I can only pay $100 monthly, and it takes me a year to pay it off, you know—but I can live.  I don’t have to sit in the corner on the floor and wait until I can buy the living room table or something like this.  And, I was like this momentaneously, you know, with everything in my life.  

I told my daughter, if I get any better then I want to go to New England.  All of my life I’m living here; I wanted to see the autumn leaves.  I want to go and see the Amish.  I have a movie that’s almost worn out because I watch it so much.  Well, she said, “Mom, I don’t think you can go there anymore, not only this, but it cost a lot of money.”  I said, “Forget about the money.  I’m going to start saving.”  I don’t know how I’m going to save, but I’m going to save.  I have a small pension from Germany, and I’m going to save some of it.  And, I said, “By fall when the autumn leaves fall, if I can ever use that one leg just a little bit—”  I’m pestering the doctor right now to send me a therapist that can make me at least stand on this and turn on this leg.  I cannot—the left leg is totally useless, so I have to do everything on my right leg.  That means my whole heavy weight goes where I can hold myself and turn on this leg.  And, if I can figure this out—I have an electric wheelchair, and if we can get a rack on the back of Chris’ van and I can get in contact with a travel agency and see—I know we can take a plane ride, but once we get there we would have to get a mobile unit to travel to do this.  I still want to go to New England.  It’s an obsession. 

JK: Sure.  (laughs)

GB: And, since I cannot go—and pop up like Jack in the Box each time I have a heart attack—I think maybe I’m supposed to go there now.  I don’t know what the reason is I’m still here.  I have to find a reason.

JK: Sure.  It’s incredible.  It really is.  Um, can you share with me more about your responsibilities as a wife and mother maybe early in your marriage, what that was like when you moved here to California in the fifties and setting up a home?

[00:40:10]

GB: Well, for me there was a lot of anxiety involved because I did not know how life would be here when you were a young mother and you had a small child and your husband was working and only one income, you know, like normal people actually have.  But, I didn’t know if it worked like this.  And, here I left and was with a salary that’s unspeakable of, and so it involved a lot of anxiety.  How are you making out?  But I managed.  

I always saved a little, and then I never waited until I saved the full amount to pay, like, piano tuition for Christine for the next four months.  I did it right there and then.  If I felt that she was musically inclined, and she sang a lot of stuff, then I asked her if she wanted to have piano lessons.  She said, “Yes,” so I enrolled her.  I mean, right there and then.  And then, she wouldn’t practice.  She did not want to practice.  She wanted to be Beethoven.  She sat on the chair and she pulled her coat back and started hammering.  Then her father said, “Look, if you do not practice then this piano goes into the fireplace.” I bought her a piano and the history of this piano is something to hear about.  So, my husband said, “If you don’t want to practice then this piano goes in the fireplace.”  I quit the lessons, and we didn’t just burn it right off.  We waited and about three weeks later I came home one day, and she was sitting practicing on her own.  So, I left her alone for about two months, three months, and she asked to get back to practice.  That piano is her second income today.  She’s teaching piano after her one work that she has for thirty-three years at Wescom Credit Union.  She’s teaching piano the whole day on Tuesday.  She only works four days for this credit union.  Her day off is Wednesday, that she gives to me, and another day is Tuesday when she teaches piano all day.  It’s a good income.  So, this piano was a beginner’s piano—it was a Kimball upright, but it had a real solid good tone.  But, that piano that was supposed to land in the fireplace is a money maker now.  She just told me recently that she thinks it’s about to be replaced.  She had it repaired quite a bit lately, so she feels maybe she should buy a new piano.  And I said, “Now that your children are grown—”  They all play on it.  They all went to piano lessons.  And, her oldest daughter, whose husband is in Afghanistan, but he’s here right now on leave for four months, she also gives piano lessons to try to finance some more medical school for her.

JK: Wow!  That’s incredible.

GB: So, her husband, he’s in Afghanistan.  I say, “He sweats in the sandbox for you, so be grateful.”  Except for they are married six years at long distance.

JK: I’ve been studying women’s economic worth in the home.  If a woman were to refuse to do her duties, like cooking and cleaning and doing the laundry, someone else would have to come in and perform all those things and you’d have to pay them.  How do you feel about as a wife and mother that you’ve provided all these years of service?

GB: No, that wouldn’t happen.

JK: No?

GB: Especially not in the small villages.  There was no cleaning woman to come in.  We had this because my mother was helping my dad in the practice, see?

JK: Okay.

GB: So, we had to have somebody to take care of us.

JK: Okay, like a nanny?

GB: So, we had this nanny.  It deprives us a lot also of our parents because my parents were in the practice until evening, and then we helped sterilizing the instruments and so forth.  At the end of the day when everybody was worn out they came in and said a prayer with us and kissed us goodnight, you know?  So, that’s not the ideal mother a child wishes when they are little.

JK: Sure.  I was wondering, how did you manage your home differently than your mother did in Germany?  You are kind of sharing with me some of the ways she interacted with you differently, but did you actually manage your home differently when you started your own in America?  Do you see quite a bit of differences the way they operated, maybe the way you interacted, uh, with managing your home, with organizing it, and keeping it in order?

GB: No, I did not see any difference because I was organized all my life.  That’s why I had the jobs that I had, you know.  I didn’t see that.  I see it now.  My daughter and these grandchildren, they are an altogether different breed.  My husband and I had a good marriage because he was raised like I was.   He would get up from bed, and he would fold his pajamas and put them on top of the nightstand and then his slippers underneath exactly this way, like in the Armed Forces.  That was good for me because I was like this.  I was raised like this.  I was only able to play with my sister’s doll after my mother washed my hands, if they were dirty or unclean.  I had to wash them first, and she put a towel on the chair so I wouldn’t get the chair dirty with my clothes.  I played in the sandbox; that’s how I was raised, you know.  But some of this is leftover when you are having your own home.  So, I was very neat, and I still am without being a Mrs. Cleanliness so to speak of.  See, now I have assisted living help.  And, they come in here, and they say, “Oh, we like your room.  It’s so homey.”  Well, because I make it homey.  I took my gong clock and my bed jacket, my hospital bed with a trapeze on it, and I have a little table on the right with a goose that has a ribbon around its neck looking out from underneath.  On top is my clock that gongs in four different tones, like the “Westminster” and the “Ava Maria” and so forth.  I’m sitting across from this in the bed, and I can hear this.  It gives me a little feeling of home, although it’s only one room, and it’s in a place that has 160 people.

JK: You can carry home anywhere with you.  I’ve seen that with people who move from one country to another.  There is a sense that women are expected to create that ambiance.  Do you feel like that pressure you had on you was to create that for your family, a place of home, a place of safety?  That’s the mother’s role to do that or—

GB: No, I can tell you this, you make a home out of a place.  Like, A house is not a home, they say, that’s true.  You make that a home wherever you live.  But, as far as going from place to place to place, no, because I made one place too homey to just leave it and start on another place like this.  I had the sense of having a place that was a home that you could sit in the corner on a bunch of cushions and read a book and listen to radio, which was all we had then.  We didn’t even have television until I was married a couple or three years or so.  I remember our first television.  What was the name of it?  We had it a long time.

JK: So, what year would that have been when you purchased your first television set, ’58 or so?

GB: Well, I got here in ’52—yeah, in 1952, and we didn’t have a television until about three years later.  It had a prominent name.  It wasn’t a Sony or Toyota thing.  [It was Emerson.]

[00:50:04]

JK: Something common for that era.

GB: It was an American made television, Electrolux or something like this.  [Emerson]

JK: Oh, okay.

GB: We had it for years.  I think we had it for about fourteen years or so, and then we got another one.  Then after my husband died I bought one where you can play—in the same unit, I can put cassettes in there, and I can put DVDs in there.  And, I have a regular television, and I can also play music on it.

JK: All in one.

GB: So, it’s all in one unit now.  This is how progressed we are now from then.

JK: When you set up your home, did your house come pre-installed with the oven and dishwasher, uh, refrigerator, washer, and dryer or are those things you purchased yourself?  The home in Pomona?

GB: Did it what?

JK: I was wondering, the home that you bought in Pomona, did it have the oven and dishwasher pre-installed?

GB: Yeah, this is what I told you.  I had to have it right there and then, you know?  So, I bought the house and had this in there: dishwasher, washing machine, dryer, stove, and oven.

JK: Okay, so it had it in it, and then you added on everything it didn’t have included?

GB: And, I added on furniture for four rooms.

JK: Okay, so everything else was there.

GB: It had a washer and it had a dryer and it had a stove.

JK: The stove was there?  Oh, okay.

GB: But, the thing is, I was risky, doing risky things, because it never occurred to me.  I knew, but I never thought about that I’m now paying on these items as long as I’m paying on the house.  Because it came with the house, see?

JK: Uh-huh, exactly.

GB: But, I didn’t want to wait.  I didn’t want to sit somewhere with a little stove until I could buy a stove.  A lot of people do that.  They say, Don’t buy it until you go the money.  I think that’s not always true.  If you have a good job and you are a faithful payer, which means you do your obligations the way they come around and don’t get late with your payments on anything, there is no reason why you can’t have a home that is cozy and neat and has everything you need and pay it off in five or ten years.

JK: Did you purchase a lot of appliances in the home too, like toasters and electric irons and mixers for the kitchen to cook with?  Did you find those helpful?

GB: Uh, yeah, I had a mixer.  I didn’t use it hardly, but I had it for Christmas cookies, I had a nut chopper kind of type like thing.  My daughter has it now.  And yeah, I had an iron, but I haven’t used an iron in almost twenty years.  When they came out with non-wrinkling clothes that’s what I bought.  I don’t buy anything that takes ironing.

JK: Uh-huh.  Do you recall the marketing materials that you received about appliances?  I found some of these from the forties and fifties to purchase, like, a Hoover vacuum, um, electric ranges from General Electric some of these things.

GB: No, that’s what I had in the house when I moved in, yeah.

JK: The costly products?  So, these look very familiar?

GB: I should give you my tape that I have of the forties and fifties.  

JK: That would be very similar to this?

GB: Yeah, it shows you that in those days the appliances were much roomier and all of this.  They had wall units that you could open there, and you put your dishes in them nicely.  You could even have glass in it so that you could see them.  They look like showcases.

JK: This is actually a hanging refrigerator, so it’s eye level.  Some very unique products to help women with their housework.  Do you think that these products eased the burden of housework, or do you think because you had all these new gadgets it increased the workload?  Like for instance, with an iron, it would take more time to—even like a new blouse, it would take additional time to iron it.  Do you think those gadgets helped?

GB: That increases my workload.  That’s why I don’t iron.  I threw the iron out about twenty years ago.

JK: Did you?  (laughs)  Do you think other items like, uh, dishwashers—and how do you feel about other products like washing machines?

GB: It’s easier than hand washing.  Since my husband’s death, a dishwasher was not very economical for me because I was one person.  I had one dish, and I did not want to save eight dishes before I could make it a half of a load or a quarter of a load.  So, I washed my two or three dishes, and I washed them without using my dishwasher.  And then, by and by they freeze, so the dishwasher got defect because it would not drain anymore because of calcium deposits set in there, see.

JK: Right.

GB: And, I never had that fixed.  But now, when I sold it I had to have all of this stuff fixed.  That next owner, he made a killing.  He has everything new in there, even new electricity and new sewer lines.  I had to pay I don’t know how much money out of the sale.  I only got about thirty thousand some odd dollars out of this mobile home that we paid I think $67,000 for about thirty years ago.

JK: Uh, what German foods would you prepare for your family?

GB: German place?

JK: Uh-huh.  Well, German foods or dishes?

GB: Oh, German foods?

JK: What kinds of traditional cuisine would you recreate?

GB: Their favorite is handed down to my grandchildren, and they call it Spitzbuben. It’s a cookie.  There are two, a double cookie.  One of them is smaller than the other.  It has raspberry in it, and then sugar crust with a little bit of lemon flavor in it.  And, all of my grandchildren bake it.  They make this for Christmas by the dozens.  Christine does certain dishes, which are considered German, but actually they are like—goulash is Hungarian, you know?  And then, they have Rouladen, which is a steak that’s flattened, and you put bacon and pickle and a lot of onions and you roll it.  You first brown in the pan in butter, and then you fill this much water in it.  You thicken it with flour into a gravy, and then just before it starts cooking again you put about a half of glass of red wine in it.  If you don’t want alcohol then you let it bubble up a couple of times.  It takes the alcohol out, but we like the flavor of the red wine with beef.  

JK: Oh, right.  Because you exported German food, do you find yourself using the products that you’re distributing to these, uh—

GB: Yeah, yeah.  A lot of things now are taken from the German markets and restaurants.  Like potato pancakes.  I wouldn’t take them from the package.  I would make them from scratch.

JK: Did it encourage you to continue those dishes because you had all the resources being imported?  

GB: Um, not really.

JK: No?

GB: No, not really because my husband was sick, and he was a poor eater.  Then just to cook for me, I got really Americanized and go for the drive-by dishes and things.  I didn’t have to cook anymore.

JK: Right, right.

GB: Yeah.

JK: So, do you think because you married an American over the years your cuisine adapted to the culture more and more?

GB: Yeah, I did, yeah.

JK: Yeah.

GB: Yeah, I did.

JK: Okay.

GB: I do—like when my daughter comes over I could have an omelet with all the vegetables I wanted to, but I prefer when she brings it to me.  What do you call this from McDonald’s here?

JK: Oh, yeah.

GB: Egg McMuffin.  See, I like junk food.

JK: Yeah.

GB: Let’s face it.  Yes!  I like candy, the sweeter the better.

[01:00:00]

JK: (laughs)  Do you think there is a connection between buying American products, maybe like McDonalds or particular appliances or cars made in America that signify a simulation, or is there any connection to you about those products?

GB: No.

JK: Are they totally independent of that or—

GB: I don’t think so.  I guess there is a restaurant of some kind that serves you something that they call like the Wienerschnitzel, you know?

JK: Uh-huh.

GB: But, there is nothing wiener in there, (laughs) and the schnitzel is a hot dog made out of the rest of the turkey.  You go in, and you say, “I want an original hot dog.”  I didn’t know that for a long time.  They told me this at the Wienerschnitzel, if you are asking for original then you get a hot dog that’s made out of pure meat, see.  But, like today, the world is so weight conscious, you know, that everything is eyed fifteen times if it has any preservative in it.  It has this and that.  Chris is like this.  She looks and then she tells me, “Mom, you should not eat this.”  (laughs)  You already had three cookies and one cake piece.  You should not eat this, and you need to lose weight.  She tells me all of this, and she’s on constant diets.  She goes on natural diets.  I have not measured her.  I have no idea whether she loses weight with those or not.  (laughs)

JK: Do you think there’s a difference between American consumerism and European consumerism?  So, have you seen those differences when you moved here?

GB: Between American?

JK: Consumerism.  So, when you moved here in the fifties, did you notice there is a difference in the way Americans buy products versus the way Germans would buy products in the fifties?  Like you said you—

GB: No.

JK: —purchased everything in bulk, uh, and that’s kind of more your personality.  But, is there quite a difference in the way German women might run a house?

GB: I did not buy everything in bulk when I was on my own, you know?  [German women did not have their husband’s help like in the U.S.A.]  

JK: Okay.

GB: She does this for her family.  But, there is no difference in American consumers and consumers of German goods if that’s what you are trying to ask me.  Because the American consumers still do the same thing as they used to do when I came in here.  They like the hot dog at the ballgame.  And, they like their—what is it McDonald makes?  (laughs)  And, that is here, and it’s here to stay and was here when I got here.  So, there’s no change.  I didn’t see any American housewives say, “Oh well, we won the war in Germany.  Let’s go to German noodles,” or something like this, no.  No, I don’t think so.

JK: Okay.  (laughs)  Uh, I was looking at Disney—

GB: It’s more the different way around.  Sometimes you are forced to go, if you are from a foreign country—like, I have this friend.  She’s from Japan, and she eats nothing but fruit.  This is some of it.  I brought that home last night because I couldn’t finish it.  We have to throw it out because it’s in the car, but that’s what she eats.  We had spinach yesterday, Christine.  They put one teaspoon full of spinach on there, and it was just cooked and hacked.  There was nothing artificial on it, no gravy.  She asked, “Could she have three portions of this?”  They are bringing her a plate of this spinach that I cannot even look at it without reguring what I already consumed.  She sat down.  She ate this just like I ate my piece of cake that we had for dessert.  (laughs)  Oh, goodness.

JK: Wow!

GB: But, she’s healthy, because she lived like this all of her life.  Yet, her blood pressure is 162.  (laughs)  But Katie, she tells me, “My blood pressure is 162.  I have to go on a diet.”  I said, “You’re on a diet all day long.”  That’s all she eats is lots of vegetables and lots of this.  And then, when I see that not doing anything for her then I’m not—I’m getting more lax with me wanting to lose weight because I figure, well, it’s not going to help her anyhow, so why do it?

JK: I was wondering if you visited Disneyland in the 1950s?  There is a house, the Monsanto House of the Future, the Carousel of Progress, and Tomorrowland.  They showed households, American houses changing from the twenties to the thirties to the forties and fifties and, like, also in the future—

GB: Where have you got this?

JK: Disneyland’s 1957 Monsanto House of the Future.

GB: I visited Disneyland in 1957.  I got there in 1957.

JK: Or anytime after?

GB: Maybe once or twice by 1957.  I didn’t have the money to run to Disneyland all the time when she was little.  In 1957 I was married two years, right?

CB: [Christine Breese, daughter of Gisela Bandurraga]  I remember the name of it.  It was called the Carousel of Progress.

JK: Right, the Carousel of Progress.  It’s in Tomorrowland.  It showed kind of the ideal home.

GB: I’m not familiar with this Carousel thing.

JK: Oh, okay.

CB: I’ll show you.  I’ll try to find a picture.

GB: You know about this Christine, Carousel of Progress?

JK: It’s an old—it’s like an exhibit of a house.

GB: In Tomorrowland?

JK: Uh-huh.

GB: I didn’t see that.  I saw the Pirates of the Caribbean and the alligators in the water there, the ride.  What is that?  Yeah, the Pirates of the Caribbean I think.  I wanted to go to Disneyland one more time, but it didn’t work out.  Maybe this year for Christmas.

JK: It showed kind of—

GB: Do I self identify as a homemaker?  Yes, I do, but not anymore because now I’m old and I’m alone.  I have assisted living, and I don’t have to.  I have help. I can have my tray on the bedside, or I can go down.  I have an electric wheelchair there, and I can go down to eat and go to the activities.  They have all kinds of activities.  It’s mostly music for me. 

JK: What do you think makes a homemaker?  What constitutes that?

GB: Well, it’s kindness with your family number one, you know, so you won’t be a nervous wreck and hitting your children.  This is what I tell my daughter.  We went to church where we lived.  It’s called St. Joseph’s and [is] in La Puente on Temple Street.  We lived off Temple Street.  Sunday morning we went to church, and we saw all these women.  There were a lot of Mexican people that lived there with the old fashioned scarf around them.  They’d have about four or five children in each arm, and they would say, Let’s go, you know, go to church and sit down.  They would run in the aisles, and they would fall down and put their scarf over them and bow a couple of times.  And, they sit in there.  The husband is there.  And then, they’d go, Shut up.  Don’t do this.  Sit down.   It goes like this until church was empty, and they run out of church.  I watch this.  And, we went in the car, and they went in the car.  They stopped at the next liquor store, and the old man went to stop for a case of beer.  Then they got home and he got drunk and they argued.  Those are things that I observed, you know.  So, I don’t think women like this would have made a good homemaker because they let their kids go outside in the backyard and play in the sand and do whatever they wanted to because they couldn’t be bothered with family life.  Their family life was to get together with the neighbors at the Rose Bowl Game, drink beer, and smoke cigarettes and watch the Rose Bowl.  For the men.  And, the women, they made tortillas and the things that go with the Rose Bowl, beer, you know.  (laughs)  But, I shouldn’t say that because we have the same thing still now.  At the Oktoberfest in Germany they do the same thing.  They have the pretzels and the beer and get drunk.

JK: Uh-huh.  What do you think of the representation of German culture in that event, what it’s telling Americans about the culture?

GB: It depends on who writes about it.

JK: Uh-huh, sure.

GB: I have read some of those write-ups in magazines that advertise student exchange on boats that come from the city of Hamburg that tell you that you can send your students, your American students, over there and how wonderful is this.  They get into the city of this and that and the other.  There is much castles and there’s lots of forest and that’s the best wine region and this and that and the other.  And, vice-versa, they tell you, you send your kids from over there here.  We have Disneyland, and then we might take them to the Grand Canyon.  We are good, uh, foster parents to them as long as they are with us and all of this, you know?  And then, these kids come over here.  They are sloppier, like all kids are today, but the German kids are also like this.  So, they come over here, and they throw their clothes around.  The people don’t like it, and they wished they were back home.  Her friend has a couple of kids from China now, right?  From China, now that’s a different story because they are raised different.  In spite of—the whole world is different, more lose and sloppy and uncaring, but the Chinese they have the Hitlerite discipline.  They have to march.  (laughs)  But, that’s what they advertise, is the culture, uh, to their benefit, you know.  They advertise it to their benefit, whoever does the advertising.

[01:11:52]

JK: Right.  Do you have any other comments about maybe your move here or any additional things that you’d like to share to future listeners?

GB: [Yes, keep your kids close to their maker and family.  Be their best friend and confident, parents.]  Well, my main comment is that I’m extremely grateful to be here because there’s too much, uh—what can I say?  There is too many Germans left in Germany and have come over here that are totally attached to a man named Adolf Hitler the mass murderer.  That’s the third generation now, and they cannot turn loose of this.  They glorify this man forever.  I don’t understand that.  And, I fight with them down there in the Old World, and I tell them off.  I tell the owner off.  I said, “Go home.  You make your money here, go home.”  “No,” he says, “I’m staying here.  I’m showing the Americans how we can get rich.”  That’s the kind of people I’m not very proud to call Germans from my homeland, because in reality they say, Home is where the heart is, and that’s forever.  (begins to cry)  We don’t say it.  Yeah, actually we don’t say where the heart is.  We say, Home is where the cradle stood.  But, it’s true with everybody from different countries.  They come here—like my little Japanese friend.  She cried her heart out the other day because somebody was mean to her because she was Japanese.  Just like she started World War III or something.  (laughs)

JK: Oh, gosh.

GB: Yeah.  So, although she’s seen her many years—her husband was a German man—and she’s here many years, but she too, she kept some of her own culture.  She’s eating light for one thing which is good, you know.  And, she likes to sing and she talks kind to people and she does things.  You drop something, and she goes and picks it up like she was your waitress or your slave, you know.  But, it’s in her.  You cannot get it out of her.  She just had a pacemaker, and she does not give up on doing this.  And, I’m afraid she’s going to have a heart attack or a stroke if she keeps it up, you know, this moving, constant moving.  But she too says sometimes, “Don’t tell them I’m Japanese,” just like people wouldn’t hear, you know.  Her accent is an altogether different one.  They have a shushish like this, talk like this shush, you know?  And some people take offense and they tell her, You’re a Jap.  Go back home where you came from and stuff like this.  That hurts, you know, when you’re born in a country and you love your country and also America.  

JK: Right.

GB: She was there during the atomic bomb.

JK: Wow!  You shared—one last thing that I wanted to ask about—that you have become very patriotic, that you really embrace Fourth of July, and that freedom is so important to you so you embraced American celebration of it.  

GB: I am more of a patriot than a lot of American born people.  Ask my daughter, she can tell you that.  I look forward to going to my husband’s graveside.  People say, Why are you going all the way to Riverside to your husband’s gravesite on Memorial Day?  Because I like the patriotism.  I like the red, white and blue.  I like the people speaking about who is in these graves and why are they there and to honor them.  Sure they are dead; they don’t know the difference.  But, I as a wife feel responsible, for one thing, for the grave to be in order.  It could be grown over by grass by now if somebody didn’t look after this.  And then, it’s just a quiet memorial that you do.  We take a picnic there.  We have a picnic, and then we listen to their speeches.  There was the daughter of a fallen soldier that spoke.  It’s very interesting what they go through losing their father that way.  And, I go in the same grave as my husband.  Last year I said already and the year before I said already, that’s the last time I’m getting here by foot, you know, but it hasn’t happened yet.  I don’t know why I’m here, but I’m here.  So, this year I’m looking forward again to Memorial Day to go out there.  We have a problem to get there because the roads are loaded with motorcyclists—what do you call this motorcycle club, Christine?

CB: Hell’s Angels.

GB: Hell’s Angels, they lent their—what do you call it?  They honor, and they go there in hoards, you know, hoards of motorcycles.  Sometimes you cannot get across the street, and you have to stand there for about half an hour before they all pass before you can get farther and closer to where you’re going.  But, I think it’s wonderful.  I could go down to the corner there to Beach Boulevard to this—I did that one time with my friend.  Five o’clock in the morning you [go to] a sunrise service of some kind.  The grass was wet, and everybody was standing there really with their head bowed, you know.  Some minister or priest or whatever he was, he said a few words that we were honoring our dead and all of this, but he didn’t get into the real meaning.  

And, I think that the world has changed now because I found this where I live from last year Easter to this year Easter.  This year when they sing about Easter and why we were having Easter, and they asked me to play the song of the “[Old] Rugged Cross” on my harmonica instead of the Easter bunny hops in the meadow or something like this.  And, I could tell people are more serious because they can feel that, uh, morally and mentally this earth is at its end or at the backend of its existence.  So therefore, I’m glad to see this, you know.  And, if this is really true and Christ should come back now, I’d be glad to greet him.  I’d be glad to be here.  We just discussed this.  I said, yeah, but you have to go—even the believers have to go through the things that lead to this, through the wars and to all of this because you are there and you get part of it.  You get the bombings and all of this.  Although you are supposed to be untouched by it, you have emotions and you go through things.  You might lose loved ones and all of that, but we’re lining up another thing here.  I want to wind this up by me telling you that I’m very grateful that I’m here and in America because it is the leading land, and I wish that its people don’t mess it up.

JK: Uh-huh.  Okay, thank you so much for your time.  It’s a pleasure to be here with you.  Okay.  I think you’re the unsung hero. 

GB: I don’t know what I’d like to end this with other than God bless America, and God bless you.

JK: Oh, we just finished it here.  It’s still on. 

END OF INTERVIEW