Ilse Williams
This interview with Ilse Williams is a unique account, especially in West Texas.
Ilse Williams was born in Cuxhaven, Germany, in 1952 to parents who were teenagers during the rise of Adolf Hitler. She provides insight into the indoctrination of Nazi Germany experienced by her parents, as well as her own generation’s resulting rejection of authority in the 1960s and 1970s. She also comments on the trauma experienced by the Greatest Generation and their reluctance to talk about the war until recently.
Interview Excerpts
This segment comes from the edited transcript of Williams’s interview, Part 1, pgs. 12-14.
WILLIAMS: Okay, well I um, When I look at the life of my father actually at my parents, I mean they were actually- they were really really affected by that whole World War II business.
GRITTER: Mhm.
WILLIAMS: And the time before. Um, I can say that my father was evidently selected for, um an officers career, or something.
GRITTER: Got it.
WILLIAMS: Um, because he was academically as well as physically really talented.
GRITTER: Mhm.
WILLIAMS: And I know, also, you know, I have talked with him a lot of times, um the older I got the more I tried to, you know, always the same question, how did that happen? You know, what made it possible? And um, he gave me a lot of answers, explanations, and so on, but it was all on the history, philosophy side, you know.
GRITTER: Okay.
WILLIAMS: You know, and of course what we always had is, he had, you know, the Greek and and, uh, Latin history in his head too.
GRITTER: Mmm.
WILLIAMS: And so, you know, there were always comparisons they were really, you know-
GRITTER: Mhm.
WILLIAMS: almost college level-
GRITTER: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: conversations about it, but the actual day to day experiences of the war he did not, he did not share.
GRITTER: Mhm.
WILLIAMS: Um he was, let me see, they shortened the high school career.
GRITTER: Mhm.
WILLIAMS: For the boys instead of thirteen years, that was the normal prep school range, or, you know.
GRITTER: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: Or um, Gymnasium range, they made it twelve years and then they immediately got went into the work service.
GRITTER: Mhm.
WILLIAMS: It was called, Arbeitsdienst, you know, so it’s really work service.
GRITTER: Mhm.
WILLIAMS: And in that work service already, they did, you know, a lot of, um- I don’t know, clean up or works, or whatever, so for my father that would’ve been, I’m trying to think, 19- in ’37.
GRITTER: Okay.
WILLIAMS: But also what they did during that time was that was um, my father, uh through his physics teacher, and you have to remember that teaching was also aligned with the whole, you know, system. [laughs]
GRITTER: Yeah. [chuckles]
WILLIAMS: And the physics teacher interested the boys in glider plane flying.
GRITTER: Mhm.
WILLIAMS: And then there was a glider plane airport nearby Cuxhaven: where he grew up.
GRITTER: Mhm.
WILLIAMS: And so he and I don’t remember whether he was fourteen or sixteen, uh he got his glider plane license.
GRITTER: Mhm.
WILLIAMS: And of course for them that was all fun they also didn’t realize that that was also a spying uh uh.
GRITTER: Oh yeah.
WILLIAMS: A spying strategy, you know, to have those- those glider plane abilities and the other thing my father was very good at was- was throwing events.
GRITTER: Oh, okay.
WILLIAMS: And he was an exceptional javelin thrower and I said something, about well why was that so important why was that, so, you know, admired?
GRITTER: Mhm.
WILLIAMS: And in the aftermath, I knew that was hand grenade throwing.
GRITTER: Oh.
WILLIAMS: You know, I mean it was that the throwing sport among the boys was really pushed.
GRITTER: Mhm.
WILLIAMS: Um and so, you know, my father, [chuckles] was able after, you know, in the in the 60’s 70’s and 80’s he was very very well able to tie all of this together.
GRITER: Yeah. [chuckles].
WILLIAMS: But, you know, as a youngster, you know, he was just like any football kid is now, you know.
GRITTER: Yeah. [laughs]
This segment comes from the edited transcript of Williams’s interview, Part 2, pgs. 3-5.
WILLIAMS: And what I do know is that when the war started my father was in the Eastern, you know, in the invasion of Poland.
GRITTER: Okay.
WILLIAMS: And I don’t know in which way.
GRITTER: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: I also know that in ’42-’43 he was at the Atlantic coast. I also don’t know in which way.
GRITTER: Mhm.
Williams: Uh. So, um, anyway, but that’s- that’s all I mean never any- never any details.
GRITTER: Mhm.
WILLIAMS: Of it.
GRITTER: Mhm.
WILLIAMS: Okay, and then we started talking- we started talking about the, um, media coverage during that time.
GRITTER: Yup, exactly.
WILLIAMS: Okay, and that now what’s left, uh, it’s hard to find anything that was not already the- the engineered manufactured-
GRITTER: Mhm.
WILLIAMS: Uh, every impressive Nazi, you know, conquest of the world.
GRITTER: Yeah definitely.
GRITTER & WILLIAMS: [laugh]
GRITTER: Mhm.
WILLIAMS: But, um, but anyway, um,
GRITTER: So-
WILLIAMS: And then of course in ’45 you know everything fell apart.
GRITTER: Yup.
WILLIAMS: And, uh.
GRITTER: Then ’45 to ’48 was the occupation.
WILLIAMS: Yeah, and another consequence, um, was that my father was not allowed to attend the University until 1955.
GRITTER: Oh, wow.
WILLIAMS: And if you, you know, in the German History in 1955 Germany was granted, you know, whatever you call it: nice country status, there’s- there’s another term for it.
GRITTER: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: You know, and so until then, um, because of his past…
GRITTER: Mhm.
WILLIAMS: He was not allowed to study and so he had to try to do something else and he tried to start a button factory and then came the Korean War. They got their supplies from Korea and Dad went broke but he also was not a businessman, you know. He was- he was always more in the teaching vein.
GRITTER: Mhm.
WILLIAMS: Whatever. But then in ’55 he started, [sighs] he was, you know, he started teachin- um, to get his teacher’s degree at the University in Hamburg.
GRITTER: Mhm.
WILLIAMS: And for the next, five years, it took five years to become a teacher in a high school, you know, in a gymnasium.
GRITTER: Yup.
This segment comes from the edited transcript of Williams’s interview, Part 2, pgs. 10-11.
WILLIAMS: You know every game it- it’s- it’s again that you have to really switch your mind and say, okay these guys have not been through what we have been through.
GRITTER: we’ve been through.
GRITTER & WILLIAMS: [laugh]
GRITTER: I’ve heard some people in West Germany that like…
WILLIAMS: Yeah. Yeah, it’s just, you have a different tool box that you bring with you in your life and you just kinda feel like: woah. Mmm. Ugh.
GRITTER: Interesting.
WILLIAMS: Yeah. Okay and I think the other one is this, you know, what I said in the beginning, um, this habit of questioning authority.
GRITTER: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: Which was strong in the ’68-’70s, you know, when I was starting, I-, uh, I started college in ’70, 1970.
GRITTER: Mhm.
WILLIAMS: And of course that was big. You know, that was, um.
GRITTER: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: But all together that was something that, you know, be critical of people in authority.
GRITTER: Mhm.
WILLIAMS: And I know that [laughs] sometimes I have taken that too- too far but it’s still what what we grew up with, you know.
GRITTER: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: So, um, I don’t know. I mean, I just always considered my Father to be a really rational, experienced, educated advisor.
GRITTER: Mhm.
WILLIAMS: And then that’s hard to put together-
GRITTER: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: With the rest of the story.
GRITTER: Mhm. Mhm.
WILLIAMS: But this is happening to a lot of people, you know, there and what I- what I find amazing is that in German literature people are still writing about that time, you know.
GRITTER: Mhm.
WILLIAMS: They’re writing about the social and personal lives, uh, from that time, even though they are.
GRITTER: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: There’s a German, uh, author that just, uh, died two years ago but he wrote a story about his mother that was exactly my mother’s story.
GRITTER: Interesting.
WILLIAMS: I mean I thought, oh yeah, that’s- that’s how it was.
GRITTER: Mhm.
WILLIAMS: So it’s, by far not forgotten and, of course, it- her- the whole current situation it’s bringing- bringing, all, all kinds of stuff back.
GRITTER: Mhm. a lot of things are coming back.
GRITTER: That’s great.
WILLIAMS: Yeah, yeah.