Interview of Grace Van Wert on her service as a school teacher in post-war Germany from September 1946 to August 1947

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Description:

Grace Van Wert talks about her service as a school teacher in post-war Germany from September 1946 to August 1947. Van Wert says that she decided to take a leave absence from her teaching job in the Lansing, MI school district, was assigned to a one room school in the resort town of Bad Wildungen in Germany. Van Wert talks about the town, the post-war devastation, the children of U.S. dependents who were her students, the limited food supplies, and the poverty and destitution which the German people were experiencing. Van Wert says that she gave away soap to German civilians, exchanged coffee for original artwork, paid the man teaching her children German in cigarettes and that she could smell decaying corpses even a year after the war had ended. Van Wert is interviewed by Elsie Hornbacher.

Date Issued:

1984-08-06T00:00:00Z

Data Provider:

Michigan State University. Libraries

Collection:

Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project

Place:

Germany, Bad Wildungen, Germany, Bad Wildungen, Germany, Bad Wildungen, Germany, Bad Wildungen (Germany), and Germany

Subject Topic:

Teachers, Foreign, Teaching, Military post schools, American, World War, 1939-1945, Destruction and pillage, and Social conditions

Subject Name:

Van Wert, Grace and 1909-2006

Subject Genre:

Interviews and Interviews

Language:

English

Rights:

In Copyright

URL:

https://n2t.net/ark:/85335/m5d42s