Edith Mcclure Interview

In a Modern American History course, it is a given that one would learn about the history of the United States from an American perspective. In 1936 America we were towards the end of the depression, attempting to avoid war, and becoming familiar with Adolf Hitler. However, in 1936 Germany, Edith G. McClure was born. Recently I had the opportunity to sit down for an interview with Edith, a woman who spent the 1930s and 40s as a young child in Germany.
Born Edith Kröger, my interviewee was raised in a small country village in western Germany near Cologne. When Edith’s mother became pregnant with her, she was unmarried, so she hid her stomach in a tight corset to avoid discovery. However, after three months it became impossible to disguise the …show more content…
She described a variety of experiences from her youth: from learning to drive at 18, to meeting the skeleton-like Russian prisoner who had befriended her father. “Here comes a dead body,” she would think as she saw him approaching. Also at the age of 18, her father began to put ads in the newspaper to marry her off. She ended up escaping this situation, moving to England for six months and Paris for two years. Edith studied language, acting as a translator and working at a variety of steel companies. She migrated between Germany, France, and England. In March 1962, after eight days on a stormy boat trip and a $200 immigrant fee, Edith arrived in New York. She took a job in Dallas, TX , however she only stayed in Texas for three months due to the racism and intolerance. At this time she was engaged to a French-African diplomat, and while living in Dallas she received threats of being deported for talking to slaves. Edith ended up boarding a train to Berkeley to see friends, where she met a woman from the German Embassy who gave her a job at Kaiser Aluminium in Oakland. There she stayed, later meeting her husband and continuing life in