

Theses interviews are a part of a project titled, “From Hitler’s Europe to the Golden State” which are housed at CSU Fullerton. It is archived at the Lawrence de Graaf Center for Oral and Public History (COPH). Please use the full citations below if used in research. Jennifer’s culminating experience to receive a history masters degree was completing an oral history project at CSU, Fullerton. It was composed of six oral histories with transcription and sixty-five pages of research analysis. Her personal collection contains European women from Germany, France, and Czechoslovakia who migrated to California. Jennifer primarily observed the home life conditions during and after war.
Society typically associates wartime memories with battlefield experiences, but women endured an entirely different dimension of the war—the home front. Jennifer Keil argues oral histories reveal women faced another “home front.” Food shortages, foreign soldiers in their own homes, and constantly vulnerability to air raids transformed women’s lives. International governments reinforced traditional gender roles, encouraging women to embrace the private sphere. In postwar consumer society, mechanisms of “liberation” such as appliances appeared disguised as time-saving devices for domestic duties. Yet these objects reaffirmed old ideologies and increased the workload capability of women.

Gisela Bandurraga
Interview by Jennifer Keil, October 10, 2012, OH 5061.1, Center for Oral and Public History, California State University, Fullerton.

Gisela Bandurraga
Gisela Bandurraga, interview by Jennifer Keil, March 6, 2013, OH 5061.2, Center for Oral and Public History, California State University, Fullerton.

Michéle Cooke
Interview by Jennifer Keil, November 15, 2012, OH 5089, Center for Oral and Public History, California State University, Fullerton.

Edith Erickson
Interview by Jennifer Keil, March 27, 2013, OH 5179, Center for Oral and Public History, California State University, Fullerton

Margo Delp
Interview by Jennifer Keil, April 11, 2013, OH 5180, Center for Oral and Public History, California State University, Fullerton.

Juliane Hodjera
Interview by Jennifer Keil, May 8th, 2013, OH 5181, Center for Oral and Public History, California State University, Fullerton.