Abstract
Born in 1939, Hertha Hetzel grew up in Bavaria and immigrated to the United States in 1952 when she was twelve years old. Her father had been a prisoner of war in England and he had two maternal uncles in Cleveland, who sponsored her family to live in the U.S. She lived in a single, crowded apartment. Hetzel did not know English, so she was placed in school as a kindergartner despite having been in the sixth grade in Germany. She relates how she attended the German Festival in Cleveland where she saw the Schuhplattlers perform and felt reconnected to her village in Bavaria. She joined the organization and played the zither, which she had learned to play at the age of nine. She attended West Tech High School before working at Pittsburgh Plate Glass for several years as a translator. After taking a break to raise her children, she worked as a secretary for a tool and die shop.
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Interviewee
Hetzel, Hertha (interviewee)
Interviewer
Parcham, Deborah (interviewer)
Project
Cleveland German-American Oral History Project
Date
8-27-2021
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
37 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Hertha Hetzel interview, 27 August 2021" (2021). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 195010.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1254
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
