Soon after we arrived in Buffalo, I joined the Women´s International League for Peace and Freedom (“WILPF”), which since its founding during the First World War has worked for peace and international understanding. At that time we were mainly concerned about the Vietnam War. I was vice president and then president of the Buffalo branch. But often, when I was driving home after a meeting, I asked myself if we had accomplished anything. The answer was no. I asked myself if it had at least been a stimulating evening among friends. Again the answer was negative. The most vocal members seemed to consider arguments normal. I knew that it would have been better if I had spent the evening with the children, although they were reaching an age when they no longer were very interested in their mothers company. There was one member who was convinced that one of us was an agent of the FBI, and gradually I came to realize that she meant me. On the other hand, I did meet one of my best friends there, Halina Kantor. Halina had escaped from Poland as a child and later lived with her husband at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. Because of the Vietnam War she moved to Toronto with her husband and children. Then there was, and still is, Miriam Becker, who still in her high eighties is very devoted to causes of peace and social justice.
Gradually I found out that in WILPF sympathies for the Soviet Union and its foreign policy interests predominated. After I returned from my first trip to Czechoslovakia in 1966, I listened to a report by a WILPF member about the country. She had not had the opportunity that I had to be in touch with people there, and so saw everything very differently and was enthusiastic about the achievements of socialism.
Some further experiences led me to lose interest in the organization. During the seventies, we were repeatedly asked to make donations for the followers of Salvador Allende who were persecuted by Chilean general Augusto Pinochet. When I suggested to the head office in Philadelphia that they also support the dissidents in Czechoslovakia, I was told that WILPF was not interested in being another organization of Red-baiters.
Source: Wilma and Georg Iggers, Two Lives in Uncertain Times, New York: Berghahn Books, 2006, p. 118f