The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust

by Edith Hahn Beer

Edith Hahn was an outspoken young woman studying law in Vienna when the Gestapo forced her and her mother into a ghetto, issuing them papers branded with a 'J'. Soon Edith was taken away to a labour camp and when she returned home after months away she found her mother had been deported. Her boyfriend, Pepi, proved too terrified to help her, but a Christian friend was not. Using the woman's identity papers, she fled to Munich. There she met Werner Vetter, a Nazi party member who fell in love with her and, despite her protests and even her eventual confession that she was Jewish, he married her and kept her identity secret. In this account, Edith recalls a life of constant, almost paralyzing fear. She tells of German officials who casually questioned the lineage of her parents; of how when giving birth to her daughter, she refused all painkillers, afraid that in an altered state of mind she might reveal something of her past; and of how, after her husband was captured by the Russian Army and sent to Siberia, Edith was bombed out of her house and had to hide at night with her daughter in a closet while drunken Russian soldiers raped women in the streets.

• ISBN10: 068816689X
• ISBN13: 9780688166892
• Publish Date: 22 September 1999
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: William Morrow & Company
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 320
• Language: English

Reviews

[gmcgregor]

An Austrian Jewish woman survives the Holocaust by marrying a member of the Nazi party. When she meets him, he is initially a high-ranking factory official, but by the end of the war, when everyone is pressed into active duty, he is an officer within the party. And the kicker? He knows she's Jewish. Totally made up, right? Wrong. That is the actual story of Edith Hahn Beer.

The Shoah has, understandably, sparked a lot of significant literature. The Diary of Anne Frank. Night. Sophie's Choice. Why this incredible memoir hasn't been included in the canon is beyond me, honestly. It was (like almost all of my Kindle books) a sale selection, the title promising a fascinating tale although memoirs aren't an especial favorite of mine. And it's been one of the few books I've read recently that I literally couldn't put down.

One of the upsides of the Kindle is its portability. And I have the Kindle app on my phone, although I hardly use it usually. Not here. I was reading on my eight-minute walk to work. I was reading in the bathroom. I was reading every spare second I could grab. Beer's writing voice feels like a story your aunt or grandma is telling you...it's immediate, it grabs you and doesn't let you go. From the moment that she's sent to her first work camp assignment, missing her mother's departure for the ghetto, to her friend's bravery in giving Edith her identification documents (which the friend then reported as "missing") so that Edith, unable to draw rations on her false ID, will at least be able to try to find work, to her first meeting with her future husband Werner, to her refusal to have any pain medication during the birth of their child so that she won't spill her desperate secret, all of it is incredibly compelling and although we know she survives her experience because she wrote a book about it, we can't help but eagerly turn pages to see how it plays out. Basically I was completely swept away and never wanted it to end and recommend it to anyone who enjoys a well-told story.