The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived The Holocaust [Hardcover]

Edith H. Beer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 22, 1999

Edith Hahn was an outspoken young woman studying law in Vienna when the Gestapo forced Edith and her mother into a ghetto, issuing them papers branded with a "J." Soon, Edith was taken away to a labor camp, and though she convinced Nazi officials to spare her mother, when she returned home, her mother had been deported. Knowing she would become a hunted woman, Edith tore the yellow star from her clothing and went underground, scavenging for food and searching each night for a safe place to sleep. Her boyfriend, Pepi, proved too terrified to help her, but a Christian friend was not: With the woman's identity papers in hand, Edith 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 vivid, wrenching detail, 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 her past; and of how, after her husband was captured by the Russians and sent to Siberia, Edith was bombed out of her house and had to hide in a closet with her daughter while drunken Russians soldiers raped women on the street.

Yet despite the risk it posed to her life, Edith Hahn created a remarkable collective record of survival: She saved every set of real and falsified papers, letters she received from her lost love, Pepi, and photographs she managed to take inside labor camps.

On exhibit at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., these hundreds of documents form the fabric of an epic story--complex, troubling, and ultimately triumphant.Edith Hahn was an outspoken young woman studying law in Vienna when the Gestapo forced Edith and her mother into a ghetto, issuing them papers branded with a "J." Soon, Edith was taken away to a labor camp, and though she convinced Nazi officials to spare her mother, when she returned home, her mother had been deported. Knowing she would become a hunted woman, Edith tore the yellow star from her clothing and went underground, scavenging for food and searching each night for a safe place to sleep. Her boyfriend, Pepi, proved too terrified to help her, but a Christian friend was not: With the woman's identity papers in hand, Edith 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 vivid, wrenching detail, 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 her past; and of how, after her husband was captured by the Russians and sent to Siberia, Edith was bombed out of her house and had to hide in a closet with her daughter while drunken Russians soldiers raped women on the street.

Yet despite the risk it posed to her life, Edith Hahn created a remarkable collective record of survival: She saved every set of real and falsified papers, letters she received from her lost love, Pepi, and photographs she managed to take inside labor camps.

On exhibit at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., these hundreds of documents form the fabric of an epic story--complex, troubling, and ultimately triumphant.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Born to a middle-class, nonobservant Jewish family, Beer was a popular teenager and successful law student when the Nazis moved into Austria. In a well-written narrative that reads like a novel, she relates the escalating fear and humiliating indignities she and others endured, as well as the anti-Semitism of friends and neighbors. Using all their resources, her family bribed officials for exit visas for her two sisters, but Edith and her mother remained, due to lack of money and Edith's desire to be near her half-Jewish boyfriend, Pepi. Eventually, Edith was deported to work in a labor camp in Germany. Anxious about her mother, she obtained permission to return to Vienna, only to learn that her mother was gone. In despair, Edith tore off her yellow star and went underground. Pepi, himself a fugitive, distanced himself from her. A Christian friend gave Edith her own identity papers, and Edith fled to Munich, where she met andAdespite her confession to him that she was JewishAmarried Werner Vetter, a Nazi party member. Submerging her Jewish identity at home and at work, Edith lived in constant fear, even refusing anesthetic in labor to avoid inadvertently revealing the truth about her past. She successfully maintained the facade of a loyal German hausfrau until the war ended. Her story is important both as a personal testament and as an inspiring example of perseverance in the face of terrible adversity. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

A well-written, tense, and intimate Holocaust memoir by an author with a remarkable war experience. Young Beer (ne Hahn) was a promising Viennese Jewish law student until the German Anschluss annexing Austria made her circle stop its laughing (``Hitler is a joke. He will soon disappear''). She was a Christmas-tree Jew with a Gentile boyfriend (dreaming of a socialist paradise), but Zionist siblings (who escape to Palestine), and the deadly follow-ups to the Nuremberg Laws send Beer into an underground existence as a ``U-boat'' in Aryan Germany. Beer took on an Austrian friend's documents and identity, got employed with the Munich Red Cross, and dated soldiers for the meals and covermarrying one Nazi, Werner Vetter, with a good job and expertise in art. She admitted her Jewishness to him but lived outwardly as a normal Hausfrau. Beer talked her husband into pregnancy, even though under Nazi rule their baby would be considered Jewish. The baby was a girl, making Werner furious``a Nazi who made a religion of twisted, primitive virility,'' Hahn comments. The losing Reich drafted the one-eyed Werner, made him an officer, and shipped him to Russia. The Nazi officer's wife discovered the Holocaust from forbidden BBC broadcasts and so learned the fate of family and friends. After the Russians conquered and burned her neighborhood, Beer retrieved her old identity papers and diploma, and this illegal fugitive was eventually transformed into a feared judge. Some embittered Jewish survivors cursed her for the way she survived the war, but Beer was still fearful enough to baptize her daughter. A returned Werner rejected the independent Edith who had replaced his servile Grete, so Beer divorced him in 1947, left the oppressive Russians, and emigrated to England, then, in 1987, to Israel. This engaging book goes deeper than psychologizing on the (Patty) Hearst Syndrome in explaining how the survival instinct allows one to sleep with the enemy. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1ST edition (September 22, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 068816689X
• ISBN-13: 978-0688166892
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (91 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #391,091 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #71 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Historical > Holocaust

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An unusual and controversial Holocaust memoir., March 31, 2002

By 

E. Bukowsky "booklover10" (NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust (Paperback)

In "The Nazi Officer's Wife," Edith Hahn describes how she grew up with her parents and sisters in Vienna in the 1920's. Vienna in those days was a magical, picturesque and sophisticated place. This lovely city was filled with sunny cafés, cultural activities and daring intellectuals. Although the undercurrents of anti-Semitism were present in Vienna even then, Jews and gentiles coexisted side by side in peace.

In 1938, Edith's world was turned upside down. The German army marched into Austria; the Austrians voted for "Anschluss" or union with Germany. After the Nazis took over, everything changed for Edith and her family. German thugs ruled the streets and laws were passed which tightened the noose around Jewish necks day by day. Some members of Edith's family escaped Austria before conditions deteriorated any further. Edith remained in Austria and was sent to do forced labor at a farm and later at a work camp.

How did Edith ultimately avoid deportation? With the help of some friends, she obtained forged papers declaring her to be an Aryan of pure blood. At the age of twenty-eight, she married a Nazi party member named Werner Vetter and spent the war years in Brandenburg, Germany, as a dutiful "Aryan" wife and mother.

How could any woman live such a lie? Although Edith at times hated herself for her deception, she felt that her actions were justifiable under the circumstances. Is Edith Hahn's story an honest and courageous tale of survival against all odds, or is it the memoir of a cowardly woman who sold out in order to save herself? Each reader answer this difficult question for himself.

43 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An astounding account of terrible times, May 10, 2000

By 

Vikram Srinivasan "Vikram Srinivasan" (Portland OR) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived The Holocaust (Hardcover)

I'm an 18-year old college student in India.My father had been to London recently where he ran into Ms.Angela at Harrods.Although,it was a chance meeting for him,it was a god-sent gift for me.She encouraged him to read a copy of "The Nazi Officer's Wife" written by her mother,Edith Hahn Beer.Although I must admit that war novels never interested me before,I was proven wrong by this one.

Once I started reading the book,I just couldnt put it down.Here is a simple,straightforward account of a Jewsih woman whose faith in her religion and her strength never let her down inspite of the horrendous perils that she had to face every minute of her life during the World War period.When I try to understand the pain in her heart when she was refused her University Degree,when she had to leave her Mother for the Asparagus fields,when she had nobody to turn to after her relationship with her boyfriend was heading no where,when she had to put on an endless charade amidst the core of the Nazi society,when she had to rely on God's mercy to keep her Jewish identity a secret,when she had to work as a maid in London after being an honoured Judge in Germany.....what can i say,its just unimaginable that this woman managed to survive through all this on her own.

There are so many lessons that this book has taught me.I can never stop admiring Edith Hahn Beer for her unshakeable faith that tomorrow is a better day.One of the most beautiful things I found in this book was the French saying "Life is beautiful and it begins tomorrow".It is so true that very few of us bother to realise its meaning!

And of course,how can I forget to mention how moved I was by this woman's love for her Mother.Her belief that she would be reunited someday with her Mother,her pangs of grief when "she sent me cake when she was hungry,mittens when she was cold"...and her resolution to do the same for her daughter(by trying to provide her the family which she herself never had around her)....these things go a long way in bringing out human emotions in their most tender and vulnerable forms.One cannot help but think inwardly what else one could have done under such terrible circumstances.

No doubt Ms.Beer's decisions were justified in every sense and they were ably supported by her virtues which we should all aspire to inculcate.

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fascinating and Well-Told Holocaust Memoir, October 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived The Holocaust (Hardcover)

Just when I thought I had read and seen everything I'd ever want about the Holocaust (and then some), I found myself fascinated by this book. Quite frankly, reading about somebody's true experience suddenly makes a story like "Life is Beautiful" seem shallow and unnecessary. (Truth being stranger, and more compelling, than even well-intended fiction.) In some ways it's the details of real everyday life -- the food rations, the clandestine radio listening, the casual comments of neighbors -- that make the book come alive. Plus, the clarity of the storytelling (it reads like a novel but maintains the right dose of sobriety and dignity) simply transports you into Edith Hahn's world. It's a must-read for anyone who wants to feel knowledgeable about the Holocaust.