Customer Reviews

The Nazi Officer's Wife [VHS]

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An excellent documentary, with fascinating and at times devastating film footage, this is the story of Edith Hahn, a courageous woman who was also blessed with a degree of good fortune, meeting people who helped her, even among those in the Nazi Party. She took the identity of another brave young woman, Cristl Denner, who went to the authorities claiming to have lost her identification papers, enabling Edith to take the original "lost" papers, and move to Germany with them...and thus starts this incredible story of survival among the enemy. In 1985, Ms. Denner was honored at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, for her bold and humane act.

Produced and directed by Liz Garbus, written by Jack Youngelson, and with a lovely score of original music by Sheldon Mirowitz, it alternates between interviews with Edith (who is currently living in Israel, in her late eighties and looking as beautiful as she was in her youth), the story itself, which is narrated by Susan Sarandon, and portions of Edith's wonderfully written journals, read with much feeling by Julia Ormond. Ms. Ormond's considerable talent has been scarcely seen lately, and it is nice to hear her lovely voice used so well in this film.

This is a powerful account of a very unique life, with rare film clips, and still photographs of images that will stay with you; the one I will never forget is of the early days of the Nazi takeover of Austria, when the Jews were made to kneel in the streets and scrub the pavements, while bystanders watched. Edith has come through the horrors of her life with amazing fortitude, saying that "human nature is not fixed" and that she has "seen good everywhere".

If you're expecting a movie which portrays the life of Edith Hahn, you're going to be disappointed. However, if you're expecting a documentary style film, you'll be happy with the results. Edith Hahn Beer's story is of the amazing true metamorphosis of a Jewish schoolgirl into an Aryan bride in a story unlike anyone else's. She got a job at the Red Cross and lived in a boarding house outside 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. The two of them - the Nazi and his Jewish wife - lived out the war together, even bearing a child. Angela Vetter, their daughter is the only Jewish girl known to be born in a Nazi hospital. Throughout her ordeal, Edith saved every document and piece of paper issued to her, such as her Nazi identification, marriage certificate, and her daughter's birth certificate which listed both parents as "German-blooded." The film explores issues of faith, family and identity in this complex portrait of a woman who had to bury her true self in order to survive.

Edith Hahn's true story is on par with a great companion film EUROPA EUROPA.Both films explore the strange circumstances that some Jews of the 1940's Holocaust found themselves facing in order to survive such madness.Like EUROPA EUROPA,THE NAZI OFFICER'S WIFE is a film that chronicles the almost happenstance life of one Jewish woman facing danger and strange,almost "Unseen" occurances at every turn.This is a thrilling film.Edith Hahn's story also highlights the ways in which many people worked WITHIN The Nazi Party in order to save countless lives.This is a point that i
s often overlooked in many Holocaust films.

The 2007 Dutch thriller BLACK BOOK bares amazing similarities to the Edith Hahn story, and may well be based upon her exploits.

We all know about the Yad Vashem ("Hand of God") Memorial in Israel. This film gives you the reason for its name. The tragedy of the Jews in harm's way in Europe was that they were in denial, weren't riled up enough to instantly revolt (the Nazis wanted to keep everything quiet, and revolt would have derailed everything), and waited too long to try to escape to safety. Hitler spelled it out quite neatly in his Mein Kampf. Half of Germany's Jews (100,000) escaped. Those in Poland, France and Hungary were not so lucky.

What makes this a stellar documentary results from three things: the testimony of an extremely intelligent woman, who decided she was going to use her wits to survive (like Fanya Heller), -- and the Hand of God took care of the rest; the wonderful footage; and the narrations by Ormond and Sarandon. Don't ruin the story by reading the plot. Listen to Edith tell her story and rest assured that if you call out to God in your distress, He will listen. A totally amazing document, showing that there are good people even in a twisted empire of terror and evil.

Fascinating and well described account of survival during WWII. It is easy to put yourself in her place as she describes how her rights were stripped away, how her family disappeared, how she struggled to survive and wonder what would you do? How would you feel? At the same time it is unbelievable that any civilized nation could do this to a people.

What this book demonstrated particularly well was the attitude of Germans during WWII, since Edith had the opportunity to live among them. Amazing, incredible story of survival. This is the sort of book that humbles me when I attempt to review it. It is incredible the amount of documentation she was able to hold on to throughout the war and show in the book in photos. Her papers are kept at the Holocaust Museum in DC.

a documentary of one persons journey thru World War II & emerging as a survivor. Edith Hahn came from a secular Jewish, Austrian family living in Vienna. Edith was pursung her law school studies as the Nazis were descending on Austria. Her father had died earlier & her sisters seeing the danger wisely left for England. But Edith was deeply in love with a non-Jewish fellow law student. Besides, her mother was stiil in Vienna. The day after she passed all her tests she was denied a law degree & soon was arrested. Her mother, was arrested & died shortly. Edith was sent to a slave labor farm. She escaped & was now a fugitive Jew on the run. It is here that Edith runs into incredible good luck. She had many non-Jewish friends in her hometown. A friend supplies her with new idenity papers. Her own. This is of course, a capital offense & very brave act. Edith can now pass as a Aryan. But with two people having the same indentity in the same city, she must flee the country & she does, to Munich. She finds work in a hospital helping the wounded returning from the war. She goes out socially & meets an important Nazi official, Werner Vetter who quickly falls in love with her. He wants to take her home & be with him in Brantenburg, Germany. She agrees, but confesses to him that she is a Jew. He doesn't care & never betrays her. This, again, is a capital offense. As the story proceeds, we get some interesting glimpes of life in Nazi Germany before the bombing destroyed it. Soon Edith tells Werner that she wants to have a baby. It is interesting to note in other western countries at this time there is a stigma attached to having a child out of wed-lock. Not in Germany, where woman were honored for producing children for the Reich. But Werner feels a man in his position must marry, so they do. Edith enjoys a elevated position as the wife of an important official. She givres birth to a baby girl. A Jewish child that is delivered, cared for & nurtured by Nazis. Yet she does secretly hope for an eventual Allied victory. As Germany is being bombed, Werner is drafted as an officer in what is becoming a hopeless cause. The war ends & now Edith must begin a journey back to reclaiming her past. In this she is scorned by other Jews because she did not suffer as they did physically. As if it where a contest. However, the emotional toll & daily terror must have been intense on her & her daughter of being discovered. She does recalim her identity & living in the Russian sector is quickly able to secure her law degree. She becomes a judge in East Germany. Werner returns from the war, but things are not the same. The women he married is not the same. Neither is he the man. This is a fine movie that can stand on its own without a documantary label.

This book is excellent and the matching A&E video is a plus AFTER you read her story here. What a super woman Ms. Hahn was and I was so sad to hear she passed away only a couple of days after I finished reading her story. This story will mean so much to me as well as anyone else who reads it. All Jews should be extremely proud of their heritage. I'm not Jewish and I'm very proud of their wonderful human spirit. God bless Edith Hahn Beer and all Jewish holocaust victims and survivors!

The Nazi Officer's Wife is a fine documentary that tells the completely true story of the lengths to which a young Jewish woman, Edith Hahn, went to survive Nazi occupation of Austria and Nazism in Germany during World War Two. As other reviewers have noted, this is not a motion picture with actors; instead we meet and get extensive interview time with Edith Hahn, the actual woman who lived through this horror. We also get good interview footage with her daughter and a couple of surviving friends from Edith's high school years as well. The documentary moves along at a good pace; and it kept my attention every step of the way. I liked the way they handled this topic; they were very sensitive and yet they never shied away from telling the truth. Susan Sarandon and Julia Ormond narrate at times to enhance the documentary.

Edith Hahn was born in Vienna, Austria; and she lived there with her family and her Christian boyfriend Pepi when the Nazis came to power in Germany. When the Nazis invaded Austria things almost immediately became impossible for Jews: Jewish children were banned from schools and Jews were beaten up on the street simply for being Jewish. You could have been beaten up just for "looking" Jewish! Edith's father had died two years prior to the Nazi invasion; and her sisters escape to Palestine. Unfortunately, however, Edith must go to a labor camp for thirteen months and toil from four in the morning until after sunset. Edith wrote many letters to Pepi who risked his own safety just keeping the letters; and when Edith returns to Vienna in Austria after thirteen months of hard labor she gets the crushing news that her mother was deported to a "camp."

Edith realizes she may never see her mother nor her sisters again--and so, with the aid of a lady who was an early member of the Nazi party (believe it or not) and a close family Christian friend (Cristl Denner) Edith finally gets false identification papers to "prove" she's an Aryan named Greta Denner. Edith bravely travels to Munich, falls in love with a man named Werner Vetter and they marry even after she tells Werner she is secretly Jewish. After Werner is drafted he eventually gets promoted to the position of Nazi officer--and this leaves the secretly Jewish Edith, masquerading as Greta Denner, the wife of a Nazi officer.

Believe it or not, there's plenty of the story left to tell. What happens after that? Does Edith ever get to be her own self again, or did she have to remain Greta Denner to save herself from even more anti-Semitism after the war was over? What about the daughter she has with Werner--will he like having a daughter that is part-Jewish? Werner knew Greta was secretly Jewish; but a partly Jewish daughter could be very different. Will Werner and Edith even stay together after the war? Watch and find out!

The DVD comes with no extras; but with the very rare footage we get of refugee camps after the war and those incredible still photos from before the war, this is no big problem.

The Nazi Officer's Wife tells the truth about how desperate people can take desperate measures to survive in a world gone mad. I highly recommend this documentary for people studying World War Two; and people studying Jewish culture would do well to get this documentary.

The documentary is very nice but there is something wrong with the transfer, there is video noise at the very top of the screen that I found to be very distracting. Also my disc came with a few small scratches and so I missed about a minute of the program.

This is a most close to actual facts and old film records of the time. Voice overs were terrific. Well done.