The Nazi Officer’s Wife: How one Jewish Woman Survived The Holocaust by Edith Hahn Beer – 305 pages
Book Blurb:
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.
My Review: 4.5 stars
Each book that recalls the life of someone who survived the Holocaust is always a remarkably fascinating read. Of the many I’ve read, this book stands apart because the author didn’t survive from the death camps, but instead escaped by hiding in plain site. The author writes in an honest way with no holes barred. This isn’t a long book and her story is one that will keep the pages turning quickly. Human nature, both good and evil, is at the heart of this memoir and should be a reminder to everyone to be kind and tolerant. Her chronicle continues far after the war years to provide the reader with the much-needed closure to her enduring and heart-wrenching tale. The author passed away in 2009 and her personal archives, which she kept hidden for years, were sold and since donated for display at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC.
Quotes I liked:
I murdered the personality I was born with and transformed myself from a butterfly back in into a caterpillar. That night I learned to seek the shadows, to prefer silence.”
-“I think that every time you hurt somebody you care for, a crack appears in your relationship, a little weakening – and it stays there, dangerous, waiting for the next opportunity to open up and destroy everything.”
-“Something always happened, you see. A Yiddish song on Hanukkah, a British rabbi’s prayer on the radio, some kindness on a train or in the street that reminded me, no matter how far I retreated, no matter how deep into self-denial my fear drove me, that the Jews would always be my people and I would always belong to them.”
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