She escaped from Vienna under a changed name, starting a new life in the heart of the Third Reich. A relationship with a member of the NSDAP gave her peace of mind. But is it safe when every lapse can make the difference between life and death?
Edith Hahn was a young, independent law student when the Gestapo imprisoned her and her mother in the Vienna Ghetto and issued them with documents marked with the letter "J". Soon after, Edith was taken to a labor camp. Though she managed to get the Nazi officials to spare her mother when she returned home, she found out that her mother had been deported.
Edith stripped the yellow stars off her clothes and went underground, although she knew that she was doing her best to the fate of the wanted man. She fed on what she could find, looking for a safe place to stay every night. Her boyfriend, Pepi, was too scared to help her, but a Christian friend found enough courage: gave Edith her own documents, which allowed her to get to Munich . There she met a member of the Nazi Party, Werner Vetter, who fell in love with her. Though she protested, although she eventually confessed to him that she was Jewish, Werner married her and kept her identity a secret.
Edith recalls her life filled with everlasting, paralyzing fear in great detail. It tells about German officials who casually asked about her parents' origins; about how, when giving birth to a daughter, she refused to take painkillers, because she was afraid that she would lose her clarity of reasoning and reveal her past; about how her husband was captured by the Russians and ended up in Siberia, and she and her daughter, after the bombing of their home, had to hide in a closet, while drunk Red Army men raped women in the streets .
The article was inspired by the book by Edith Hahn-Beer "The Nazi's Wife. How a certain Jewish woman survived the Holocaust ” (Napoleon V 2019).
Contrary to the threat this posed to her life, Edith Hahn created an unparalleled record of her survival history: she saved all true and false documents, letters from lost love, Pepie, and even photos she managed to take in labor camps .
Hundreds of documents on display at the Holocaust Museum in Washington compose a truly heroic story - it is a complicated and thought-provoking story. Victory story.
EDITH HAHN BEER divorced her first husband in 1947. He lives in Netanya, Israel. Her daughter is probably the only Jewish child born in a hospital in the Third Reich in 1944.
SUSAN DWORKIN is a novelist and playwright. She received a Peabody Award for her work for television. She was also nominated for the National Book Award. Her works were published by:"Ms.", "Ladies' Home Journal" and other publishing houses. He lives in New Jersey.
Buy the book cheaper on Empik's website
