| Title | : | The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 068817776X |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780688177768 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 305 |
| Publication | : | First published September 22, 1999 |
| Awards | : | Audie Award Biography/Memoir (2004) |
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,
The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust Reviews
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I have read a good number of books about the holocaust and most of them were novels. I keep reading them because they are gut wrenching and they keep reminding me that it's important for us to acknowledge and remember what happened in those concentration and death camps . Reading a memoir like this one, only reminds me all the more how horrific this history was and that this happened to real people.
This book is not about the concentration or death camps but it is about the courage and determination of one woman who survived the holocaust as yes - a Nazi Officer's wife. Because she didn't go to the camps did not mean that Edith didn't experience horrific conditions, go hungry, or did not suffer physically or mentally. She did. She was sent from Vienna when the Nazis took over to work as a slave laborer on a farm, then at a box factory. With bleeding hands, little food and despicable living conditions, and only the hope of packages and letters from home, she manages to survive.
Then right in the middle of the Nazis, she is defiant, brave, smart, and afraid as she finds ways to make them believe that she is one of them. I also loved knowing about the people who helped her. It restores my faith in humanity to know of these people who risked their lives to save another human being, who happened to be Jewish.
It is so well written that it almost doesn't feel like a memoir, which can sometimes feel just like a reiteration of events and dates. This is the story of an amazing woman whose strength and resilience saved her life as well as her daughter’s. I love that her daughter convinced her to tell her story, otherwise we would not have known about this remarkable woman. I am glad that we can remember her.
"We said "Heil Hitler. In my soul's fastness, I prayed: Let the beast Hitler be destroyed. Let The Americans and the RAF bomb the Nazis to dust. Let the German Army freeze at Stalingrad. Let me not be forgotten here. Let Someone remember who I really am." -
NO SPOILERS!!
This is a four star book. Recently another GR friend rated this with three stars, and to be honest, I was flabbergasted. "HOW CAN YOU NOT BE MOVED BY THIS BOOK?" zinged through my head?! I will try and explain without giving spoilers. First of all, if you are the kind of person, like me, that highly values straight talk, and talk that does not shy away from ANY subject - sex, love, cruelty, motherhood, lying, corruption, guilt and survival - then this is a book for you. Edith will say "Now remember this....." to jolt you. She will say "Now maybe you are questioning how I could ....." and then she explains so clearly and so succinctly that what before seemed strange is know dazzingly obvious. The fantastic prose hits you from the first page. Then as you get to know Edith/Grete you are drawn into her moral dilemas, the choices she made. When I picked up this book, honestly, I had a completely different view of Edith. I was a bit disgusted at the thought of a Jewish woman who survived the holocaust by marrying a Nazi officer..... I thought she was self-centered. Well, she isn't. Not at all. She is a wonderful, kind person who suffered terribly during the war. Terribly. She never lost her integrity. Never. You get completely the wrong idea of Edith by reading that title. The title IS perfect, but you have to read the book to understand. This book is about people and how we all react differently when shit hits the fan. You come to empathize with Chrstl, Elisabeth, Pepi, Werner, Doctor Maria Nierderall, Klothilde, and I shouldn't stop here b/c the list goes on and on. Not all of these people acted admirably, but what they did you come to understand. That is why I used the word empathy! This book focuses on how people behave and why they behave as they do, not delivered as a lecture, but simply by throwing a spotlight on them. This is a book about the holocaust, but don't think it is devoid of humor. I promise you, people are just so unbelievably funny! What they come up with is utterly amaing and absurdly funny and wonderful! Another very interesting issue is what Edith did with her education as a lawyer/ judge. How it meandered AFTER the war. To tell you would be a spoiler, but it is a very interesting point. How other Jews and Germans have reacted to Edith after the war is also revealing. I could go on and on. Instead - read the book.
Through page 153: Most people do not have the courage to be kind. Most often kindness doesn't demand courage, but sometimes it does; and then who is strong enough, brave enough to jeopardize their own security for another human being? Such people are to be found on BOTH sides of any conflict. In this case, some were Nazis others were gentiles and others Jews. Finally, someone, a complete stranger, a Nazi, reaches out and helps Edith - with explicit, exact instructions, devoid of emotion.
"He turned away. The interview was over. I had never listened so hard to anything in my life. Every word was printed on my mind."
"He did not wish me luck. He did not ask for money. He did not say good-bye. I never saw him again."
"He saved my life."
With these words you see how this author expresses herself in telling her story.
Through page 147: I like this book very much. Look at Edith's chin on the front cover. Look at her eyes. Her chin shows her relentless will to get through this mess. Her eves hold something back. Her strength is visible, but it is at the same time cautious. She is back in Vienna and alone. In all senses. She doesn't know where she can sleep or where she will get her next meal. People who were close to her are gone. And those who remain, like her boyfriend? Well read her tale. I have noted many sections that I should quote, but it is terribly difficult to pick just one. They show that she is a person like all the rest of us simply trying to get through this mess, at the same time retaining an ounce of integrity. This book shows how many different people behave when put in a "tight spot". Or should I say when stamped on? Each behaves differently, some better than others, but the focus is on each idividual behavior. Unpretentious writing from start to finish. You can relate to her thoughts and experiences
Through page 23: I love this, absolutely love this book. Why? Well it is all in the ability of the author to write anchanting prose. Very simple, very down-to-earth and with humor. The following lines are from page 9:
"have you heard that the Russians are cannibals? Have you heard that they eat their young?"
"Yes, sir."
"And do you believe that?"
I took a chance. "Some people do, sir. But I think if the russians ate their babies, there would not be so many Russians as there apparently are."
He Laughed. He had warm humorous and a gentle manner. He even reminded me a little of my grandfather.....
This is a memoir about a Jewish woman who survived WW2. How? By being the wife of a Nazi officer!
Before starting: I Will return to reading about Armenia, but first this since Maude and I want to read a book together. :0) So many have siad this must be read. And I always love memoirs. -
What makes this memoir of an Austrian Jewish woman relentlessly moving is the attention to detail, the sharp incisive nature of Hahn’s observations. These eloquently described details bring the narrative vividly to life. The title is slightly misleading and hints perhaps at a cinematic melodrama which does this book a disservice. Her husband was a painter, blind in one eye and thus spent most of the war working as a kind of foreman in a paint factory. Only when the Nazis were on the verge of defeat and desperate was he conscripted and made an officer. He is essentially a good man, not at all synonymous with the term Nazi Officer.
She does a brilliant job of portraying the constant terrors of being trapped in a world where you are being hunted. Most poignantly of all she gets us to understand that everyone almost always has the choice of being kind or unkind, no matter what the circumstances. True, to show kindness often takes courage but Hahn shows us that courage is no less a part of our humanity than charity. It’s essentially an incredibly gripping and moving story of kindness and unkindness. And as Hahn points out –“It was the individuals who made their own rules in many situations. No one forced them to act in an unkind manner. The opportunity to act decently towards us was always available to them. Only the tiniest number of them ever used it.”
Wholeheartedly recommended. -
This is an incredible, true story. That doesn't give it a free pass as a book. To put it plainly, it is badly written. In fact it is not written at all, the spoken interview was committed directly to publishing. "I knew a girl. Her name was so-and-so. She had red hair. I liked her brother a lot." The red-haired girl is then never mentioned again while the brother only pops up again, and is finally named, fifty pages later. We all talk like this. But this is not how written text works. The book should have been edited by a professional. Like many autobiographies, this one makes assumptions about what the interesting bits are, and runs out of steam at the end. I would have liked to know a lot more about Fred Beer, Edith's postwar husband, and the fifty years between WWII and the writing of this book. Does Fred really rate just three sentences? Can half a lifetime reflecting on the aftermath of wartime experience, or trying to forget it, be captured in a short epilogue? All that is not to say you should not read this book. You should, if only to get a first-person account of what it was like to be inside Germany in WWII. That world is increasingly becoming a foreign country to us, and the genocides since then suggest that we have learnt nothing.
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I found this to be a fascinating book, I could hardly put it down. I found the fact that a highly educated woman successfully played an uneducated woman. How difficult it much have been not to accidently just say something or use words above her station in life. She lived day to day with the fear of being caught and sent to a concentration camp. Edith only had one examination to take to receive her J. D. degree in law with extra training as a judge.
She arrived to take the last examination and was refused admittance and removed from the university because she was a Jew, from that moment on her life was in a downward turmoil. She was sent off to a labor camp for Jews doing hard physical labor in the fields. Before this she had never worked physically in her life. On a trip, back to Vienna she took the star off her coat, slipped away as she left the train and passed as an Aryan. She got papers from a catholic friend and moved to Munich where she worked as a nurse’s aide at a Red Cross Hospital. The only job she could get that did not check her papers against the National Registry was the Red Cross. She did not want to get her friend in trouble so she had to stay out of sight. She married Werner Vetter a Nazi Party member. She had a daughter which made her a popular woman with the Nazis. Werner was captured on the Eastern Front by the Russians and sent to Siberia.
The book is well written and the description of daily life under the Nazis was interesting. All of Edith’s paper are at the Holocaust Memorial in Washington, D. C. She resides in Israel. It was her daughter that pushed her to tell her story. The book is 330 pages long. I read this as an e-book on my Kindle app for my iPad. -
The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust was a most important memoir as told by Holocaust survivor Edith Hahn Beer. She purposely buried her story for many years, not wanting to relive the past nor to burden younger generations with her sad memories. However, her daughter Angela urged her to tell her story. In 1997, she sold her archive of wartime letters, pictures and documents to Sotheby's where it was bought by two philanthropists who donated it all to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. The Hahn family lived in Vienna, where Edith was well-educated and almost out of law school when she was forced by the occupying forces into a ghetto and on to a labor camp where she became separated from her mother. What follows is a tragic but compelling story as we see how Edith is forced underground, eventually able to forge a new identity, and live in Germany. It is a gripping, frightening and tragic tale, while at the same time, giving us all hope in the resilience of the human spirit.
"That's all it takes, you see--a moment of kindness. Someone who is sweet and understanding, who seems to be sent there like an angel on the road to get you through the nightmare."
"I simply retreated down, down, down, trying to live in imitation of the German writer Erich Kastner, whom I always admired and who responded to the Nazi years with what was called 'internal emigration.' The soul withdrew to a rational silence. The body remained there in the madness."
"My baby lay on a blanket, laughing and cooing, wriggling with happiness as I nuzzled her little belly. And meanwhile the bombs smashed into the city over the horizon, the sky flashed with orange and black waves of death, the antiaircraft cannons roared. The earth beneath her shook and trembled--and Angela kicked her legs and laughed. She kept me sane. She made me smile in the presence of death. She was my miracle. As long as I had her, I felt that any miracle could happen, that all of the world could be saved."
"What you see is a mask of calm and civility. Inside, always, forever, I am still weeping." -
Het verhaal van een Joodse vrouw die op haar manier de oorlog probeert te overleven. Ze wordt een tijd te werk gesteld in Aschersleben, dat ik ken uit de verhalen van mijn vader die daar als krijgsgevangene heeft gewerkt. De Joodse werkers gaan op transport naar Polen en worden vervangen door dwangarbeiders uit de bezette landen.
Het lukt haar om dat lot te ontlopen door zich voor te doen als niet-Joods en onder de radar te blijven (als een U-boot). Indrukwekkend. -
Wow, what an incredible story.
I think reading and listening the stories of Jewish survivors of WWII is more important today than ever. It seems to me that so many people have forgotten the horror people suffered during this time and just how truly evil the world can be. Ignorant people so casually dismiss what people lived through during the war that's it's scary and to me is a signal that history is going to repeat itself. It's so important to remember and not let these scars on human history fade to time.
This book was well written and structured. I couldn't put it down. It is an amazing story of courage, survival, and HOPE even at the darkest of times. So many people in Edith Hahn's life, including herself, spoke of hope and how one day everything would be okay again. It got them through the darkest era in history and it's so inspiring. Hope is the key to survival.
While this book covers such terrible darkness, it is also a testament to human kindness and generosity. I am so glad I read this book and that I got hear Edith's story. What a brave and amazing woman. Please read this book. -
This felt like a conversation with the author, between only the two of us. I loved it. I loved how easy it read in that way. Stories as personal as this are some of my favorites and this is right near the top.
The photos the author included are astounding, some of the words can even be made out. The reader can actually see, although I couldn't read it, the letter her husband had smuggled to her from a Siberian prisoner when he was a POW.
I think the biggest thing for me was how clear she made what her life was like. Most Holocaust readers "know" what life was like in the camps, even what life was like hidden in fields, forests, barns, someone's hidden room. But this may have been my first memoir about a person hiding out in the open.
I loved one part when, after the war she went back to get her papers changed and she met the same man who had given her papers saying she was "deutschblutig" (German-blooded). He was highly offended about the fact that she had lied to him.
There is testament after testament to the honor with which this woman lived/lives. She became a judge after the war which is where she had been headed before the war and before the Nazi's put a stop to it. She was offered, no, pushed, to judge Nazi cases - and she refused. How does one do that? I'd have accepted and punished them with everything I had. I can't imagine being so honest, so duty bound, that I would refuse. I have an immense respect for this woman.
Edith's daughter was born during the war and the way her husband acted on his return was hideous. Apparently the "Jewish blood" was stronger and overruled the "German blood". This makes no sense to me because weren't the Germans superior? Wouldn't that made this the other way around? Not to fit their crazy schemes. He had wanted a son - I wonder if it would have been the same? Would the sons Jewish blood had overridden the German? What a pity some people have these thoughts and feelings.
I can't count all of the times when I felt such sympathy for the author and as I kept reading realized she didn't need it. She has to be one of the strongest women to have ever lived.
She lived a remarkable life and we all owe her and her daughter a debt of gratitude that she's written it down for us to learn. -
Found on the history clearance cart at our local HPB, The Nazi Officer’s Wife was a surprise, weaving itself into the heart of my WW2 studies. Author Edith Hahn Beer’s personal story of survival remained untold for almost 50 years until encouragement from her daughter, born in a Nazi Germany hospital, inspired her to share the memories she’d long lived in silence with: “I did not discuss my life as a “U-boat,” a fugitive from the Gestapo living under a false identity beneath the surface of society in Nazi Germany, but preferred to forget as much as possible and not to burden younger generations with sad memories.”
Edith grew up in a moderately well off secular Jewish family in Vienna, Austria. Her father died before the Nazi invasion, leaving Edith’s beautiful mother to support 3 daughters via her dressmaking talent. A beautiful young woman herself, Edith studied law at the University of Vienna, and fancied herself in love with a young socialist who was himself saved from the Holocaust by his Catholic mother. Until the Nazi’s absorbed Austria, a dream of socialist utopia was the political movement of the youth of Edith’s day, allowing Hitler to capitalize with his vision of National Socialism. Most intriguing and fascinating about Edith’s history is the way in which she reveals to us day-to-day Nazi Germany from the perspective of citizen and Jew simultaneously. Her's is a tale of courage, of stamina, of forbearance and fortitude, of the adaptability of the human spirit in order to survive. Edith projects a human face into my reading of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Her experiences are the cry of the clarion calling us to be ever vigilant in promoting liberty throughout the world and defending America’s freedoms here at home.
Edith died just last year, March 2009, but her legacy lives on at the United States Holocaust Museum.
http://www.ushmm.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Ha... -
I have always been interested in books and stories from the Nazi era. Not because I find the topic entertaining - but because I believe it is important to understand the atrocities that existed. History tends to repeat itself - I think we need to do all that we can to avoid making mistakes that have been made in the past and this moment in history should never ever happen again. I had no clue what this story would be like but I wanted to read about the Nazi side of the events - how did things get so far out of control - or under control of Hitler. This book provides at least an understanding as to just how such a thing could happen. Not every German supported Hitler but not many stood in opposition. There was almost as much fear under Hitler as there was for those that were threatened by Hitler. The book also delves into some events after the war - did the winners really win and did the losers really lose? So many questions.
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My doctor wants to know why this year I have taken to reading books about the Holocaust.
I don't know. It's not the time period I'm usually interested in. I much prefer the Tudors. Yet, when I taught
Anne Frank The Diary of a Young Girl earlier this year, I did some more reading, and haven't stopped for whatever reason.
Maybe it is because I'm P*ssed off at the Holocaust deniers. I don't know.
I picked this book up at an used bookstore. It is a different perspective on the Holocaust.
Yeah, I know the sentence doesn't sound right, but I don't know how else to say it. Much of what gets published, or seems to get published, deals with people surviving in hiding or surviving the camps. When in hiding, the people are always locked away somewhere. Think Anne Frank or
The Book Thief, for instance.
Mrs Beer hid, but she hid in plain sight. She was incredibly brave and, at times, incredibly naive.
Smart and lucky too.
Honest, when she writes, it seems.
What she does best is capture the area between good and evil. The book is not the romance that the back cover of my copy sells. This is good. I think I would have thrown up if it was. Beer's Nazi Officer doesn't turn her in, but it isn't a fairy tale happy ever after ending. It is unclear why exactly he helps her, perhaps because she would, out of necessity, be the perfect wife, perhaps he loved, and perhaps it is a combination of the three. The reasons for Beer's marrying him remind somewhat unspoken. At the point, there really wasn't much more she could do. She was running out of choices, and her previous boyfriend hadn't really helped her as much as he could (perhaps).
At times, it seems as if Beer is tooting her own horn a bit too much, for instance when she describes herself as the one who cheered everyone up at a work camp farm. Doesn't everyone, however, make themselves the hero and center of their own stories? Doesn't everyone edit their memories just a bit?
An interesting book, simply because it shows great detail of a society and of people. It shows humanity, at its best and worst. -
Every German or Austrian and every Jew must read this book. Everybody else will also gain from reading it because "The Nazi Officer's Wife" tells about human nature more than tens of other fictional or non-fictional books. If this were a fictional story, it would have lacked credibility, but life is stranger than fiction, and this memoir is a perfect proof for the wisdom of this staple cliche.
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I thought it would be a case of Stockholm Syndrome, but was pleasantly surprised. The author grew up in Vienna in the 1930s and while many of her family members saw the writing on the wall and managed to flee before the Nazi area closed itself, Edith and her mother remained for various reasons. The title is slightly misleading as the author does not really meet her husband until halfway through the book. Nevertheless, it's a very interesting memoir of how a Jewish girl managed to survive in Nazi Germany by acting her way through the regime's duration.
The writing is adequate and the despair she felt at some points came through the words. The tone is very conversational as if the author is narrating to you rather than writing a book, which might put people off. But having read a lot of memoirs, I think this is written much better than most.
The book takes us through her father's death (natural) at the very beginning of the Nazi rule and then takes us through her years as a slave labourer in an asparagus farm, her work in a paper factory, her relationship with Pepi and its demise, her going on the run to avoid going to Poland, meeting her Nazi husband and finally, freedom! Her husband was a complex man who not only married her and helped her but helped her friends as well and took delight in lying to the regime, but at the same time also believed in some of their propaganda against the Jews.
My favourite part of the book was when the author goes back to the registration centre to get her real name back and meets the same guy who checked her 'Aryan' antecedents and she told him she was Jewish. Oh, how his face must have looked. Brilliant! -
It's always difficult to review an autobiography or memoir, and The Nazi Officer's Wife is no exception. It's Edith's life, after all. This was fascinating in terms of historical context, describing the survival of a Jewish woman during the Holocaust via a way that I'd never even considered: she married a Nazi officer.
But the vernacular style is sloppy. I'd heard this was adapted directly from a spoken interview - and it shows. . The account was strangely detached and not as vivid as I had hoped. Despite the horrific events described, I found it difficult to feel.
However, I greatly admire Edith Hahn Beer for reliving what must have been a truly harrowing and traumatic time. Her story is brilliantly candid and enlightening. -
3.5 stars - It was really good.
An incredible story, but the memoir is written much like a spoken interview which could be detracting at times.
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Favorite Quote: 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.
First Sentence: After a while, there were no more onions. -
Edith Hahn Beer’s memoir of her life prior to and during World War II in Austria and Germany. The book starts before the war and covers her decision to remain in Austria as well as events that led to her marriage to a Nazi. As conditions for European Jews worsened, and with assistance from others, she made the decision to “hide in plain sight.” This is a riveting story of identity, fear, courage, guilt, and redemption. It provides another slice of history, depicting the personal impact of the Nazi regime. It shows the lengths to which a person needed to go to survive. At times, it seemed she was almost apologizing for what she decided to do to escape Nazi persecution, but who can blame her? The tone of this book is one of candor. She does not shy away from addressing difficult subjects. I felt like I was sitting down with the author and listening to her tell me her story. Recommended to those interested in the history of World War II, especially personal experiences of that time period.
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There is a bounty of harrowing tales of both suffering and survival of the Holocaust available to readers. These are impossible to emotionally avoid and each and every one is compelling and heartbreaking. One of these tales is that of Edith Hahn, whom as a Viennese Jew, evaded deportation, survived labor camps, took on a false identity, and even eventually married a Nazi party member. Along with the help of Susan Dworkin, Edith Hahn Beer tells her story in, “The Nazi Officer’s Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust”.
The title of Hahn-Beer’s memoir is somewhat of a misnomer as it begets a reader to believe that much of the work will be a high-drama reflection of a Jewish woman married to a Nazi more reasonably conceived for a Hollywood film than real life. However, little of “The Nazi Officer’s Wife” is actually spent on this. Hahn-Beer’s memoir forgoes an elaborate introduction into her person or childhood and basically dives into the time of WWII and the Holocaust. Although comparable to eschewing small talk; it also makes Hahn-Beer less accessible and the reader can’t fully grasp her.
“The Nazi Officer’s Wife” describes Edith’s experiences with the beginning of the war, her time labor camps, and of the relations with family members and lovers. The text certainly sweeps the reader away creating a strong, illustrative environment that begs for attention at the expense of any other tasks that may need completed. Hahn-Beer’s story is fascinating and although the writing isn’t a masterpiece; it is the content that is mind-blowing.
The tone of the memoir is relaxed and somewhat conversational making it feel like one is sitting with Hahn-Beer and having a conversation about her life. However, there is a noticeable holding back of emotions on Hahn-Beer’s part. “The Nazi Officer’s Wife” forgoes a deep emotional spectrum or insight into Hahn-Beer’s thoughts and is more of a recall of events. This makes psychological sense as survivors of severe trauma often put up walls and tend to suppress any horrible feelings. Although understandable, it results in a missing element from the reading.
Some of Hahn-Beer’s memories should be taken with a grain of salt as the text includes verbatim conversations and events in which she always happens to be at the right place at the right time. Despite these possible flaws, “The Nazi Officer’s Wife” goes deeper than simply telling Hahn-Beer’s story by also truly emphasizing the Holocaust, itself. It is not unusual for the reader to become teary-eyed at the intense displays of love, hate, and drive to survive that so many people went through. It is mind-blowing and adds substance to “The Nazi Officer’s Wife”.
It isn’t until more than half-way through that Hahn-Beer eventually marries the Nazi officer. Sadly, once again, a true insight into her feelings is ignored for a more macro-view of the events. Furthermore, the nature of the experience is contrary to the click-bait of the book’s subtitle making it seem like Hahn-Beer married a Nazi officer merely to survive. The reality is that Edith told him she was Jewish before they married and he wasn’t wholly anti-semantic so she wasn’t in fear of him; even having a decent marriage (and a child)until it unraveled when he became a prisoner of war. So, although this is still a very intriguing story; it isn’t as dramatic as advertised.
It isn’t until the conclusion that Edith finally breaks down some of her emotional shrouds. “The Nazi Officer’s Wife” ends on a strong note and encourages reflection from the reader.
“The Nazi Officer’s Wife” includes a section of black-and-wife photos and documents from Edith’s life which is now on display at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC.
Edith Hahn-Beer’s memoir is naturally a moving, compelling, amazing piece (despite) its flaws that is suggested for all readers who have compassion for human kind and history. “The Nazi Officer’s Wife” is a rather quick read and therefore has no regrets on the time spent. A truly stirring memoir, “The Nazi Officer’s Wife” is not to be ignored. -
I was thrilled and horrified by this book. I've read several accounts of Nazi-occupied Germany, of the camps that were the eventual end of thousands of innocent men, women and children, and of the occasional survivor, who was able - using luck, brains and skill - to forge a new life for themselves with a false identity, but this is the first I've read that was told in such a direct voice.
Edith was one of the more lucky ones. She was fortunate enough to find a way to escape both her ghetto and the labor camp that she was forced into, and was able to procure a false identity, sneak her way into Munich, and start a new life.
That would have been harrowing enough, but as if living under an assumed identity in a hostile country isn't enough, she meets and is swept into a romantic relationship with a Nazi Officer. He pursues her relentlessly, convinced he wants to marry her, and she, in her distress, admits her identity and secret to him. He calls her names, but doesn't turn her in (astonishingly good luck for her, as she was essentially handing her death papers to him and begging him to sign them), and agrees to keep her secret during their marriage.
So now, poor Edith is living a lie, married to a man who makes a living eliminating her people, and is trapped by questions of other Nazi officers, wanting to know about her parents and her family. She even opts for natural childbirth - no drugs to help ease her pain - because she's sure that she'll say something telling to the nurses while in the grip of the drugs.
What's more amazing, though, is that Ms. Beer managed to save documents and photographs that, if confiscated, would have meant her life. Even after her children were born, knowing the danger, she still kept these items hidden, hoping for a time when it wouldn't be necessary to lie about herself or hide her documents.
This was written with amazing directness, and the reader could feel Ms. Beer's fear, uncertainty, disgust and eventual relief from start to finish. -
This is a different holocaust story.
Edith Hahn was not in concentration camps, ghettos, or fought with the partisans.
She was a forced laborer worker, went underground and managed to get fake papers. She got involved with a Nazi party member and married him and even had a child with him.
The story is good, It was interesting for me to read a story of the war that happened in Germany. From the stage she got her papers, she did not go hungry and had a comfortable life (compared to the vast majority of the Jews and even compared to most Germans).
One point that touched me was that after the war she went to visit a camp where she met Jews that survived the war through camps . They did not believe she was a Jew (because she did not looked starved and broken) and when she told them that she saved herself by marrying a German they called her a bitch and spat at her. As readers of the book, we identify with her but for the Jewish refugees, she is a collaborator with the enemy. This reminded me of a few friends of my father who were holocaust survivors and some, survivors from Schindler’s list. I am not sure of the exact story but at the time, 50 years after, they still hated one woman because they claimed that she got on the list by sleeping with someone or bribing him (or both). For me and for my father who knew this woman and liked her, it sounded very strange.
The part in the book that described her life from the fall of Germany until she left to England in 1948 was interesting too. -
Sehr ergreifende und fesselnde Geschichte. Die Spannung war ab der ersten Seite vorhanden und zog sich durch das ganze Buch. Das Ende war so schockierend und traurig. Der Schreibstil hat mir sehr gefallen.
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Baseado em facto verídicos este livro retrata a vida de uma judia que tudo faz para sobreviver durante a segunda guerra mundial.
Para quem gosta de ler sobre este período e tem receio daquelas descrições mais gráficas, esta pode ser a escolha certa -
Wow - what a story!
Edith Hahn is brave beyond belief, surviving a horrific period of history.
She was a young Jewish woman living in Vienna when she was taken by the Gestapo and delivered to a ghetto, eventually ending up in a slave labor camp. Many months later, having survived all of that, she returns home, knowing she is simply a sitting duck and will be hunted and taken, and most likely murdered. She goes underground, changes her name, and ends up in Munich. All of this was complished with the help of a friend who happened to be Christian. Now Grete Denner, she lives in constant, near-paralyzing fear that her secret will be uncovered and she will be marched off to a death camp. Nazi Werner Vetter meets Grete and falls deeply in love with her. Their relationship takes off and he wants to marry Grete. She makes the incredible decision to tell Werner the truth of her name and lineage. Miraculously, he loves her so much, he keeps her true identity a secret, and they marry. Eventually, Grete becomes pregnant. She refuses any pain control during childbirth, fearing she might accidentally say something about being Jewish or who her parents were. This book includes copies of photos Edith took while she was in the slave labor camps. It's not an easy story to hear, but it's a very important one. Edith is an extremely brave woman who stepped forth and told the world the truth about the labor camps. -
The title is somewhat sensational. This is the story of a Jewish woman during WWII who spent time in work camps, then was able to adopt a false identity with the help of a friend, and ended up married to a man who was then drafted into Nazi officer service late in the war (he knew about her real identity before they married). Still, as the story develops, it is a fascinating read. A&E aired a special documentary on this story which I watched a few years ago. The book goes into much more detail than the documentary did. More importantly, the author writes as though she is talking to you ("...you see, that is what the people were being told..."), so you really understand not just the facts, but the motivations of people's actions at the time. This is probably the best depiction I have read regarding how average non-Jewish people managed to look the other way and live with themselves during the Holocaust.
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What an unusual, heart wrenching, incredible story. The author lived through hell, nearly died several times while doing slave labor, lucked out with friends who helped her change her identity, married a Nazi because he seemed to be a decent man, had a child, had the child baptized a Christian after the war in hopes her husband would accept a child with “Jewish blood”, was abused by the Nazi after he was sent to a prison camp in Siberia and then returned home, had her job yanked away by the Russians after the war ended, was oppressed by the communists, and managed to get to England when no one was allowed to travel. This is a breathtaking story of survival. Thank you, Mrs Beer, for having the courage to tell it. You were a beautiful person.
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When I first read about The Nazi Officer's Wife, I thought the premise seemed totally unplausible. Nevertheless, my Goodreads friend Chrissie convinced me to read the book. Once I started it, I was unable to put it down. Even after everything that's been said about the Holocaust, living in Skokie which has a large concentration of survivors, and going to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, this story had something new to teach me. I never knew that there were people who hid in plain sight in Germany and Austria by finding new identification papers and becoming a new persona. How she does it is a very compelling story and well worth reading.
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Most people have heard of Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl who lived through most of WWII in an annex, hidden away from the world for a few years before being turned in and sentenced to her death in a concentration camp.
The question I had to ask myself after finishing "The Nazi Officer's Wife..." was, 'How have I not heard of this book before?' Why is it not on any reading list that I was given in my high school classes?
This book is a fantastic and beautiful story of a Jewish woman living through WWII in the heart of Germany. It gives you a sense of what happened to those Jews who went underground during that time and managed to maintain their façade until the end of the war.
Edith Hahn sees her sisters sent away. Her mother disappears while she is toiling first as a farm girl and then as a factory girl for the Germans. She receives little money, is malnourished and abused, but manages to stay alive and keeps the hope through the entire war that she will one day see her mother and family again.
After finishing her term as a farmer and factory worker, she returns back to her home town to find most of the Jews gone and her formers friends unwilling to take her in at the personal cost it may incur. She wanders from house to house, staying only for a night, until she happens to find herself beginning a relationship with a German Nazi.
The story introduces us to an aspect of WWII that is spoken about very much: collaborators. In The Netherlands and France when the war ended, the women who had carried on liaisons with Germans for whatever reasons were punished quite severely. In Germany the situation was different. Edith emerges at the end of the war relatively unscathed (especially compared to the sad plight of her people) and finds herself in a strange position, working with the Russian communists and being able to acknowledge her background and culture without having to be afraid of death.
After reading this book, the overwhelming feeling I experienced was a sense of the savagery and idiocy of human nature, especially with regards to the politics of WWII. The Germans allowed Hitler to take over their country and inundate them with propaganda because they were angry at the way they had been treated post WWI. The Russians raped German women and stole German children because of the cruelty that had been exacted on them by the Germans during the same time period. Hatred begets hatred, revenge more revenge, and that becomes very clear in this succinct yet poetic biography.
Hahn does a masterful job of expressing herself without being too wordy or descriptive. Her feelings are easy to understand and grab hold of, her characters is empathetic and admirable, her novel a sobering read. I would highly recommend this book if you are interested in that time period; I would highly recommend this book if you have never read anything about the Holocaust or the "Jewish Solution".
I found myself reading with bated breath at the end of the book, wishing that Hahn would find her mother and reunite with her family. My only minor complaint with the novel was the fact that it barely spent any time on her life reunited with her sisters, but that is understandable considering the general aim of the novel.
While hatred causes more hatred and terrible acts, learning and remembering can only teach us this history lesson over and over again:
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." ~Edmund Burke
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8 de 10*
Toda e qualquer guerra representa uma atrocidade, afectando civis inocentes (infelizmente, basta ver o telejornal, para se assistir a esta triste realidade). A Segunda Guerra Mundial teve a particularidade de ter como interveniente Adolf Hitler, o que a tornou ainda mais atroz e desumana.
Os relatos de sobreviventes do Holocausto são inúmeros e, hoje em dia, já é possível ter uma noção da dimensão da tragédia. Já li vários livros sobre o tema pelo que as leituras que faço actualmente sobre o Holocausto, embora me continuem a incomodar de igual maneira, já não me surpreendem.
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Excellent true story of the lengths some had to go through in order to stay alive in Nazi Germany. This woman's life was one of heroism, fear, and accomplishment. Who could condem such a woman for doing all she could to protect herself and eventually her child? This book certainly gave a new perspective on the intrepid ability of a Jewish woman to stay alive and survive the Holocaust.