Edith Hahn Beer

I have read several books about the Holocaust. They're all very interesting. They have different stories that explained how they survived despite the odds. What they have in common are the terrible things they had to endure.

One of these books I own is completely different. It's about a young Jewish woman who survived the Holocaust by being married to a Nazi Officer. She had to be very careful and very lucky to keep her past a secret. It's a very interesting story. I recommend it.

Amazon: "The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust" by Edith Hahn Beer

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Edith Hahn was an outspoken young woman in Vienna when the Gestapo forced her into a ghetto and then into a slave labor camp. When she returned home months later, she knew she would become a hunted woman and went underground. With the help of a Christian friend, she emerged in Munich as Grete Denner. There she met Werner Vetter, a Nazi Party member who fell in love with her. Despite Edith's protests and even her eventual confession that she was Jewish, he married her and kept her identity a secret.

In wrenching detail, Edith recalls a life of constant, almost paralyzing fear. She tells how German officials casually questioned the lineage of her parents; how during childbirth she refused all painkillers, afraid that in an altered state of mind she might reveal something of her past; and how, after her husband was captured by the Soviets, she was bombed out of her house and had to hide while drunken Russian soldiers raped women on the street.

Despite the risk it posed to her life, Edith created a remarkable record of survival. She saved every document, as well as photographs she took inside labor camps. Now part of the permanent collection at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., these hundreds of documents, several of which are included in this volume, form the fabric of a gripping new chapter in the history of the Holocaust—complex, troubling, and ultimately triumphant.

Wikipedia: Edith Hahn Beer

Edith Hahn Beer
Born January 24, 1914
Died March 17, 2009 (aged 95)

Edith Hahn Beer (January 24, 1914 – March 17, 2009) was an Austrian Jewish woman who survived the Holocaust by hiding her Jewish identity and marrying a Nazi officer.

Life

Early life and education

Hahn was one of three daughters born to Klothilde and Leopold Hahn. Her parents owned and ran a restaurant. In June 1936, Leopold died while working at a hotel as the restaurant manager in the Alps.

Although it was uncommon for a girl of that time to attend high school, Hahn's professor persuaded Leopold to send his daughter. After graduating, Hahn continued her studies at university and was studying law at the time of the Anschluss, when she was forced to leave the university because she was Jewish.^[2]

World War II

In 1939, Hahn and her mother were sent to the Jewish ghetto in Vienna. They were separated in April 1941, when Hahn was sent to an asparagus plantation in Osterburg, Germany and then to the Bestehorn box factory in Aschersleben. Her mother had been deported to Poland two weeks before Hahn was able to return to Vienna, in 1942.^[2] With duplicate copies of the identity papers of a Christian friend, Christa Denner, Hahn went to Munich.^[3]

In Munich, Hahn met Werner Vetter, a Nazi party member who sought her hand in marriage, and volunteered as a German Red Cross nurse. The couple lived together in Brandenburg an der Havel, married, and had a daughter, Angelika, born in 1944.^[4]

Vetter, whose blindness in one eye had initially exempted him from military service, was ultimately drafted as a Nazi officer. He was captured as a prisoner-of-war and sent to a Siberian labour camp in March 1945.^[5]

Later life

Following the war, Hahn used her long-hidden Jewish identity card to reclaim her true identity. The Allies' need for jurists called her law education into use, and she was appointed as a judge in Brandenburg. Hahn pleaded with the Soviet occupation authorities to free Vetter, and he was released in 1947, but their marriage ended shortly afterward. Vetter died in 2002.^[1]

Pressed by the authorities to work as an informer, Hahn fled with her daughter to London, where her sisters had settled after seeking refuge in Palestine at the onset of the war. In London, Hahn worked as a housemaid and a corset designer.^[1]

In 1957, she married Fred Beer, a Jewish jewelry merchant, and they remained married until his death in 1984.^[2] After Beer's death, Hahn emigrated to Israel and lived in Netanya until returning to London, where she lived for the last few years of her life. She died in London, in 2009.^[6]

Archive

In December 1997, a collection of Hahn's personal papers was sold at auction for $169,250. The collection, known as the Edith Hahn Archive, was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.^[7]

Works[edit]

• Hahn Beer, Edith & Dworkin, Susan (1999). The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust. Little, Brown & Company.