Book Review by Sue Averett 

The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived The Holocaust 

By Edith H. Beer and Susan Dworkin 

May God Bless Us All

 This book has been reviewed many times on Amazon.  I am not going to repeat all the details of the story.  What struck me as an American woman who in 1938 was born to my parents in a much different part of the world, I remember the war only as a child.  I remember how my dad bought war bonds, the women worked in the factories, lots of items were scarce in the stores, we had food stamps, soldiers were everywhere training and waiting to be shipped overseas to an unknown place.  And we all pulled together to win the war.  How different it is today.

I believe this story is a warning to us.  Hitler became God by taking away all the rights and freedom of the citizens while most of them stood by or actually helped.  They had every part of their lives regulated.  They were put on lists for food, clothing, jobs, and membership in the Nazi party.  They were taught racial hatred through speech propaganda and on the radio.  They were not allowed to listen to any other station on threat of imprisonment.  Their books were burned. They were questioned at will and deported to work camps or death camps depending on their ethnicity, race or the whim of the SS.  I always wondered how the people could follow such a devil.  Now I understand.

 

As in the book, we have seen our constitution eroded by politicians of both parties.  We now have accepted that our privacy rights can be violated at will, we can be forced to buy health insurance whether we want to or not, we are subject to oversight as to what medicine we are allowed to have at what age, we must register guns, and we have thousands of regulations to conform to on almost every facet of our lives.  Like in the book, I question if this "social justice" is worth the price.

 

Edith Hahn Beer was a brave and exceptional woman.  She did what she could to survive using her intelligence and the knowledge and help of a small group of relatives and friends. It was a hard story to read.  But, I ask you, please read this book as we all need to learn the terrible lessons from the past.  This is a perfect example of how quickly lives can be changed.  My parting advice is "don't put your heads in the sand."  Become informed, be analytic, look at everything and decide for yourself.  May God bless us all.

Excerpted and edited from reviews on Amazon.com

Memoirs Of A Courageous "U-Boat" Survivor, July 5, 2003

By Jana L. Perskie "ceruleana" (New York, NY USA)

Edith Hahn Beer is a Jewish woman, now living in Netanya, Israel. In 1938, pro-Nazi Vienna, she was an intelligent, inquisitive law student, with an adventurous spirit.  After the Anschluss [takeover of Austria] the German's traded exit visas for money and valuables from the Jews for their freedom.  Some families had to decide, because of a lack of funds, which of their children could leave for safer havens, and which were doomed to stay in Austria with their parents, and almost certain deportation. Edith's two sisters left the country, but she remained with her childhood friend and lover, Pepi, with the hope they would soon marry.  Her beloved Pepi, whose Jewish father had married a non-Jew, was a weak man, dominated by his mother. And the mother wanted nothing to do with Edith.

She was sent to a labor camp in the north of Germany to do backbreaking farm work, 12 hours a day, six days a week. The motto of some of the Jewish laborers was, "Life is beautiful, and it begins tomorrow." Her mother was deported to Poland while Edith was in Germany— helpless to assist or join her beloved parent. When she finally returned to Vienna, her remaining friends, Jew and Gentile, with few exceptions, were afraid to assist her. A prewar friend, who also happened to be a doctor, and a Nazi Party bureaucrat, assisted Edith, and a Gentile friend obtained copies of her own identity papers for her to use as her own. Edith writes, "Our faces will be imprinted on the hearts of those who are kind to us, like a blessing."

In 1942, she moved to Munich and went underground. Edith Hahn disappeared from the face of the earth and Grete Denner emerged to replace everything Edith had ever been. Grete was not only a new identity, she was a totally different woman; mild, meek, unassuming and uneducated—hard to pick out of a crowd. Thus began life as a "U-boat," submerged beneath the surface of society in Nazi Germany. She writes, "Now I am like Dante. I walk through hell, but I am not burning."

 Living in mortal fear, she found work as a nurse's aide for the Red Cross, and a room with a kind family. She met a handsome Aryan, Werner Vetter, who wooed her persistently. When he pressured her to marry, she finally blurted out her secret. Werner accepted her to the extent that he still wanted to marry and protect her. Mostly, he wanted to have her take care of him. But her husband never rid himself of Nazi prejudices about "Jewish blood," and resisted having a child with Edith/Grete.  She, in turn, became the passive, perfect wife Werner desired, abandoning any remaining sense of self. The ironies of her existence increased as the war progressed, and Germany's doom became obvious to almost all. Then Werner, blind in one eye, was drafted and became an officer in the Wehrmacht.  Edith/Grete became pregnant— the ideal Aryan wife, with a baby on the way and a husband at the front in Russia.

This is a powerful account of a person existing with constant fear of discovery and almost no sense of identity. The isolation was devastating.  She was living the life of a German Hausfrau, while millions of others, like her own mother, went to the camps and crematorium. This intimate narrative is simply and intelligently written.  At times it seem that truth is stranger than fiction. I highly recommend this autobiographical account of a woman's life in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. It is a story of fear, persistence and ultimately peace.