Essay on "The Nazi Officers Wife: How
one Jewish Women Survived the Holocaust"
The story of Hahn's survival is told in a
memoir she has written, The Nazi Officer's Wife, which has enough twists to make
a plot for a thriller. Time and again, her life was saved by chance and random
encounters with strangers - including Nazis - whose personal morality eclipsed
orders. Hahn is used to keeping secrets, and on a scale that is beyond the
comprehension of most. The spirited daughter of a middle-class Jewish family in
Vienna, she was transported by the Nazis as a slave laborer in 1941. Sent back
to Vienna, she was about to be deported to a death camp, but fled to Germany
under an assumed identity. There, at the height of the war, she married a Nazi
party worker. Her husband, Werner Vetter, knew her background but they never
spoke of it. Living in terror that the authorities would uncover her, she worked
for the German Red Cross under an assumed identity and swore oaths of allegiance
to Hitler. When her daughter, Angelika, was born, she found herself feted as a
fine example of the Aryan housewife, breeding for the Reich.
Trusted by over 145,000 highly satisfied students for custom essay
writing
“More than half a century after the Holocaust, the amazing individual stories
are still jarring and inspirational. In setting down her own tale of survival
-largely for her daughter's benefit-Edith Hahn Beer provides a fascinating
addition to the testimonial literature. As a young Jewish woman in Vienna, she
makes a foolish choice: missing the chance to flee Nazi-occupied Austria because
her boyfriend doesn’t' t want to leave. She winds up as a slave laborer but
adopts the identity of a Christian friend and ends up working for the Red Cross
in Munich. There a Nazi officer falls in love and marries her and, amazingly,
she gives birth to a Jewish baby in a German hospital. They divorce after the
war, and Ms. Beer settles in England before moving to Israel for her final
years. A powerful story.” (Precker, 1999)
The story of Hahn's survival is told in a memoir she has written, The Nazi
Officer's Wife, which has enough twists to make a plot for a thriller. Time and
again, her life was saved by chance and random encounters with strangers -
including Nazis - whose personal morality eclipsed orders. As a teenager growing
up in Vienna, Hahn was fascinated by philosophy and politics and, while studying
law; she read Mein Kampf and other racist tracts of the time. But life was
changing irrevocably and, as anti-Semitism spread, the humiliations heaped on
the Jews became impossible to dismiss. Hahn and her widowed mother were evicted
from their home and denied a radio or a telephone. Forbidden to sit her final
law exams, she was dispatched to Germany as a slave worker, first to an
asparagus plantation and later to a paper factory.
Hahn felt herself laden with the burdens of being Jewish, but without any of its
strengths: the Torah learning, the welded sense of community, the deep faith in
God. Her mother, she learnt, had been deported east; only thoughts of her
half-Jewish sweetheart, Pepi Rosenfeld, sustained her. After a year, she was
sent back to Vienna, from where she was to be deported, ostensibly to join her
mother. But on the train, she slipped her Jewish yellow star into her pocket and
escaped to meet Pepi. He was a changed man, living in the shadowy margins of the
ghetto. Fearing for his life, he refused to give her shelter or even food -
providing refuge to any fugitive, even his lover, was too great a risk.
Her fate, like that of so many, was determined by the kindness of others. Above
all, a Christian friend, Christl, helped her. The younger woman risked her life
by giving Hahn her papers, claiming to the authorities they had been lost in the
Danube. Hahn, then 28, assumed the identity of Grete, a 20-year-old, poorly
educated, nurse's aide. She went to Munich, where she joined the Red Cross.
Like the German writer Erich Kastner, who responded to the Nazi era with
internal emigration, she retreated deep into herself. Her new persona was that
of a friendly but distant girl who listened but seldom spoke. Then, one day at
an art gallery, Werner Vetter sat down beside her and struck up a flirtatious
conversation. He was a couple of years older than her and, with his silky blond
hair, bright blue eyes and thin, rather hard mouth, appeared a typical example
of Hitler's ideal Aryan man. Quiet Grete also enchanted him. After a whirlwind
courtship lasting little more than a week, he begged her to marry him. Hahn was
plunged into panic. She tried to fend him off with platitudes, saying they
couldn't marry in wartime and that she would wait for him, but he wouldn't take
no for an answer. Finally, she whispered into his ear that she was Jewish.
Vetter responded by saying that he, too, told her a lie when he said he was
single. He was in the midst of a divorce, and had a young daughter he had
pretended was his niece. As he saw it, they were quits, and she moved into his
flat in Brandeburg, outside Berlin. But Werner was a complex man, who, rather
bizarrely for a Nazi, had a problem with authority. He worked as a painting
supervisor at an aircraft factory, but if he felt like staying in bed, he would
call up his bosses with a lie about his mother's house being bombed. While she
remained calm on the outside, the daily anxieties of dealing with petty
bureaucrats, or even entering a coffee house, made her nauseous with fear.
There were some concessions she would not make. She avoided shops where she
would be required to give the Heil Hitler greeting and would not hang a picture
of Hitler in her house. Her daughter Angelika, who later called herself Angela,
was born in 1944. A year later, the war ended. After two months, she retrieved
her real papers, hidden in the binding of a book. Her law training was
officially recognized, and she was made an attorney in the new state of East
Germany and, soon after, a family law judge.
Defeated in war, Vetter had no role in the new regime and resented the fact his
meek wife had been transformed into an empowered professional. He left and was
reunited with his first wife. Heartbroken, Hahn agreed to a divorce. But further
disruption was to come. Hahn took Angela to Britain, where her sister had lived
since before the war. Here, she found work as a housemaid, and a seamstress.
Turning her back on "the charade of assimilation", she raised Angela as a Jew.
In 1957, Hahn married a Jewish jewellery merchant, Fred Beer, whose mother had
been killed in Theresienstadt. After he died, in 1984, she moved to Israel. She
kept in touch with her first husband for the sake of their daughter but he was
violent towards Angela, whom he rejected as a Jew. Hahn broke off contact with
him, but harbors no ill will.
Works Cited
Edith Hahn Beer, “The Nazi Officers Wife: How one Jewish Women Survived the
Holocaust" Harper Perennial; ISBN: 068817776X; (November 2000)
Precker, Michael Warming Words: As nights turn chilly, our book reviewers find
the perfect curling-up companions. , The Dallas Morning News, 11-27-1999, pp 1C
|
