Edith Hahn. The Nazi Officer’s Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust. Rob Weisbach: New York, 1999. 305 pp. ISBN 0-688-16689-X.

Beyond the day-to-day struggle for life in concentration camps, and beyond the brutality of ghetto life and Nazi pogroms in Eastern Europe, survival took a variety of forms. Some Jews survived in larger cities and lived by their wits.

Edith Hahn, born in Vienna in 1914 into a fairly affluent Jewish family, was a young law student when, following Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938, her idyllic world of music, learning, art, and civility began to disappear.

In The Nazi Officer’s Wife, Hahn describes the gradual dehumanization of the Austrian Jews and presents a chilling social portrait of Fascism. On April 10, 1938 over ninety percent of Austrians voted for the Anschluss, the annexation that would make Austria part of the Third Reich. When this was accomplished, Jews were forced to turn in all radio sets and typewriters for redistribution to Christians. Those who wished to emigrate were charged exorbitant fees and often had to choose which family member could leave. They were forbidden to attend movies or concerts, use parks, or travel by public transportation. Non-Jews were warned not to patronize Jewish businesses and not to seek help from Jewish doctors or other Jewish professionals. These restrictions eventually robbed Jews of every shred of humanity, save the right to live; and before long, even this was denied them.

Edith Hahn looked forward to completing her legal degree after five years of study; and in April of 1938 she was prepared to take her final examination for a doctoral degree. A smug clerk returned her transcripts and other school documents, and told her she could no longer remain, thus ending forever her aspirations for a legal career.

A greater shock soon followed—selection, at gunpoint, for an agricultural work detail in Germany. But weeks of backbreaking toil harvesting asparagus and beets could not break Hahn’s spirit. Nevertheless, Hahn always believed she would soon return to her family. She was next sent to do slave labor at the H.C. Bestehorn paper factory in Aschersleben, where Jewish workers wore yellow Stars of David on their dresses.

When Hahn returned to Vienna for “relocation” in the East, she went underground instead. She was able to do so with an identity card stolen from a stranger on her way to Vienna. With her falsified identity, and after discarding the yellow Star of David, Hahn began her struggle for survival.

She spent a few days in the country with a friend’s Nazi uncle, sleeping in a room adorned with a portrait of Hitler. Then she moved from one safe house to another—always one step ahead of her captors. Often, she spent time in public bathhouses, sitting in a cinema, or simply walking the streets in desperation. One of her contacts steered her to a Nazi official who could be trusted to help her obtain a Sippenbuch [a document proving her “racial purity” for at least three generations]. Christl Denner Beran, a friend with impeccable “Aryan” credentials, pretended to have lost her identity card. The authorities replaced it, and the extra card enabled Hahn to assume an Aryan identity. In 1942 Hahn fled to Munich. For her act of courage, Denner Beran later received a medal for heroism and was allowed to plant her own tree in the Garden of the Righteous Gentiles at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

It was at a Munich art gallery that the fugitive Edith Hahn met Werner Vetter, a German art lover who oversaw foreign workers in the painting department of an aircraft company. In spite of her ever-present fears of detection, she was attracted to him. Nevertheless, she censored her every action toward him, knowing that she was a stranger in a strange and dangerous land. Hahn describes this period in her life as an internal emigration, where, “The soul withdrew to a rational silence. The body remained there in the madness.”

Vetter insisted that Hahn marry him, though he was already married. He vowed to get a divorce. He was so insistent that Hahn, in a moment of weakness, blurted out the words that could surely condemn her to death: “I cannot marry you because I am Jewish! My papers are false! My picture is in the files of the Gestapo in Vienna!” He noted that they were now “even”: since each had lied to the other, there should be no further excuses. He got divorced; they became engaged; and they eventually married.

Hahn was a typical housewife; but now she had to hone her survival tactics on two fronts: the outside world and the home front. Vetter, an ardent Hitlerite, for some inexplicable reason loved her. Still, Hahn knew that unless she deferred to his mania for control, and kept him placated, she could be denounced at any time. Werner Vetter, the egotistical, frustrated artist, had a distaste for authority, lied to excess, and was often on an emotional roller coaster. Hahn was never able to drop her guard, even at home. Vetter was like a violent time bomb, ready to explode. Although he helped some of her Jewish friends establish false identities, his actions could never be predicted with any degree of reliability.

Hahn’s terror increased when she learned she was pregnant. Frightened that she might reveal her identity under anesthesia, Hahn refused any painkillers during the delivery of her daughter. Vetter berated her for giving birth to a daughter instead of a son, and then apologized; but it was clear that he could never accept his child of “mixed blood.”

Hahn paints a descriptive portrait of Nazi Germany’s fall, as her husband was sent to the Russian front and captured. She became an attorney and, later, a judge in a district family court, pulling strings to get Vetter released from Russian captivity. Hahn’s judgeship was too much for Vetter’s enormous ego to endure. His resentment of her success led to physical and emotional violence and, finally, divorce. While he was often an enigma, Vetter could never be construed to be a savior—their relationship only increased Hahn’s uncertainty and fear. In 1957, she married Fred Beer, also a Viennese Jew.

The Nazi Officer’s Wife depicts a vivid social history of Austria and Germany under Fascism; but more importantly, it describes one woman’s struggle for survival and is well worth reading. It took Edith Hahn Beer over fifty years to tell her story. She knew she had to relate her experiences, for “the dead have no voice and cannot scream.”

Kay Stone–Center for HGPS Board Member