The Nazi Officer's Wife
Edith Hahn was an outspoken young woman studying law in Vienna when the Gestapo forced her and her mother into a ghetto, issuing them papers branded with a 'J' for 'Juden' (Jew). Edith was then sent to a labour camp, only to return home to find that her mother had been deported to Auschwitz.
Edith tore the yellow star from her clothing and went underground, becoming a 'U-boat' – a Jew passing as an Aryan. She fled to Munich, armed with her Gentile friend Christl's identity papers. There, with the new name of Grete Denner, she met Werner Vetter, a Nazi party member.
In this edited extract, which takes place in late 1942, Edith's relationship with Werner becomes serious, and this raises vital questions about her safety and, ultimately, her survival ...
Edith Hahn as a young
girl.
There in Frau Gerl's front hall was a telegram from Werner, saying that he was arriving in Munich in the morning and simply had to see me. It's amazing to consider these turns of fate. If I had stayed three days in Vienna, I would not have returned in time to receive that telegram. But by chance I did – by chance.
A proposal
Early the next morning, I went to Munich to meet Werner. In the train
station, I took my hat off, fearing that he would not recognise me in
my winter clothes. But he spotted me instantly. He shouted a greeting,
scooped me up in his arms, showered me with kisses and sat me down for
breakfast in the café at the House of German Art.
'I decided on my way to work yesterday that I had to have you,' he said, kneading my hand.
'What?'
'That's right. It has to be. You must be my wife.'
'What?'
'So I took time off from work by telling the boss at Arado that my mother's house in the Rhineland had been bombed and I had to go and make sure she was all right.'
'Werner! You can go to prison for that! False excuses! Absenteeism!'
'But they believed me. Look at this face.' He grinned. 'This is a face you must believe. So, when will you marry me?'
'We're in the middle of a war! People shouldn't get married in wartime.'
'I am madly in love with you! You do not leave my thoughts for one minute. I sit in the bathtub, I think of you, and the water begins to boil.'
'Oh, Werner, stop that ...'
'I want to meet your father. I will go to Vienna to meet him. He will think I am wonderful, you'll see.'
A lie
My mind was racing. I had thought to spend a day with a charming man,
bandaging my wounded ego. I had never dreamed of this! What was I going
to do? Werner was ready to jump on the train to Vienna and ask my father
for my hand in marriage. Where was I going to get a father?
'Now, please, slow down. This is not rational. We have known each other only a few days.'
'For me, this is enough. I am a man of action.'
'But why didn't you write to me? Why did you endanger yourself by lying to the company?'
He leaned back in his chair, sighed and hung his head. 'Because I felt guilty. Because I told you a lie about being a bachelor. I'm married and in the middle of a divorce, that's the truth, and my little niece Bärbl that I spoke of – well, she is really my daughter Bärbl. So I thought that since I had not been honest with you at first, now I must see you in person, face to face, to tell you the truth. I love you, Grete. You are my inspiration. Come and live with me in Brandenburg, and as soon as the divorce comes through, we can get married.'
My coffee sloshed on to the table because my trembling hand could not control the cup. I was terrified. He wanted me to meet his brother Robert and his sister- in-law Gertrude and the famous Tante Paula; he wanted to introduce me to his friends; it was endless.
Werner Vetter before the war.
A bathtub, a sofa and a Volkswagen
We went into the museum. He pressed me and pressed me as we walked
past those huge Nazi paintings and friezes ... portraits of Hitler and
Göring, skies full of fire and eagles, grim-faced soldiers with steel
helmets, Arno Breker's stone god-men with their Parthenon stances, waving
their mighty swords.
Werner didn't even look at them. He was holding my hand and talking into my ear, telling me what a nice flat he had and what a good job he had and how happy he would make me. 'Think of the bathtub! Think of the sofa! Think of the Volkswagen I am buying for us both!'
It went on and on for hours.
'The world is too unsettled,' I protested. 'What if you are sent to the front and killed in battle?'
Werner laughed heartily. 'They'll never send me to the front! I'm half blind!'
'What if the Red Cross hospital is bombed and I am killed?'
'What if they send you to another hospital and some soldier sees you and falls in love with you as I have done, and I lose you? It would be unbearable! I would not be able to go on living!'
'Oh, Werner, stop that ...'
Father and mother
'Tell me about your father.'
He was a dedicated Jew, and if he knew I was even walking through a museum with the likes of you, he would kill me and then have another heart attack himself and die again.
'Tell me about your mother.'
She is in Poland, where your vile Führer has sent her.
'Tell me about your sisters.'
They are in Palestine, fighting with the British to destroy your army, may God help them.
'Your uncles, your aunts, your cousins, your old boyfriends.'
Gone. Maybe dead. So deep in hiding from your Nazi plague that they might as well be dead.
'I love you. I must have you.'
No, no, leave me alone. Go away. I have too many people to protect. Christl. Frau Doktor. Pepi. You.
'You!' I cried. 'I cannot be involved with you!'
Rassenschande, the scandal of racial mixing – a crime.
'Why not? My God, Grete, are you promised to someone else? Did you steal my heart and not tell me? How can this be?'
A confession
He looked hurt, destroyed by the idea that I might not want him. I
recognised his pain because I had felt it myself. I threw my arms around
him and whispered violently into his ear:
'I cannot marry you because I am Jewish! My papers are false! My picture is in the files of the Gestapo in Vienna!'
Werner stopped in his tracks. He held me away from him at arm's length. I dangled in his hands. His face turned hard. His eyes narrowed. His mouth tightened.
'Why, you little liar,' he said. 'You had me completely fooled.'
He looked as grim and determined as one of the SS men in Krause's painting.
Idiot, I thought. You have signed your own death warrant. I waited for the sword of Breker's god-man to fall. I imagined my blood spreading on the marble floor, the horrific pounding on Christl's door.
'So, now we are even,' Werner said. 'I lied to you about being divorced, and you lied to me about being an Aryan. Let's call it square and get married.' He cradled me in his arms and kissed me.
A good cook
I think I must have become a bit hysterical then.
'You are a madman! We cannot be together. They will discover us.'
'How? Are you going to tell someone else besides me about your true identity?'
'Stop joking, Werner. This is serious. Maybe you don't understand somehow, but they could imprison you for being with me. They will kill me and my friends and send you to one of their terrible camps. Why aren't you afraid? You must be afraid!'
He laughed. I was imagining him at the end of a Nazi rope, like the Frenchman who had taken up with a Jewish girl from the Arbeitslager [labour camp], and he was laughing and carrying me into a room full of golden landscapes.
To this day, I cannot understand what made Werner Vetter so brave when his countrymen were so craven ...
He stopped in an alcove next to a bust of Hitler.
'Do you cook everything as well as that cake you sent me for my birthday?'
I swear it was the spirit of my mama, appearing like an angel whenever I needed domestic advice, who must have told me to say yes.
Of course, it was a bald-faced lie. To understand Werner Vetter, remember that it was perfectly possible for me to tell him that I was Jewish in Germany at the height of Nazi power, but it was essential for me to lie about being a good cook.
Hausfrau
'Go back to Brandenburg,' I whispered. 'Forget about this whole
thing. I will not hold you to any promise.'
He went back to Brandenburg, but he did not think it over. He had made up his mind, you see, and when Werner did that, there was no stopping him.
You ask me whether I thought he would denounce me, whether the Gestapo would come knocking on Frau Gerl's door. I did not think that. I trusted Werner. For the life of me, I do not know why. Maybe it was because I really had no choice.
He sent me several telegrams saying that he had arranged for me to come and stay with the wife of a friend of his ... She had an extra room and would take me in until his divorce was final.
I was afraid to receive any more of these ardent telegrams, afraid that they might bring me to the attention of the SS. I was afraid that my Red Cross assignment, when it came, would send me out to the territories in Poland, where I would need a national identity card which I could not possibly get. I was afraid that, if I stayed in Frau Gerl's house, the Gestapo would begin to wonder who I was. After all, she had an anti-Nazi record.
Edith Hahn and her daughter Angela.
I thought that, if I went with Werner, I would be better hidden: a little Hausfrau in a kitchen living with a member of the Nazi party who worked for the company that made the planes which were dropping the bombs on London. A man with clearances. A trusted man who would never be challenged. Of course, to be this man's wife was a better disguise than being single ...
Edith Hahn Beer divorced Werner Vetter in 1947, and eventually went to live in Israel. She has recently moved to London, where she lives with her daughter Angela, who is believed to be the only Jew born (in 1944) in a Reich hospital.
Find out more
She just wanted to stay alive
http://edition.cnn.com/books/reviews/
9911/16/nazi.officer/index.html
A review of The Nazi Officer's Wife, on the CNN website.
Edith Hahn Beer reflects
www.tiara.clara.co.uk/acjr/acjrnl00.htm
This short article, published in the newsletter of the Association
of Children of Jewish Refugees, was written as a response to the trial
involving the Holocaust denier, David Irving.
Secrets revealed
www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/people/
highlights/edith.shtml
The story of Edith Hahn Beer, including her life after the war. You
can also listen to part of an interview she gave to the BBC World Service.
