The Nazi Officer's Wife

I have mostly read novels and only a couple of nonfiction books about WWII but this might be the first memoir. It doesn't really talk about concentration camps and atrocities committed on the prisoners but about the human side of the survivors and people who helped them on the way.

Edith is from a loving Jewish family in Vienna studying to be a lawyer. When the Nazi's come, she is denied her degree, forced out of her home into a ghetto and finally sent to labor camp. She works almost eighty hour work weeks while starving and her only hope being the letters and packages that she received from her mom and Pepi. After her mother is deported to Poland, she refuses to report to the authorities and after managing to secure false papers, moves to Munich. There she meets a Nazi party member Werner who falls in love with her and they get married.

There were some comments about Edith's life that demeaned her for surviving as a German Nazi wife. But that's the whole point of this book. In times of war, when living is the only matter of concern, is it really worth it to judge a woman for setting up a false identity and surviving under the enemy's nose. Edith is a smart, intelligent woman who is deprived of everything – her education, dignity, a future, even basic food and shelter – and when all doors close for her freedom, she chooses the one way that she finds. She lives in constant fear of being caught, every minute of her existence, but still manages to carve out a life and family for herself. She suppresses her witty intelligent personality to become a meek submissive wife of a Nazi because all she wants is to live; because that's the only thing she has left. Finally, when the occupation ends, she gets a chance to resume her true identity, even become a lawyer and judge to help the people who have lost everything in the war.

But this book is not just about Edith. It's about all the people who chose to help her. Her friend Christl, a German who gave Edith her original papers at great peril to herself. Maria Niedarall, another German who provided her all the encouragement and resources to escape. Pepi, her eternal love whose letters provided her great relief and hope during the whole ordeal before her escape. Even Werner in some ways helps her because despite being his aggressive self and knowing Edith's truth, he never betrays her.

This book is about humanity – how seemingly good people can turn their backs on friends for personal safety and well-being while at the same time, people from unexpected quarters risk their lives to help their fellow citizens. I think this book is a must read for anyone who thinks living in wartime and surviving is a black and white. Because it is most definitely not.

An Austrian Jewish woman survives the Holocaust by marrying a member of the Nazi party. When she meets him, he is initially a high-ranking factory official, but by the end of the war, when everyone is pressed into active duty, he is an officer within the party. And the kicker? He knows she's Jewish. Totally made up, right? Wrong. That is the actual story of Edith Hahn Beer.

The Shoah has, understandably, sparked a lot of significant literature. The Diary of Anne Frank. Night. Sophie's Choice. Why this incredible memoir hasn't been included in the canon is beyond me, honestly. It was (like almost all of my Kindle books) a sale selection, the title promising a fascinating tale although memoirs aren't an especial favorite of mine. And it's been one of the few books I've read recently that I literally couldn't put down.

One of the upsides of the Kindle is its portability. And I have the Kindle app on my phone, although I hardly use it usually. Not here. I was reading on my eight-minute walk to work. I was reading in the bathroom. I was reading every spare second I could grab. Beer's writing voice feels like a story your aunt or grandma is telling you...it's immediate, it grabs you and doesn't let you go. From the moment that she's sent to her first work camp assignment, missing her mother's departure for the ghetto, to her friend's bravery in giving Edith her identification documents (which the friend then reported as “missing”) so that Edith, unable to draw rations on her false ID, will at least be able to try to find work, to her first meeting with her future husband Werner, to her refusal to have any pain medication during the birth of their child so that she won't spill her desperate secret, all of it is incredibly compelling and although we know she survives her experience because she wrote a book about it, we can't help but eagerly turn pages to see how it plays out. Basically I was completely swept away and never wanted it to end and recommend it to anyone who enjoys a well-told story.

This is a must-read for the frightening comparisons that can be made between 1930s Germany/Austria and our current political environment. Edith tells the story of how she could not believe that someone like Hitler, who said such outrageous lies about Jews, would really be believed and followed. She thought surely reasonable people would come to their senses. She underestimated how much otherwise good, kind, friendly people who had been neighbors for years would turn against her family when it meant they could basically take all of her family's belongings for free/low cost. Then, to justify their stealing from others, they bought into the arguments that the Jews had first stolen from them, that other nationalities were inferior to their own and should be slaves, etc. Scary stuff. This is the amazing story of one woman, her survival, and the people who courageously helped along the way as well as those who used the opportunity to take advantage of others to enrich themselves ... at least temporarily.