Edith Hahn, a law student in Vienna, faced the horrors of the Nazi regime when the Gestapo forced her and her mother into a ghetto, marking their papers with a "J." After being taken to a labor camp, she managed to convince officials to spare her mother, but upon returning home, she found her mother had been deported. Realizing she was now a hunted woman, Edith removed her yellow star and went underground, struggling for food and safety each night. Her boyfriend, Pepi, was too frightened to assist her, but a Christian friend provided identity papers, allowing her to escape to Munich. There, she met Werner Vetter, a Nazi party member who fell in love with her. Despite her protests and eventual confession of her Jewish identity, he married her and kept her secret. Edith recounts her life filled with fear, detailing encounters with German officials questioning her lineage, her refusal of painkillers during childbirth to protect her secret, and the harrowing experience of hiding with her daughter while Russian soldiers ravaged the streets. Throughout her ordeal, Edith meticulously preserved her survival records, including real and falsified papers, letters from Pepi, and photographs from labor camps. These documents, now exhibited at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., weave a complex and ultimately triumphant narrative of resilience.
Susan Dworkin Books
Susan Dworkin is an author who writes for everyone, tackling diverse genres with compelling narratives. Her work includes historical dramas, such as co-authoring the bestseller The Nazi Officer's Wife, which delves into themes of love, terror, and courage in Hitler's Germany. She also explores science fiction, as seen in her novel The Commons, set in a future where humanity battles starvation. Dworkin's keen insight into filmmaking is evident in Making Tootsie, an intimate look at the creation of a classic comedy.
Eine Liebesgeschichte vor dem Hintergrund einer Zeit, in der die Menschen sich - mit tödlicher Konsequenz - entscheiden mussten: für Liebe oder Verrat, Freundschaft oder Feigheit, Hilfsbereitschaft oder Gleichgültigkeit. Edith Hahn Beers Lebensgeschichte lässt uns einmal mehr verstehen, was Leben 1933-1945 in Deutschland bedeutete.