Edith Hahn was an outspoken young woman in Vienna when the Gestapo forced her into a ghetto and then into a labor camp. When she returned home months later, she knew she would become a hunted woman and went underground. With the help of a Christian friend, she emerged in Munich as Grete Denner. There she met Werner Vetter, a Nazi Party member who fell in love with her. Despite Edith's protests and even her eventual confession that she was Jewish, he married her and kept her identity a secret.
In wrenching detail, Edith recalls a life of constant, almost paralyzing fear. She tells of German officials who casually questioned the lineage of her parents; of how, when giving birth to her daughter, she refused all painkillers, afraid that in an altered state of mind she might reveal something of her past; and of how, after her husband was captured by the Soviet army, she was bombed out of her house and had to hide while drunken Russian soldiers raped women on the street.
Yet despite the risk it posed to her life, Edith created a remarkable record of survival. She saved every document and set of papers issued to her, as well as photographs she managed to take inside labor camps. Now part of the permanent collection at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., these hundreds of documents, several of which are included in this volume, form the fabric of a gripping new chapter in the history of the Holocaust -- complex, troubling, and ultimately triumphant.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
Improbable, yet True:
This Holocaust memoir was hard to put down. It tells the story of Edith Hahn, a well-educated Viennese Jewish woman who managed to survive working in a slave labor camp, avoided being deported, and lived as an Aryan Christian woman married to a Nazi officer through the use of false papers. The story is as completely improbable as it sounds, yet, it really happened. There were many insights into the causes and thinking behind the tremendous anti-semitism in Austria during that time, as well as the sheer... more info
Kept me riveted:
This book was recommended by a friend, and while it came highly-rated, I hesitated to read it because I find stories about the Holocaust too upsetting. When I did pick it up, I couldn't put it down! Admittedly, I turned the pages through the first third slowly, fearing I would read something disturbing but, by the end I couldn't get enough. The book is written in Mrs. Hahn's voice and reads very much like a novel. Although she shares the most tragic details of her life with us, she does so in a way... more info
A lucky, if not heroic, woman:
While the focus of the story is how one woman survived the holocaust, the title sensationalizes a small part of the story (in fact, her husband wasn't a Nazi Officer until the German's were losing the war and drafting anyone left). This is a book about one individual's survival, in large part due to some amazing luck and some good people. It is NOT a book of how the author used her fortune or took extraordinary risks to help others. Not that there's anything wrong about that. It was a time where no one... more info
important story, poor delivery:
I would give 2 and a half stars. This is a good read in that any account of human experiences is important to remind us of the evils in the world, and human resilience nevertheless. The writing, however, is too rudimentary, and one dimensional.
