Edith Hahn Beer

Edith Hahn Beer

Edith Hahn Beer (Edith Hahn) was born on January 24th, 1914. Edith passed away March 17th, 2009 at 95 years old. Edith Hahn Beer was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary.

Edith Hahn Beer was an Austrian Jewish woman that survived the Holocaust by hiding her Jewish identity and she married a Nazi officer.

In 1939, she and her mom were sent to the Jewish ghetto in Vienna. They got separated in April of 1941, when Hahn was sent to this asparagus plantation in Osterburg, Germany and then to the Bestehorn paper factory in Aschersleben. Her mom had previously been deported to Nazi Germany occupied Poland just two weeks before she was able to come back to Vienna in 1942. with duplicate copies of the identity papers of Christa Denner, a Christian friend, she went to Munich.

While she was in Munich, she volunteered as a German Red Cross nurse. While there she met Werner Vetter, a Nazi party member that sought her hand in marriage even after she had told him that she was Jewish. They lived together in Brandenburg an der Havel, married, and they had Angelika, a daughter, who was born in 1944.

Vetter was ultimately drafted as a Nazi officer even after his blindness in one eye had exempted from military service. He got captured by the Russians and was sent to a Siberian labor camp in 1945.

After the war, she used her long hidden Jewish identity card to reclaim her real identity. The Soviet Military Administration in Germany, who needed trained lawyers, installed her as a judge at the Brandenburg district court. She pleaded with the Soviet occupation to free Vetter, and while he was released in 1947, their marriage ended shortly after that.

The Nazi Officer’s Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust was a #1 New York Times Bestseller. It tells the story of Edith Hahn, an outspoken woman in Vienna when the Gestapo forced her into the ghetto and into a slave labor camp. When she came back home months later, she knew that she’d be a hunted woman and went underground. With some help from a Christian friend, she came out of Munich as Grete Denner. She met a Nazi Party member that fell in love with her. Despite Edith’s protests and even her later confession that she was Jewish, they got married and kept her identity a secret.

Edith, in wrenching detail, recalls this life of constant, nearly paralyzing fear. She talks about how German officials would casually questioned the lineage of her parents; about how she refused painkillers during childbirth, because she was afraid that in an altered frame of mind, she could reveal something about her past; and how, after Werner was captured by Soviets, she was bombed out of her own house and had to hide as drunken Russian soldiers raped women on the street.

Edith, despite the risk that it posed to her life, created this remarkable survival record. She kept every single document, and photograph that she had taken in the labor camps.

Edith Hahn Beer: Awards & Accolades

Beer's book, The Nazi Officer's Wife won the Audie Award, Best Female Narrator, in 2004.

Related Authors

Fans of Edith Hahn Beer also enjoy these authors:

1. Harper Lee, author of the To Kill a Mockingbird Series.
2. Stephen King, author of The Dark Tower Series.
3. John Grisham, author of the Jake Brigance Series.
4. Stieg Larsson, author of the Millennium Series.
5. Anthony Doerr, author of: All the Light We Cannot See.

Edith Hahn Beer: F.A.Q