The Nazi Officer’s Wife, now among the most popular books on Apple’s iBooks, is a true memoir of love and terror in the Third Reich which Susan Dworkin wrote with the woman who lived it, the late Edith Hahn Beer. The book has been described as a “beautiful story of survival, an inspiring tale of overcoming fear” (Washington Jewish Week) and an “extraordinary book .. destined to become one of the best Holocaust memoirs available” (Library Journal).
Edith was a well-educated Jewish woman from Vienna, soon to earn her law degree, when the Nazis came to power. In a remarkably short time, she entered poverty and bondage, conscripted as a slave laborer to work in some farmer’s fields. She lived through the war as a “U-Boat”, a Jew masquerading as an Aryan and hiding in plain sight. She pretended to be an uneducated country girl. Worked as a nurse’s aide, cleaning bed pans. Kept her head down and her voice timid and soft.
Edith never credited herself with her escape. She did acknowledge that she was always terrified, always. That the dumbness of luck kept her from being murdered as her mother and her friends were murdered. That five people helped to save her. A former student who gave Edith her papers and her identity. An acquaintance who fed her when she was starving. A factory worker who taught her how to make the quota. A German officer, soon to be dead in North Africa, who taught her how to play the ration system. A young Nazi Party member named Werner who fell in love with Edith and married her and hid her identity, even though discovery would have cost them both their lives. When working with Susan on the book, drinking tea at her apartment in Netanya, Israel, Edith commented: “I think sometimes, if every Jew had five people who helped them, there might have been no Holocaust.”
The Nazi Officer’s Wife was on the New York Times Best Seller List for more than 30 weeks, has been translated into more than a dozen languages and has sold more than half a million copies worldwide. The collection of Edith Hahn’s documents, on which the book is based, is now part of the permanent collection of the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. The book is available on Amazon in paperback and in a much honored audio from Audible.
Don’t miss this opportunity for a lively, in-depth discussion with Arlington author Susan Dworkin about her best-selling memoir of this remarkable woman. Join the Friends of the Robbins Library on Thursday, November 7, 2024 at 7 pm in the Community Room, lower level, of the Robbins Library, 700 Mass. Ave., Arlington. The event is free and open to all.