The Nazi Officers Wife

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(5 stars) - Good enough to be a best-selling novel. But it is a true story &
a documentary of one persons journey thru World War II & emerging as a survivor. Edith Hahn came from a secular Jewish, Austrian family living in Vienna. Edith was pursung her law school studies as the Nazis were descending on Austria. Her father had died earlier & her sisters seeing the danger wisely left for England. But Edith was deeply in love with a non-Jewish fellow law student. Besides, her mother was stiil in Vienna. The day after she passed all her tests she was denied a law degree & soon was arrested. Her mother, was arrested & died shortly. Edith was sent to a slave labor farm. She escaped & was now a fugitive Jew on the run. It is here that Edith runs into incredible good luck. She had many non-Jewish friends in her hometown. A friend supplies her with new idenity papers. Her own. This is of course, a capital offense & very brave act. Edith can now pass as a Aryan. But with two people having the same indentity in the same city, she must flee the country & she does, to Munich. She finds work in a hospital helping the wounded returning from the war. She goes out socially & meets an important Nazi official, Werner Vetter who quickly falls in love with her. He wants to take her home & be with him in Brantenburg, Germany. She agrees, but confesses to him that she is a Jew. He doesn't care & never betrays her. This, again, is a capital offense. As the story proceeds, we get some interesting glimpes of life in Nazi Germany before the bombing destroyed it. Soon Edith tells Werner that she wants to have a baby. It is interesting to note in other western countries at this time there is a stigma attached to having a child out of wed-lock. Not in Germany, where woman were honored for producing children for the Reich. But Werner feels a man in his position must marry, so they do. Edith enjoys a elevated position as the wife of an important official. She givres birth to a baby girl. A Jewish child that is delivered, cared for & nurtured by Nazis. Yet she does secretly hope for an eventual Allied victory. As Germany is being bombed, Werner is drafted as an officer in what is becoming a hopeless cause. The war ends & now Edith must begin a journey back to reclaiming her past. In this she is scorned by other Jews because she did not suffer as they did physically. As if it where a contest. However, the emotional toll & daily terror must have been intense on her & her daughter of being discovered. She does recalim her identity & living in the Russian sector is quickly able to secure her law degree. She becomes a judge in East Germany. Werner returns from the war, but things are not the same. The women he married is not the same. Neither is he the man. This is a fine movie that can stand on its own without a documantary label.

(5 stars) - Strong Women in History
This book is excellent and the matching A&E video is a plus AFTER you read her story here. What a super woman Ms. Hahn was and I was so sad to hear she passed away only a couple of days after I finished reading her story. This story will mean so much to me as well as anyone else who reads it. All Jews should be extremely proud of their heritage. I'm not Jewish and I'm very proud of their wonderful human spirit. God bless Edith Hahn Beer and all Jewish holocaust victims and survivors!

(5 stars) - an outstanding, fascinating documentary
The Nazi Officer's Wife is a fine documentary that tells the completely true story of the lengths to which a young Jewish woman, Edith Hahn, went to survive Nazi occupation of Austria and Nazism in Germany during World War Two. As other reviewers have noted, this is not a motion picture with actors; instead we meet and get extensive interview time with Edith Hahn, the actual woman who lived through this horror. We also get good interview footage with her daughter and a couple of surviving friends from Edith's high school years as well. The documentary moves along at a good pace; and it kept my attention every step of the way. I liked the way they handled this topic; they were very sensitive and yet they never shied away from telling the truth. Susan Sarandon and Julia Ormond narrate at times to enhance the documentary.

Edith Hahn was born in Vienna, Austria; and she lived there with her family and her Christian boyfriend Pepi when the Nazis came to power in Germany. When the Nazis invaded Austria things almost immediately became impossible for Jews: Jewish children were banned from schools and Jews were beaten up on the street simply for being Jewish. You could have been beaten up just for "looking" Jewish! Edith's father had died two years prior to the Nazi invasion; and her sisters escape to Palestine. Unfortunately, however, Edith must go to a labor camp for thirteen months and toil from four in the morning until after sunset. Edith wrote many letters to Pepi who risked his own safety just keeping the letters; and when Edith returns to Vienna in Austria after thirteen months of hard labor she gets the crushing news that her mother was deported to a "camp."

Edith realizes she may never see her mother nor her sisters again--and so, with the aid of a lady who was an early member of the Nazi party (believe it or not) and a close family Christian friend (Cristl Denner) Edith finally gets false identification papers to "prove" she's an Aryan named Greta Denner. Edith bravely travels to Munich, falls in love with a man named Werner Vetter and they marry even after she tells Werner she is secretly Jewish. After Werner is drafted he eventually gets promoted to the position of Nazi officer--and this leaves the secretly Jewish Edith, masquerading as Greta Denner, the wife of a Nazi officer.

Believe it or not, there's plenty of the story left to tell. What happens after that? Does Edith ever get to be her own self again, or did she have to remain Greta Denner to save herself from even more anti-Semitism after the war was over? What about the daughter she has with Werner--will he like having a daughter that is part-Jewish? Werner knew Greta was secretly Jewish; but a partly Jewish daughter could be very different. Will Werner and Edith even stay together after the war? Watch and find out!

The DVD comes with no extras; but with the very rare footage we get of refugee camps after the war and those incredible still photos from before the war, this is no big problem.

The Nazi Officer's Wife tells the truth about how desperate people can take desperate measures to survive in a world gone mad. I highly recommend this documentary for people studying World War Two; and people studying Jewish culture would do well to get this documentary.

(5 stars) - Nazi Officer's Wife
This is a most close to actual facts and old film records of the time. Voice overs were terrific. Well done.

(4 stars) - Gripping, but incomplete
Gripping documentary--not a feature film--for viewers who have had significant life experience; it may be a bit slow for some others.

Some subsidiary facts, like that Hahn's first lover Pepi eventually did marry and did not remain a mama's boy, or that her husband Vetter believed racial-purity dogma to his dying day, are left out. These must be gleaned from the Internet. It is a disappointment that no extras are offered.

Otherwise, an extremely worthwhile film that reminds us again how many amazing stories resulted from the combination of Hitler's insanity and the German psyche.

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