Edith Hahn Beer

Edith Hahn Beer was born in 1914 in Vienna to Leopold and Klothilde Hahn. She was the second of three girls. From a very early age she read the newspaper, and had an interest in law and politics. A local rabbi saw her interest and told her father that he should send her to the university, which was very unusual for a woman in Vienna during the 1930s. Edith had almost completed her degree when the unification between Germany and Austria occurred. After the unification she went back to take her last exam to find that the Nazis would not allow her to take it because she was a Jew. Shortly after, her sisters moved to Palestine. Around the same time that Edith's sisters left, she and her mother were forced to move into a ghetto in Vienna. After several months of living in the ghetto, the Germans wanted it to be free of Jews. The Jews were forced to report to the Germans on a specific day according to their last name. When the Hs were called, Edith and her mother stood in a long line to wait their turn. They were picked up in a truck and taken the Nazi headquarters in Vienna. They were given contracts to sign saying that they would agree to six months in a labor camp in Germany. Using all the skills she had learned in school, Edith got her mother out of going by lying and saying that she had two sisters that were still in line that were strong and could do work faster and better than the old woman who she told the Nazis was a former maid in her household just keeping them company. Edith was then sent to Osterburg, Germany to work on a farm. The six months that the Nazis had told her she would work ended up being nearly a year and a half. She grew used to the work that had to be done and made some friends at the farm. Whenever she could find the time she would write to her mother and her boyfriend Joseph (Pepi) Rosenfield, who was still living in Vienna. After a year and a half Edith and some of the other girls from the farm were brought to a factory to make boxes. Edith spent several months at the factory before she found out that her mother was going to be sent to Poland. She tried to get back to Vienna before her mother went to Poland so that she could go with her, but she ended up getting to Vienna two weeks after her mother left. Before Edith returned to Vienna, the Nazis told her that she needed to report to their headquarters the day after she arrived in Vienna. However, Edith had another plan. On the train ride from the factory she and another girl who was with her, ripped the Star of David from their jackets so that they were not noticeable. When she got into Vienna, Pepi and his mother were waiting for her. She then went to visit her cousin and her son, where she stayed for several days. For the next few months, Edith became a Nazi fugitive. She made sure that she would not get caught by never staying in the same place for more than one night. Her friend, Christl Denner, whom she had looked after when she was younger, helped her out by letting her stay in the stockroom of her store several times. During the time that Edith was hiding out she went to visit Maria Niederall, a friend and former boss of one of the people that she knew at the farm. When Edith went to see Frau Doktor (she was called that because she was the wife of a Doctor) she got a warm welcome. Maria also helped Edith get away from Vienna. She sent Edith to the Aunt and Uncle of one of the people that she worked with who lived in Germany. Edith only stayed there for a few days because she could not stomach their talk of Nazism and Adolph Hitler. Edith returned to Vienna and went back into hiding. She could not take the pressure though, so after a short period of time she went to visit Maria again to say goodbye. Instead, Maria called a woman who worked with her to say that a friend had lost her identification and could she help her. Maria then told her where to go and told her to just tell the truth. When Edith got there, she found herself looking at a full-blown Nazi. He was very helpful though, and he told her exactly what to do. She was to ask another friend to go to the officials and tell them that she had been in a boating accident and that she had lost all her papers in the river. They would give the woman duplicates and Edith was to assume that woman's identity and use the woman's original identification and go and live somewhere else in the Reich. Fortunately, her friend Christle Denner (whose real name was Christina Maria Margarethe Denner) agreed immediately. After Christle Denner got the duplicate identification Edith moved to a town outside of Munich as Grete Denner. Edith lived with a couple outside of Munich for free in exchange for sewing. She also worked at the Red Cross because that was the only place where they would not realize that there were to Christina Denners living inside the Reich. On a vacation in Germany Edith met Werner Vetter, who used his talents as a painter to paint planes for the Luftwaffe. After Werner was divorced from his first wife, Edith went to live with him. She did not want to get married because she was afraid that they would find out that she was a Jew. After she got pregnant though, they married to legitimize the baby. Shortly after the birth of Maria Angelika (who is called Angela) Werner was drafted into the German army and because of the high number of combat deaths quickly became a Nazi officer. After the war was over, the Germans needed people who had law degrees to replace all the lawyers and judges that had been Nazis. Edith, with her background in law was a good candidate and quickly went from being a lawyer to a judge. During her time as a judge, Edith asked the Communists who were in charge of Munich to release Werner who had been taken prisoner by the communists. She told them that he was not as bad as all the rest because he had lived with her even after he found out that she was Jewish. The communists did release Werner, but he did not like that the woman who had cooked and cleaned and treated him like a king before he left was too busy to get fish for dinner. Shortly after he came back to Germany, he left Edith to go back to his first wife. After Werner left her Edith found that living in Communist controlled Germany did not suit her anymore. It took her several months, but eventually she sneeked out of Germany and went to live in England with her sister and bother-in-law. She remarried in England to a man named Fred Beer who was also a survivor of the Holocaust. In the late 1970s before Edith's former boyfriend Pepi Rosenfield died he sent her all the letters that she had sent him while she was at the farm, and later when she was at the factory. She gave them to her daughter to read so that she would know what happened to her during the war years. After her husband Fred died in the mid 1980s Edith moved to Isreal and has lived there ever since and recently wrote a book about her life called A Nazi Officers Wife.