That is the final in my posts on The Nazi Officer’s Spouse: How One Jewish Girl Survived the Holocaust. (The primary three are right here, right here, and right here.)
Generally what Edith Hahn Beer calls “private morality” comes by way of:
Frieda, the woman who had misplaced ten tooth, started to wail: “Why is the asparagus a lot extra vital than human beings. [DRH note: Frieda and the author were among the slave laborers on a German asparagus farm.] Why are we dwelling in any respect when the entire objective of our life is such distress?”
The overseer, miraculously moved by her outburst, allow us to return to the hut.
You see, even the inhuman ones weren’t at all times inhuman. This was a lesson I might be taught time and again—how fully unpredictable people may very well be when it got here to private morality.
German officer Werner falls in love along with her and stays in love even when he finds out she’s Jewish. However she’s not a great cook dinner and he or she lies to him about that.
After all, this was a bald-faced lie. To grasp Werner Vetter, do not forget that it was completely doable for me to inform him that I used to be Jewish in Germany on the top of Nazi energy, however it was important for me to lie about being a great cook dinner.
On mendacity to get scarce rations:
“Hear, Grete,” he [Werner] stated. “If you go to the pharmacy for the particular milk for the infant, don’t be shocked in the event that they deal with you as a tragic heroine. As a result of to let you know the reality, I lied to them. I informed them you had already buried three kids and due to this fact they merely needed to provide the milk so this fourth baby of yours wouldn’t additionally enter eternity.”
Even now, I’ve to smile after I consider this. I let you know, of all of the issues about Werner Vetter that appealed to me, this most of all warmed my coronary heart: He had no respect for the reality in Nazi Germany.
