That is the final in my posts on The Nazi Officer’s Spouse: How One Jewish Lady Survived the Holocaust. (The primary three are right here, right here, and right here.)
Typically what Edith Hahn Beer calls “personal morality” comes by means of:
Frieda, the woman who had misplaced ten enamel, started to wail: “Why is the asparagus so much more important than human beings. [DRH note: Frieda and the author were among the slave laborers on a German asparagus farm.] Why are we living at all when the whole purpose of our life is such misery?”
The overseer, miraculously moved by her outburst, allow us to return to the hut.
You see, even the inhuman ones weren’t all the time inhuman. This was a lesson I’d study many times—how utterly unpredictable people could possibly be when it got here to non-public morality.
German officer Werner falls in love together with her and stays in love even when he finds out she’s Jewish. However she’s not an excellent prepare dinner and he or she lies to him about that.
In fact, this was a bald-faced lie. To know 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 peak of Nazi energy, nevertheless it was important for me to lie about being an excellent prepare dinner.
On mendacity to get scarce rations:
“Listen, Grete,” he [Werner] mentioned. “When you go to the pharmacy for the special milk for the baby, don’t be surprised if they treat you as a tragic heroine. Because to tell you the truth, I lied to them. I told them you had already buried three children and therefore they simply had to give you the milk so this fourth child of yours would not also enter eternity.”
Even now, I’ve to smile after I consider this. I inform you, 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.
