The Nazi Officer's Wife: Edith Hahn Beer

This was a powerful novel about a Jewish woman who survived the holocaust by being clever. Her father died from heart failure as the Nazi's took power, Vienna was then filled with Nazis. Edith was sent to work camps after her mother was able to get both younger daughters sent to Britain and Palestine. She was fist sent to an asparagus farm where she and the other girls lost so much weight they stopped menstruating. After about a year, she was sent to a paper factory where another woman's husband sent news back about the failures at the front line. She caught scarlet fever and shortly after recovering was sent home to be with her mother in relocation. She and the other girls sent home to Vienna decide to take off their stars before leaving the train and the melt into the crowd. Edith finds refuge in the city by constantly moving between people who help her, but she is constantly worried she will be putting those helping her at risk. One day she gives up and tells a Nazi friend that she is going to find her mother, the woman directs her to a friend of hers, who was leaving for Africa the next day. He tells her to find a non-Jewish friend that looks like her and have the friend register that she is going on holiday, then take those food rations, then have the friend say she lost her purse in the river, take her original documents, the friend will then file for replacements. There was still a list of things she couldn't do because they would find out there were 2 of the same woman. Edith then moved to Munich to work with the red cross where a Nazi, Werner, started courting her. She told him she was Jewish, thinking she was signing her death warrant, but he had her live with him. When she got pregnant he was very unhappy, but married her and never told her secret. Once the battle was lost and Werner was a POW in Russia, Edith was able to find another apartment, theirs had been burned, but she was able to get her suitcase with her original paperwork. She finally practiced as a judge and was eventually asked to be at the Nuremburg trials, but being Jewish, she didn't want anyone to accuse her of being bias and pleaded to not go, they took her license away so she wouldn't. She was able to get Werner released from prison, but he was unhappy that Edith stopped being "Grete" and was actually very smart and independent. She was providing for her daughter and didn't have time to do the domestic chores he insisted she do, they divorced. Edith and her daughter were able to get to England out of luck and the tickets provided by her youngest sister and brother-in-law. This was a heartbreaking story as it wasn't until after the war that she learned of her mother's fate and then suffered survivor's guilt as few members of her family survived. It didn't sound like she and her middle sister ever reconciled and a one line sentence was stated that the sister didn't want them with her in Palestine. Edith died in 2009, right before the featured film of her life.