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 “private morality” comes by means of:
Frieda, the lady 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 residing in any respect when the entire goal 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 study repeatedly—how fully unpredictable people might be when it got here to non-public 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 she or he lies to him about that.
After all, this was a bald-faced lie. To grasp Werner Vetter, keep in mind that it was completely attainable for me to inform him that I used to be Jewish in Germany on the peak 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. “While you go to the pharmacy for the particular milk for the child, don’t be stunned 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 advised them you had already buried three kids and subsequently they merely needed to provide the milk so this fourth youngster 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.
