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.)
Generally what Edith Hahn Beer calls “private morality” comes by:
Frieda, the woman who had misplaced ten tooth, started to wail: “Why is the asparagus a lot extra essential 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 be taught many times—how fully 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 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 potential 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 an excellent cook dinner.
On mendacity to get scarce rations:
“Pay attention, Grete,” he [Werner] mentioned. “Whenever you go to the pharmacy for the particular milk for the newborn, 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 instructed them you had already buried three kids and subsequently they merely needed to provide the milk so this fourth little one of yours wouldn’t additionally enter eternity.”
Even now, I’ve to smile once 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.
