Have you ever heard the phrase “hiding in plain sight”?
At the age of 25, an Austrian Jewish woman named Edith Hahn and her mother were sent to the Jewish ghetto in Vienna by the Nazi regime.
Two years later she was moved to work in a German factory – and never saw her mother again.
But a Christian friend gave Edith copies of her own identification papers, With which she was able to return to Vienna – and ultimately travelled to Munich.
More below video:
Carefully concealing her true identity, Edith Hahn volunteered as a German Red Cross nurse.
And that’s where she met a Nazi party member, who married her – even after she revealed to him her Jewish identity.
Their daughter Angela was born in a Nazi Hospital. Their marriage ended soon after the war, and so did Edith’s lifesaving charade.
She lived the rest of her life in Israel and London. And in 1999 told her story in a book called The Nazi Officer’s Wife.
It was a book that her daughter Angela had urged her to write, soon after Edith’s letters were sold at auction and ultimately donated to the Holocaust Museum in Washington.
I met them both when Edith’s book was published. So here now, from 1999 Edith Hahn Beer and her daughter Angela.
Edith Hahn Beer died in 2009. ten years after our interview. She was 95.
