Final comments on the Nazi officer’s wife

This is the last in my posts about it The Nazi Officer’s Wife: How a Jewish Woman Survived the HolocaustT. (The first three are here, here and here.)

Sometimes what Edith Hahn Beer calls “personal morality” comes from:

Frieda, the girl who had lost ten teeth, began to whine: ‘Why are the asparagus so much more important than people. [DRH note: Frieda and the author were among the slave laborers on a German asparagus farm.] Why are we even alive if the whole purpose of our lives is such misery?”

The supervisor, miraculously moved by her outburst, allowed us to return to the hut.

You see, even the inhuman weren’t always inhuman. This was a lesson I would learn again and again: how completely unpredictable individuals could be when it came to personal morality.

The German officer Werner falls in love with her and remains in love, even when he finds out that she is Jewish. But she can’t cook well and she lies to him about it.

Of course this was a blatant lie. To understand Werner Vetter, consider that it was entirely possible for me to tell him that I was Jewish in Germany at the height of Nazi power, but that it was essential for me to lie about the fact that I was a good cook.

On lying to get scarce rations:

“Listen, Grete,” he said [Werner] said. “If you go to the pharmacy for the special milk for the baby, don’t be surprised if they treat you like a tragic heroine. Because to tell you the truth, I lied to them. I told them that you had already buried three children and that they should therefore only give you the milk so that this fourth child of yours would not enter eternity either.’

Even now I smile when I think of this. I tell you, of all the things about Werner Vetter that resonated with me, this one especially warmed my heart: He had no respect for the truth in Nazi Germany.