Edith Hahn was a young law student in Vienna when Hitler absorbed Austria in 1938. Madly in love with a young man called Pepi who was half-Jewish, she was separated from him and sent to a forced labour camp. So began the extraordinary chain of events that led to her return to Vienna, her life as a 'hidden' Jew with an identity given to her by a German girlfriend, her marriage to a Nazi who knew she was Jewish and protected her, her intervention through her husband on behalf of Pepi, and her life at the end of the war in Eastern Germany where she was appointed a judge over the persecutors of her people. She fled the Communist regime there because of the conflicting emotions she felt for these who had NOT informed on her. She settled and married in London, and now lives in Israel, aged 84.
- 'Hahn Beer tells her story with a remarkable lack of rancour ... her evocation of atmosphere and detail is worthy of John le Carre. The book is most moving as a record of individual courage but it also constitutes valuable evidence on the vexed subject of how far ordinary Germans were aware of the evil in their midst' THE TIMES
- 'All memoirs of this period are worthwhile, but, in this case, doubly so.' MORNING STAR
Paperback:
£10.99
Published 01/03/2001
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