The Nazi Officer's Wife by Edith H. Beer

Author:Edith H. Beer
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1999-04-08T16:00:00+00:00

I BOUGHT THE Munich newspaper, Münchner Nachrichten. In the “Rooms for Rent” section, a women in the little suburban town of Deisenhofen offered a room in exchange for sewing and mending. I thought: This is perfect for me. It is a sign that Munich is the right choice.

Frau Doktor sold my mother’s Persian lamb coat and gave me the money. I left the jewelry with her, not as payment—neither of us would ever have considered such a thing—but for safekeeping. I hugged her close to me, blessing her with all my heart.

I went to my cousin Jultschi’s house and picked up my suitcase with the six dresses Mama had made for me, and the shoes and underwear, the little nightgowns she had left. I kissed my poor cousin, feeling as sorry for her as she felt for me, and I kissed our darling little boy.

I went to Pepi’s house. Anna was there, happy to see me dressed for departure. She talked about how a niece of hers had just this morning gone to travel in the Reich on vacation with the “Strength through Joy” program, how she had packed her up with cakes and sausages. I was sitting there quietly waiting for Pepi, and she didn’t even offer me a sandwich for the journey.

Finally he came. He had brought me a present. It was a book of poems by Goethe which he himself had bound—rather clumsily—in a dusty blue paper cover. Deep inside the binding were my true identity papers, the ones that said I was Edith Hahn, a Jewess and a resident of Vienna. With this were my last exam papers, and my grade transcripts from the university.

“Someday maybe you will need these,” he whispered. “To show someone what a brilliant law student you were in your previous life.”

He walked me to the train station and put me on the night train for Munich. He did not kiss me good-bye. The time for kisses was over.

There was no razzia, no search of passengers’ papers by the police, on the train. This was good luck—no razzia on the train from the Arbeitslager, when I could have been arrested for not wearing the star; none on the train to Hainburg, when I could have been arrested just for being on a train; and none on the train to Munich, when I was first carrying papers that said I was Christina Maria Margarethe Denner, twenty years old, an Aryan Christian. I rode all night in a compartment with other people, pulled my coat over me, and slumped down so that, whoever I was now, I should not be noticed.

During that long terrible ride to Munich, I finally swallowed the bitter pill of my lover’s rejection and poisoned myself with it. I murdered the personality I was born with and transformed myself from a butterfly back into a caterpillar. That night I learned to seek the shadows, to prefer silence.

In the morning, I stood in the station and looked around at the Germans. They seemed just fine—healthy, pink, well-fed.

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