The Nazi Officer's Wife Quotes

“I thought: Now I am like Dante. I walk through hell, but I am not burning.”
― Edith Hahn Beer a, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust

“The soul withdrew to a rational silence. The body remained there in the madness.”
― Edith Hahn Beer a, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust

“But I think that every time you hurt somebody you care for, a crack appears in your relationship, a little weakening - and it stays there, dangerous, waiting for the next opportunity to open up and destroy everything.”
― Edith Hahn Beer a, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust

“Life is beautiful, and it begins tomorrow.”
― Edith Hahn Beer a, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived The Holocaust

“What about Adolf Hitler?"
"Oh, him. He's not a thinker. He's just a ranter and raver."
"There may come a time," said Pepi, "when people cannot tell the difference.”
― Susan Dworkin Edith H. Beer (Author), The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust

“It was the individuals who made their own rules in this situation. No one forced them to behave in an unkind manner. The opportunity to act decently toward us was always available to them. Only the tiniest number of them ever used it.”
― Edith Hahn Beer a, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived The Holocaust

“That's all it takes, you see -- a moment of kindness. Someone who is sweet and understanding, who seems to be sent there like an angel on the road to get you through the nightmare.”
― Edith Hahn Beer a, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust

“They had been harboring a hatred for us which we had grown accustomed to calling “prejudice.” What a gentle word that was! What a euphemism!”
― Edith Hahn Beer a, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust

“Once, after the Anschluss, I was stopped by a policeman for jaywalking. He ordered me to pay a stiff fine. “But I am Jewish,” I said. That was all he needed to hear to know that I was penniless and could not possibly pay, and he let me go. So you see, when they tell you that they did not realize how the Jews were being despoiled, you must never believe them. They all knew.”
― Edith Hahn Beer a, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust

“You see, even the inhuman ones were not always inhuman. This was a lesson that I would learn again and again—how completely unpredictable individuals could be when it came to personal morality.”
― Edith Hahn Beer a, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived The Holocaust

“When an idea is idiotic to begin with, its applications never make any sense.”
― Edith Hahn Beer a, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived The Holocaust

“One class. No masters. No slaves. No black. No white. No Jew. No Christian. One race--the human race.”
― Edith Hahn Beer, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust

“How can a gang of pompous little men so quickly destroy the democratic institutions of a great country?!”
― Edith Hahn Beer, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust

“I think my father knew how to be Jewish, but he didn't teach us. He must have thought we would absorb it with our mother's milk.”
― Edith Hahn Beer a, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust

“You will ask how I felt about spending so much time with people who supported the Hitler regime. I will tell you that, since I had absolutely no choice in the matter, I no longer dared to think about it. To be in Germany at that time, pretending to be an Aryan, meant that you automatically socialized with Nazis. To me, they were all Nazis, whether they belonged to the party or not. For me to have made distinctions at that time—to say Hilde was a “good” Nazi and the registrar was a “bad” Nazi—would have been silly and dangerous, because the good ones could turn you in as easily and capriciously as the bad ones could save your life.”
― Edith Hahn Beer a, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust

“In the morning, real nurses taught us the rudiments of anatomy and instructed us in the preparation of dressings and bandages. But then in the afternoon, representatives of the Frauenschaft, the women’s auxiliary of the Nazi Party, came to instruct us in our real mission: to boost the morale of the wounded and spread the propaganda of German invincibility. “You must make sure that every single soldier in your care knows that, despite the cowardly British air attack last May, the Cologne cathedral is still standing,” said the sturdy, uniformed instructor. “You must also tell everyone that there has been no bombing in the Rhineland. Am I clear?” “Yes, ma’am,” we all said. In fact, the Rhineland was being crushed by Allied air attacks.”
― Edith Hahn Beer a, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust

“Berta, whose boyfriend had walked so far to see her, went out without her star and was immediately arrested and sent to a concentration camp.”
― Edith Hahn Beer a, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust

“Mama had a decayed tooth that was killing her. Our Jewish dentist was no longer allowed to practice, but with Pepi’s help, Mama found an Aryan dentist who would pull the tooth. He wanted gold. Mama gave him a gold chain. He wanted more. She gave him another. He wanted more. She gave him her last. Three gold chains for one tooth.”
― Edith Hahn Beer a, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust

“But then the Nazis arrested Uncle Richard and Aunt Roszi too. They spent six weeks in prison. To get out, they gave the Nazis everything they possessed: real estate, bank accounts, bonds, dishes, silver. Then they left immediately, heading east. Russia swallowed them. My mother waited and prayed for word of them, but none came.”
― Edith Hahn Beer a, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust

“They wanted to know, you see. They were afraid that with our typical Austrian faces, we might be able to pass. They didn’t want to be fooled. Even then, in the 1920s, they wanted to be able to tell who was a Jew.”
― Edith Hahn Beer a, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust

“Often, the teachers would ask me what language we spoke at home. This was a not-so-subtle way of discovering if we spoke Yiddish (which we didn’t) and were therefore Jewish (which we were).”
― Edith Hahn Beer a, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust

“She brought forth a piece of wood into which she had burned a French saying which our friend Franz had used to cheer us, in Osterburg: La vie est belle, et elle commence demain. “Life is beautiful, and it begins tomorrow.”
― Edith Hahn Beer a, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived The Holocaust

“Something always happened, you see. A Yiddish song on Hanukkah, a British rabbi's prayer on the radio, some kindness on a train or in the street that reminded me, no matter how far I retreated, no matter how deep into self-denial my fear drove me, that the Jews would always be my people and I would always belong to them.”
― Edith Hahn Beer a, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust

“typical war baby, never demanding or complaining,”
― Edith Hahn Beer, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived The Holocaust

“Have you ever considered these lines by Goethe?” said the little piece of paper. Cowardly thoughts, anxious hesitation, Womanish timidity, timorous complaints Won’t keep misery away from you And will not set you free.”
― Edith Hahn Beer, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived The Holocaust

“But I think that every time you hurt somebody you care for, a crack appears in your relationship, a little weakening—and it stays there, dangerous, waiting for the next opportunity to open up and destroy everything”
― Edith Hahn Beer, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived The Holocaust

“My manner was quiet. My habit was to listen. I behaved in a friendly way toward everyone; I became close to no one.”
― Edith Hahn Beer, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived The Holocaust

“Why did I surround my daughter with these pleasant, soothing lies? Because I wanted her not to feel alone. Just as Mama had always sent me the things she did not have-the cake when she was hungry, the gloves when she was cold-I tried to give Angela the things that I had lost: a family, a secure place in the world, a normal life.”
― Edith Hahn Beer, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust

“It was getting to be the end of the day. The sun was somehow setting again. A man could stand in the street and tell a perfect stranger a story of such incomprehensible evil that it really seemed as if the sun should stop shining altogether. But there was no alteration in Heaven, no sign that the cries of children had been heard.”
― Edith Hahn Beer, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust

“It's easy to be a cardinal when your cousin is the pope.”
― Edith Hahn Beer, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust