Krishna
Edith Hahn Beer works in a hospital in Nazi Germany. She has called herself Margaret (or Gerthe for short) and pretends to be a German pure-blood. The patients there are mostly foreigners who were captured in the war, and set to work in factories, and met with industrial accidents and needed medical treatments. The nurses, who were of peasant stock from East Germany and who had imbibed the Nazi propaganda of Aryan superiority thought nothing of stealing the food meant for patients and taking it home to their own families to alleviate the shortage in their homes.
This being a memoir, it is told in a straightforward way. Since she is ‘too friendly’ with foreigners who are patients, she is transferred to the maternity ward and then assigned to look after a really high ranking Nazi officer. She tends to him skillfully but in a moment of weakness reveals her intellect, almost blowing her cover of being an uneducated twenty year old Austrian rural girl.
In reality, she is the Jewish daughter of the Hahn family. Her father owns a popular restaurant. The childhood descriptions are fairly boring. The book feels like how you will if you went to your very old grandma whom nobody generally talks to and ask ‘Hey, how was your childhood?’. She talks of boyfriends, her certainty that the clown Adolf Hitler will never capture power and is a passing fad and so on. Very banal, very humdrum existence.
Often the Jew in her is flaunted visibly. Like a friend asking ‘How are you Jews so clever?’ or her saying as we (Jews) do often, we stopped for a mid morning snack. Really? What is uniquely Jewish about being smart or eating snacks? A declaration: I definitely am not against Jews nor deny that some of the cleverest people in the world are Jews. In fact I admire the courage of Jews who faced enormous discrimination from biblical times and have managed to not just survive but thrive. I am here only reacting to the tone of the narrative and the level of the narrative.
And irritating inferences. Her intellectual boyfriend Pepi had a Jewish father (who died) and a Catholic mother who converted to Judaism to marry. And the author blithely claims - not in so many words but very heavily implied - that Pepi knows that he is intelligent because of the Jewish side of his parentage! And Pepi’s mother ‘dressed in a flashy style unsuitable for her age and size’. Really!
At this stage in the book (Yes, it gets a lot better shortly hereafter), you also cannot help making comparison with one of the best known nonfiction about Nazi Germany, The Schindler’s List. The slow creeping evil of the Nazi regime and the Jews clinging to the hope that however low the treatment went, perhaps that was the lowest the regime can go until the next, more evil brutality is brilliantly brought to life. In this book too the regime’s brutality (in Austria which was occupied by Nazis early) is brought forth but it is more in-your-face. The synagog is burning, young boys arrested, her sister being sent away with almost all the savings of their mom - all told in a plain fashion. I am not criticizing the events but the narrative skill of this book is definitely not on par among the best works.
Since this is a Holocaust related story, I must stress that this real life tale is heart wrenching and sad. However, what I say below is purely as a critic of the book - the novel.
What grates also is the glib assertions and generalizations. For instance, when several families are forced to share accommodations - ‘we had no issues. We had unfailingly good manners and always apologized when we had to intrude on each other’s private space’. Contrast that with the Diary of Anne Frank, which talks openly about petty issues and fights when several families were to share an attic. Which strikes you as closer to the truth and a frank portrayal? (I do not know the events in this book and so it may all have been true, but looks like an artificial varnish has been put on the events after the fact). Or the assertion that ‘All Aryan Austrians knew of the plight of the Jews and did not care; greed took over’. How does she know this? ‘Because when I was confronted by a policeman asking me for money, I said “But I am a Jew”, so he knew I was penniless and let me go’. Yes? You jump from one man knowing about the plight to the entire population conniving in the atrocities? Is that not a bit far fetched?
I understand the bitterness, angst and the raging sense of injustice among the oppressed; rightly so. What happened to them is horrific in its own right. But several decades after, when the story is narrated, to make sweeping generalizations makes it a whitewashed story. A bit more balanced descriptions would have enhanced, not reduced the overall impact of the true story.
One by one the sisters leave and she, unwilling to be separated from her boyfriend Pepe, stays. She is chosen to work in a factory by the Nazis and goes reluctantly.
She talks about back breaking work in the fields and a friendship with a fellow poor Jewish girl.
She finds that the love of her life, Pepi is now lukewarm towards her in his letters.
She goes to Vienna to confront him but is unable to get him to agree to marry her.
At this point, the book becomes a lot more interesting. Her struggles to stay hidden (she had to hide her star to go in Vienna and that opened the door for a surprise check and imprisonment) and gets rejected by all her old friends who say that ‘She must go somewhere else’. Pepi manages to place her in an empty house belonging to his mother but she has to hide there and not take bath as the noise would alert the suspicions of neighbours. Finally, heartbroken, she decides to leave then her friend sends her to an officer she knows. Even though he is a Nazi officer, he is sympathetic to her plight and advises her about how to create an Aryan identity for her. (Involves getting an identity paper set from someone who looks similar, whereupon that person will claim it was lost and ask for another set with the government.
She decides to leave for Munich and there meets a sensitive and artistic man working for the Nazis called Werner Vetter. He pursues her relentlessly and treats her well. She gives him her ‘new name’ Grete Denner’ a pure Aryan. He expresses interest in “Grete”.
When he suddenly comes over to meet her and declare two things - that he is married and in the midst of divorce proceedings and second, he is in love with Grete and wants to marry her - the novel takes off. The descriptions become better, and the storyline becomes a lot more interesting. For example how she wanted to go back to Vienna briefly and found that no one, including Pepi, wanted her there!
She goes back and marries Werner, after he knows her secret. He places her in the Nazi apartments and she plays the part of Grete, and pretends to be a ‘loyal’ German admiring Hitler and the whole nine yards.
The quiet rebellion where she and Werner listen to the banned BBC is interesting. So is her life with her neighbours. Finally when Werner, towards the end, is made an officer and sent to the front, she achieves the exalted position of an officer’s wife, so high in the esteem of all the Nazi sympathizers and indeed the general populace, it is ironic and interesting.
When finally on the eve of Germany’s defeat, Werner is called back to the army to the Russian front, Grete is very scared but the SS officers come to tell that he has been taken prisoner by Russians and so she is relieved, knowing that he is alive and more important, safe.
Meanwhile her city is overrun by the Russians who set fire to her house. Now she and Angela are homeless.
After the Russians occupy the German town, Edith takes her real papers and goes to meet the same officer who registered her false papers and the shock on his face is amusing to read. She then gets appointed as a family Judge and is given a court, robes and quarters.
Edith - now she has reverted to her real name - manages to release Werner from a Siberian prison and brings him back but life turns hell. He resents her privilege and his inability to find a job; resents her having servants and a nice house even though he is also enjoying them; resents her not doing any ‘house work’ for him and is furious when he finds a tear in his sock.
They go their separate ways and then Edith, lives her life out. The rest of the details are ho hum. Like how she could not find a life in England and how only back in Israel she felt that she was at last home and with her people. All good sentiments, as they go. But nothing to write home about or to read about.
All in all, a bit better than I expected or a bit better than the book initially promised.
6/10
-- Krishna