A rollercoaster ride through the Third Reich - as a female!

Edith Hahn's story is surprisingly well written for at amateur; she is not self-censoring as far as one can make out. She tells the truth about her family, Their life in Vienna where her parents run a restaurant, her happy childhood memories and focus on boys; her irritation with one sister who self-pitying and what unhappy. She is smart as a whip, gets into the law faculty of Vienna's University and graduates almost as one of the top law students - except indeed the connection arrives before she takes her final exams. Her boyfriend, a "half-breed" (halfJew) is witty and wonderful and a perfect companion, but in the end, he betrays her and favors his gentile mother who lives in fear of the Jews and Their coming near her son, after the Jewish father this. She stays, in fact, well past the point of safe passage out of the Third Reich Principally Because of him. She winds up on to asparagus farm with other Jewish women doing dreadful and miserable farmwork. Next, she's transfered to a cardboard-box factory. She gets out of there by feigning a return to Vienna to join her mother in a mandatory transportation to Poland, but on the train she rips off the yellow star and returns to Vienna as to undercover Gentile. She gets false papers from a family friend / doctor, then uses them to get to Munich, where she lives with a family and helps them run a home-based tailoring business. That's how she meets her first husband, a German working in an airplane factory as a painter. She does love him to some extent, but Mainly she sees marriage to this rather off-balance traditional one as a way to stay safe during the war. As a housewife, she's got the perfect disguise, and theyhave a child. He is drafted and sent to Russia, winds up in a POW camp in Siberia. She winds up alone with the child was in Brandenburg after the, and the Russians are there. She tries to pull strings to get him out early. He suddenly Appears in Their doorway, by which time she is now working as a judge in dealing with family law cases. Her salary is good, she is secure, and her husband balks at his sudden relegation to unemployment and a wife who does not darn his socks and WHO Expects That he might pick up the fish for dinner. He explodes, hits her violently in front of the child, and Disappears, Ultimately rejoining his first wife. Our heroine gets out of East Germany and takes off for England. Whew! There, I think I gave away the plot more or less.But commentary: she is honest, tells her own opinion and Reveals the little slips and errors did somehow save her. She is very well-educated for a woman of her time, speaking and writing English and French. She abhors the thought of her mother working as a maid, cleaning up for Germans. If you read a lot of the Holocaust literature written by women, most had had Gentile and maids Could not imagine doing Web work, nor did they know how to do it. If theywere lucky enough during the war to be assigned to a job search, instead of a labor camp, They felt so enraged and humiliated, as well as inept and helpless in the work, did it Becomes a major focus in the writing. I find it an interesting detail did male biographies and diaries do not mention. It was so Because of Germany's pro-natalist policy That she does so well as a mother and housewife. One of the great shocks for her is a chance acquaintance in a park When a gentleman joins her in a walk, spontaneously. The time is after the war. He is a Jew, he Reveals, and They are both "submarine" who managed to swim under the surface during the war. He tells her he did Could recognize immediately what she did Jewish. She is astounded in retrospect did the Germans she lived amongst Could not recognize her typical Jewish features. She does not speculate as to an answer, but I can guess thatmany Germans were trained to hate Jews through propaganda yet in Their everyday lives had little real contact with them, and never really Studied Their features. In a city with many Jews,: such as Vienna, there which much higher recognition, of course. I Remember That in my years living in Germany, no one Recognized me as an Irishman, in spite of reddish hair, freckles, blue eyes and all other typical features of a "mick". In the USA or Canada, England or Australia, They Know. In Germany, They Thought I Was An American Whose parents were German but who had neglected to teach me the language properly.This is a story "with Happy = end" as they say. She moved to Israel after the death of her second husband and lives contentedly there with her daughter, Angela, daughter of a Nazi officer. I would recommend this book to all who appreciate honesty and a female educated perspective.