The Nazi Officer's Wife

Looking back over my posts, I see a large proportion of books about World War II.  I guess I do read a lot of books about that era.  I think perhaps it is because I was born just as the war was beginning in Europe, and the war colored my early life.  My father was a chaplain in the Army Air Corps, and our family moved with him from base to base.  The first churches I remember are Army base chapels.  I remember them with great fondness and warmth.  Some of my first baby sitters were my dad's chapel assistants, lovely WACS.  I remember when Franklin Roosevelt died, and when the war ended.  Even though I was very young, those memories remain strong and were formational influences in my life.  I remember ration books and coupons for clothing and food.....those memories stay.

Recently I was talking with a good friend who had just finished a book about World War II,  and recommended the book to me.  The full title is The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust by Edith Hahn Beer.

Edith is a young Jewish woman who grew up in Vienna as part of a warm, loving, middle class family.  Her ancestors had lived in Vienna for years.  Her father owned and ran a restaurant, and their lives were secure and safe, until Hitler started coming to power.and war came to Europe.

This book is an autobiography, written by Edith at the request of her daughter, Angela, so she could understand what her mother had survived.  Edith Hahn had saved her papers....everyone had stacks of  papers to prove who they were, to allow them food rations, to allow them to move around....to allow them to breathe!  Her papers are now in the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

I have read other books about this time and about concentration camps, including the classic Night  by Elie Wiesel, and I've heard him speak. I've visited Dachau, the concentration camp just outside Munich.  However, this book reached me in a personal place, and I think it is because, at last, I've read a woman's story from that time.  So often, we read the men's stories.  This time I could put myself in her place and experience what a woman had to endure.

What she had to endure is almost unthinkable.  She lived as a "U-Boat" in Munich for several years during the war.  A U-Boat is what Jews who lived in the society as "Aryans" called themselves.  She did this.  She married a German man who became an Army officer toward the end of the war.  She told him she was a Jew, and for some reason he married her anyway, and did NOT turn her in.  She lived in fear all the time.

 Her mother had been taken away to Poland, and her sisters had escaped to various places while she was at a work camp early in the war.  She was the only family member still left in Germany, and did not know about her family until the war ended.  Then, she learned that her mother, after being taken to Poland in 1942, had been killed shortly after being deported.  She had told herself the entire war that her mother was alive, and after finishing the book, I think this belief is what kept her going.  That belief, and the beautiful daughter she had in 1944.  The daughter who would later ask her to tell her story to the world. 

She and Werner Vetter (the Nazi) were married about a total of four years.  He was sent to Siberia when captured by the Russians, at the end of the war, and when he came back to Munich, their life together disintegrated and they divorced.  He remarried his first wife, and Edith and her daughter soon were able to get out of Germany to England.  Edith has lived in Israel since 1987.

This book portrays the inhumanity and unbelievable cruelty of people towards other people, and  I learned much about the Nazi treatment of people, especially of women.  Women were good only as breeders, not as thinking, capable people.  She had to subvert and bury her entire background and personality in order to survive. 

In this book I also learned about the resilience of people in horrid circumstances, and how people will fight to survive in spite of horror.

This is a personal book about one life, but one life which was part of a large pattern of attempted extermination.  The human spirit shines brightly, but my heart weeps for the horror.

Ease of speech

When I get interested in a subject, I pursue it until I've mined it pretty well.  Right now, that subject is King George VI and his speech therapist, Lionel Logue.  After viewing the movie twice, I saw the book written by Logue's grandson at Target. The book is The King's Speech: how one man saved the British monarchy. 

I couldn't resist buying it, as Colin Firth's picture was on the front of the book, and I had become curious about Lionel Logue.  Why did he emigrate from Australia to London?  How did he get referred to the future king?  Who else did he work with?  Was he successful in his life? 

This book is written by his grandson Mark Logue along with Peter Conradi.  This grandson did not know his grandfather.  He was born after Mr. Logue died.  However, he had lived with a series of pictures on his mantelpiece of the king and queen, signed by them.  He knew the connection with royalty came through his paternal grandfather, and after having children of his own, set about to find out all he could.

Fortunately for him and for us, Lionel Logue kept detailed notes about his work, and also kept voluminous scrapbooks of newspaper clippings concerning the royal family and his family. 

This book details Logue's family in Australia.  Logue's family went to Australia from Ireland in 1850....that would have been during the potato famine.  They prospered and did well in the brewery business.  Lionel said he found himself when he discovered poetry, plays and public speaking.  He is said to have had a beautiful voice, and gave voice, poetry and drama recitals to great acclaim.  These were quite popular before the advent of radio.  These recitals drew large crowds all over the English speaking world.

He and his wife took a long cruise.....six months in length.....from Australia to Vancouver, B.C., to Chicago by train,and on to New York.  They stayed in both Chicago and New York for extensive periods of time, going to school in both places, and becoming acquainted with the upper society of each city.  From New York they sailed to London and stayed there several months.  This was a thoroughly enjoyable trip, and they knew when they returned home to Australia they would go to England again some time.   In 1924 they took their three sons and emigrated to England.  Lionel had had some good therapeutic voice results with World War I veterans in Australia, and wanted to try his methods where there were even more needy men.

The relationship between the King and Lionel Logue is quite an intriguing one.  They became very good friends.  Logue was with the King for almost every speech the king ever gave.  The king's progress was truly phenomenal, but Lionel always credited the king's hard, persistent work.  The king was able to rally his people during World War II, while he carried the heavy burden of the war.  We here in the U.S. hear more about Churchill, and he was a gifted strategist and orator, but the king was the heart and soul of the British people, and it was his and his queen's example and stability which carried the British people through the war. 

Since I like history, this was a good instance of backstairs history, not the world-shaking event kind, but the human kind, which does truly shape great events.

Your Majesty, Sir!

This time I will diverge from writing about books and write about a film.  If you know me, you won't be surprised at my choice of films, yes The King's Speech! A dear friend recommended it to me without reservation; I mentioned it to another dear friend, she had seen it, but was more than willing to see it again. I saw it the first time.....and LOVED it!  I visited my sister in California last week, she hadn't seen it and wanted to, I was MORE than willing to see it again.  It was even better the second time around.

If you don't know the story, it is about King George VI of England, father of the present Queen Elizabeth, a man who had an almost debilitating stutter.  Since he was second son, he didn't think this would make much of a difference, BUT, his older brother David, king for a very short time, abdicated so he could marry Wallis Simpson, a twice divorced woman from Baltimore.  Fortunately for the world, George VI was king during World War II, not his older brother.  His older brother was sympathetic to Hitler, George VI was not.

Okay....that is background, now to the movie.  In order to lead the nation, the king often had to address his people, and he had to overcome his stutter.  His wife found a non-conventional therapist who was able to help the King overcome his stutter.  Geoffrey Rush as Lionel Logue, the therapist, and Colin Firth as the King are both terrific.  What a pair they are....first adversaries, then friends.  Thanks to Logue, the King became the encourager of his people on the radio and in person.  Also, Logue became his friend.  The most poignant line in the movie was when Logue said something about his friends (the King's).  King George replied, "I don't have any friends."  That was the lonely life he lived until he married.  He was fortunate in his marriage, and it was a real love match. 

Colin Firth, whom we remember as THE Mr.Darcy from A&E's Pride and Prejudice in 1995, does a masterful job in a completely different role. He has played many successful roles since 1995, and was nominated for an Oscar last year.   I don't know how difficult it must have been to learn to stutter like he did, but I felt every humiliating anguish with him, and triumphed with him at the end.  If you've seen it, did you notice Logue's wife?  She was played by Jennifer Ehle who was Elizabeth Bennett with Pride and Prejudice. Remember how good she was? 

If you haven't seen this movie, by all means do so.  I  see very few movies a year, and this was my movie, probably for 2011.  It is a treasure, and so is Colin Firth.