The Nazi Officer's Wife (2003)
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86% of critics liked it
(14 reviews) -
80% of users liked it
(42 ratings)
"The Nazi Officer's Wife" looks at the extraordinary and unforgettable life of Holocaust survivor Edith Hahn Beer. Born in Vienna in 1914, Edith Hahn was an outspoken young woman studying law in Vienna when the Gestapo forced Edith and her mother into the Jewish ghetto. Soon Edith was deported to a… More
"The Nazi Officer's Wife" looks at the extraordinary and unforgettable life of Holocaust survivor Edith Hahn Beer. Born in Vienna in 1914, Edith Hahn was an outspoken young woman studying law in Vienna when the Gestapo forced Edith and her mother into the Jewish ghetto. Soon Edith was deported to a labor camp, and though she convinced Nazi officials to spare her mother, when she returned home she discovered that her mother had been deported. Knowing she would become a hunted woman, Edith tore the yellow star from her clothing and went underground, scavenging for food and searching each night for a safe place to sleep. Her boyfriend, Pepi, proved too terrified to help her, but a Christian friend was not. With the Christian woman's identity papers in hand, Edith fled to Munich.
Edith was now what became known as a "U-boat" -- a fugitive hiding in plain sight in Nazi Germany. She got a job at the Red Cross and lived in a boarding house outside Munich. There she met Werner Vetter, a Nazi party member who fell in love with her. And despite her protests and even her eventual confession that she was Jewish, he married her and kept her identity secret. The two of them - the Nazi and his Jewish wife - lived out the war together, even bearing a child. Angela Vetter, their daughter is the only Jewish girl known to be born in a Nazi hospital.
Edith Hahn and her daughter survived the war, while potential exposure lurked at every corner. But Edith Hahn is not simply a hero she is a complicated woman who kept her story of survival secret for nearly half a century, deceiving even her children. The film explores issues of faith, family and identity in this complex portrait of a woman who had to bury her true self in order to survive. -- © Seventh Art Releasing
- Rating, Runtime
- Unrated, 1 hr. 37 min.
- Directed By
- Liz Garbus
- Written By
- Jack Youngelson
- Genres
- Documentary, Drama, Special Interest
- In Theaters
- Jun 13, 2003 Limited
- On DVD
- Jul 29, 2003
- Studio
- Seventh Art Releasing
Critic Reviews
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Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune
A compelling survival drama despite the mundane telling.
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Janice Page, Boston Globe
One of the most compelling films the Holocaust has yet produced.
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Elvis Mitchell, New York Times
It is a bewitching and harrowing tale of the continual submersion of self to stay alive, told by a woman who survived the impostures in which she cloaked herself.
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V.A. Musetto, New York Post
The amazing story of Edith Hahn Beer, an Austrian Jew who survived the Holocaust by passing herself off as Aryan.
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J. Hoberman, Village Voice
A powerful account of living in isolation and constant terror.
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