NAZI OFFICER'S WIFE, THE (TV)
Summary
Susan Sarandon narrates the story of Edith Hahn Beer, a Jewish woman who escaped Nazi persecution by falsifying identity papers and lived out the war married to a Nazi party member. The documentary uses interviews, archival World War II footage, photographs, Beer's extensive personal archives -- the largest of any Holocaust survivor -- and passages from Beer's autobiography, read by Julia Ormond, to tell Beer's story. The film opens with Beer's journey from Vienna to Munich in August 1942, which she undertook using false papers identifying her as an Aryan woman. The first part of the film tells the events in Beer's life that lead to this journey: Beer describes her privileged childhood; classmates Hans Wessely and Kurt Rothschild recall their friendships with Beer during high school; over the backdrop of the Nazi party's rise to power in Germany and Hitler's rise to the chancellorship of Germany in 1933, Beer describes her involvement with Socialist youth groups, her pursuit of a law degree at the University of Vienna and her courtship with fellow student Pepi Rosenfeld; Beer, Rothschild and Beer's contemporary Dagmar Ostermann recall the rampant anti-Semitism in Vienna following Hitler's annexation of Austria and the imposition of the Nuremberg laws in 1938. The film describes Beer's sisters' flight to Palestine, Beer's and her mother's deportations -- to a prison labor camp and a concentration camp respectively-- and how Beer's mother's absence upon her return to Vienna, Rosenfeld's rejection, and the Gestapo's warrant for her arrest lead to Beer's fugitive flight to Munich. The second part of the film recounts the life Beer led after her train journey, as the Aryan "Grete Denner": Beer describes working for the Red Cross; her courtship with Nazi party member Werner Vetter; her life in Brandenburg as a traditional German hausfrau; the birth of her daughter; her return to Vienna with her "Aryan" family; and Vetter's years as a Nazi officer during which he was captured by the Russians and imprisoned in a Siberian labor camp. The film then recounts Beer's postwar recovery of her true self: Beer describes raising her daughter in postwar impoverishment in Brandenburg; recovering her old identity and university papers; being appointed to a judgeship by the occupying Soviets; and Vetter's decision to divorce Beer upon his return from Siberia in 1947. The final part of the film talks about Beer's decision to keep her wartime story secret after taking her daughter to London in 1948, the repercussions of that decision, and her daughter Angela Schulter's eventual discovery of her mother's -- and her own -- past.
Cataloging of this program was made possible by The Marc Haas Foundation, 2002/2003.
Details
- NETWORK: A&E
- DATE: November 30, 1999 8:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 1:36:57
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: 103762
- GENRE: Documentary
- SUBJECT HEADING: Documentary; Holocaust survivors; Nazism; History; World War II
- SERIES RUN: A&E - TV, 2003
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Tamar Hacker … Executive Producer
- Abbe Raven … Executive Producer
- Rory Kennedy … Producer
- Laurent Zilber … Producer
- Christina Zilber … Producer
- Liz Garbus … Producer, Director
- Jack Youngelson … Producer, Writer
- Edith Hahn Beer … Based on the book by
- Susan Dworkin … Based on the book by
- Julia Rudin … Researcher
- Sheldon Mirowitz … Music by
- Susan Sarandon … Narrator
- Julia Ormond … Voice
- Edith Hahn Beer
- Adolf Hitler
- Dagmar Ostermann
- Pepi Rosenfeld
- Kurt Rothschild
- Angela Schluter
- Hans Wessely
- Werner Vetter