Edith Hahn-Beer papers

Edith Hahn-Beer (1914-2009) was born Edith Hahn on January 24, 1914 in Vienna, Austria to Klothilde (1890-1942) and Leopold Hahn (d. 1936). She had two sisters, Maria Hahn (Mimi), and Johanna Hahn (Hansi, b. 1921). Her parents owned a restaurant in Vienna. Prior to the German annexation of Austria in March 1938 (Anschluss), Edith was a law student at the University of Vienna. She was also engaged to fellow law student Joseph Rosenfeld (Pepi). In 1939 Edith and her mother were forced to move into the Jewish ghetto in Vienna. In April 1941 she was sent to a farm in Osterburg, Germany where she was a forced-laborer. In October 1941, she and other women from the farm camp were taken to a paper carton factory in Aschersleben, Germany. During her time in these camps, Edith managed to maintain a steady correspondence with her fiance Joseph. In 1942, Edith received notice that she was to be deported from Vienna, and she fled and went into hiding. Her mother Klothilde was deported in June 1942 and likely perished. With the aid of a non-Jewish friend, Christine Margarethe Denner (b. 1922), Edith received false identification papers bearing Denner’s name. She then fled to Munich where she worked as a seamstress and nurse. In August 1942 Edith met Werner Vetter (1912-2002). Werner was a Nazi officer and married, but fell in love with Edith and soon divorced his wife. She eventually revealed to him that she was Jewish and living under a false-identity. Edith and Werner settled in Brandenburg an der Havel, and married in 1943. Their daughter, Angelika Maria (Angela, later Angelika Schlüter), was born on April 9, 1944. Nearing the end of the war, Werner was drafted and soon captured by the Russians. He was sent to Siberia as a prisoner of war. Edith fled with her infant daughter to the German countryside. After the war, Edith and Werner divorced in 1947, and he returned to his first wife. Edith became a judge in the Soviet zone of Germany. She received pressure from Soviet authorities to spy on her colleagues, and she and her daughter fled to England 1948, where one of her sisters lived. In 1957, Edith married fellow Viennese refugee, Fred Beer. They lived near London until Fred's death in 1984, and then Edith moved to Israel. Her story was published in the co-authored book “The Nazi officer’s wife” in 1999. Edith died in London in 2009. Christine Margarete Denner was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in 1985 for her efforts to help save Edith.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum collection, gift of Dalck Feith and Drew Lewis

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum collection, gift of Edith Hahn-Beer

Dalk Feith, Drew Lewis, and Edith Hahn-Beer donated the Edith Hahn-Beer papers to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1998. The accessions numbered 1998.A.0079 and 1998.A.0196 have been incorporated into this collection.