Holocaust Survivor’s Story to be Discussed in Book Talk

Edith Hahn, young and Jewish in Vienna, found herself forced into a ghetto by the Gestapo and later, into a labor camp. On her homecoming months later, she expected to become a hunted woman and went underground. Aided by a Christian friend, she emerged in Munich under the name Grete Denner. Then, she met Werner Vetter--a Nazi Party member, who fell in love with her. Hahn initially put him off, but eventually told him she was Jewish. He married her and helped keep her identity a secret.

Hahn’s story is the subject of “The Nazi Officer’s Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust” (HarperCollins, 2000). Her co-author, Susan Dworkin, will discuss and sign the book on Wednesday, March 18, at noon in the Library of Congress Montpelier Room, sixth floor, Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E. This Books & Beyond event, co-sponsored by the Library’s Center for the Book and its Hebrew Language Table, is free and open to the public; no tickets are required.

Hahn survived the Holocaust and created a remarkable record in the process. She saved every scrap of paper issued to her, along with photographs she was able to shoot in the prison camp. Her papers are now part of the permanent collection of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

Susan Dworkin has written half a dozen plays and published 14 books, including her biography of Bess Myerson, “Miss America, 1945: Bess Myerson and the Year That Changed Our Lives.”

Founded in 1800, the Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world. The Library seeks to spark imagination and creativity and to further human understanding and wisdom by providing access to knowledge through its magnificent collections, programs, publications and exhibitions.

The Library’s Center for the Book, established by Congress in 1977 to “stimulate public interest in books and reading,” is a national force for reading and literacy promotion. A public-private partnership, it sponsors educational programs that reach readers of all ages through its affiliated state centers, collaborations with nonprofit reading-promotion partners and through the Young Readers Center and the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress. For more information, visit Read.gov.

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