Austrian Jews perform forced labor in a farm in Osterburg, Germany.
Overview
- Caption
- Austrian Jews perform forced labor in a farm in Osterburg, Germany.
- Date
-
1941
- Locale
- Osterburg, [Saxony] Germany
- Photo Credit
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Edith Hahn
Rights & Restrictions
- Photo Source
-
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumProvenance: Edith HahnSource Record ID: Collections: 1998.A.79
Keywords & Subjects
- Photo Designation
-
LABOR CAMPS/MINOR CAMPS -- Germany -- Osterburg
Administrative Notes
- Biography
- Edith Hahn-Beer (born Edith Hahn) was born on January 24, 1914 in Vienna, Austria. She studied law at the University of Vienna until the Anschluss in 1938 when she was forced to discontinue her studies. The following year, she and her mother, Klothilde Hahn, were forced to move into the Jewish ghetto in Vienna. In April, 1941 Edith was sent to a labor camp at a farm in Osterburg, Germany, where she performed agricultural labor. In October 1941, she and other women from the farm camp were taken to a paper carton factory in Aschersleben, Germany, near Leipzig. During her time in these camps, she managed to maintain a steady correspondence with a former law school friend, Joseph "Pepi" Rosenfeld, of Vienna chronicling her experiences in the camps and his support and encouragement for her. In 1942, the Nazis ordered Edith to report for relocation, but she decided to escape deportation by going underground. She sought the aid of a non-Jewish friend, Christine Margarethe Denner. Denner applied for and received duplicate identification papers for herself. She gave one set to Edith to use while posing as a Christian. Living under her new identity, Edith settled in Munich, Germany, where she worked as a seamstress and nurse. In August 1942 Edith met and fell in love with Werner Vetter, a Nazi. After his divorce from his first wife, Vetter and Edith married in 1943. Their daughter, Angelika Maria (Angela), was born on April 9, 1944. As World War II turned against Germany, Vetter was drafted and soon captured by the Russians and taken to Siberia as a prisoner of war. Edith fled with her infant daughter to the German countryside. After the war, Edith and Werner divorced, and he returned to his first wife. Edith became a judge in the Soviet zone of Germany but eventually fled to England when the Soviets pressured her to spy on colleagues. In 1957, Edith married fellow Viennese refugee, Fred Beer. They lived near London until Beer's death in 1984. Before Fred died, he and Edith visited Pepi and retrieved the letters and postcards that she wrote to him while in the labor camps. Joseph (Pepi) Rosenfeld died in the early 1960s. Edith Hahn moved to Israel in 1984 after the death of her husband.
- Record last modified:
- 2006-10-05 00:00:00
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1161775
