Edith Hahn survived the Holocaust hiding in plain sight, like a few others - few, compared to the number that existed before the Holocaust in Europe, and also compared to the number that perished in the Holocaust as per the nazi determination of making Europe "Judenfrei", free of Jews. She went on to live her life, mostly determined not to look back, like most of such survivors of so harrowing an ordeal, until later in the century when a combination of factors made it imperative and possible to save their stories from being extinguished with them as they grew old and life was no longer a guarantee.
This need to save their stories from oblivion into recorded history was the motivation, while their need to live and not look back had been taken care of by lives lived in relative safety, families grown anew and more. And one of the key factors that had silenced such stories from being published earlier in the century, especially the post war years, was now no longer that relevant - which was the post WWII accommodation of hundreds, thousands of erstwhile nazis by various world powers including the Vatican and also the policy of US initiated by Allen Dulles in the interest of US and its cold war against the Soviets, resulting in helping hundreds of war criminals to flee or hide in Europe with other identities, or even without if it were possible to have them ignored.
And since the victims of Holocaust were meanwhile silent, exposure of such war crimes and the general atmosphere of antisemitism of Europe was to remain hidden in plain sight too, the stories of various victims and their criminals or those that survived due to help and their helpers, saviours, meanwhile being hidden in plain sight too.
Thankfully that era is abating, and a few stories are now being heard by the world, published now that the stigma and strictures against their publications are somewhat abated.
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Edith Hahn, like many of the Jews of Europe of that era, was from a family not very strict in observance, although they did practice and observe some, but were more into the then current life of their nations, their time, with their aspirations taking them to the higher echelons of education in performing arts, medicine, law or business. Often they joined military of their nations too, and had fought in the WWI too without the antisemitism of their societies being not affected by it whatsoever.
Edith had aspired to be a judge due to a famous case in court during her young years in school, and did go on to almost finish her education in law, except the Anschluss and subsequent laws imposed in Austria made it impossible for her to take her final exams that would qualify her in Vienna, her home town, as a Doctor in Law. Her younger sisters escaped to various safe havens - Ersatz Israel, Great Britain - and went on to become parts of their new nations, while Edith and her mother lived on in Vienna, until picked up off street by authorities to be sent off to Germany for slave labour in farms. Edith successfully argued into being sent off alone, and spent years slaving in farms and factories in abominable conditions of starvation and cold, until she was sent back to Vienna for purpose of being deported to east "for resettlement". Her mother had already been sent off, and Edith never saw her again, although hoping against hope to do so one day.
Edith survived due to her own determination, her ability to hide herself in plain sight by submerging her personality and pretending to be illiterate and stupid, and with some luck, and a good deal of help from various people who helped her with food, shelter, and a change of identity - and then she met someone in Munich who was so determined to marry her, his own antisemitism and the danger of marrying her were non sequitur in the context in spite of her having told him of her being Jewish.
How Edith lived her life as Grete Vetter, a wife of a German who had grown up during nazi era and did think and spout along antisemitic lines but helped her nevertheless, how she managed to escape detection of her being Jewish until Russians occupied eastern Germany and she suddenly found herself not only able to say who she was but now became very valuable as an educated person who was definitely not a nazi, how she went on to be a judge for a while until it became too dangerous for her to stay on in another totalitarian regime and she managed to escape to Great Britain to join her sister, is all very gripping.
Very valuable of course are the insights into human characters - how people had a choice of being decent or otherwise even in those circumstances, and how various people made those choices sheer out of their own volition. And she has much to say about her experiences and her understanding of societies and humans as individuals, which she says, profound truths expressed in concise but nevertheless definite terms, worth attention. For example, her early realisation that what the Jews had thought of as a mere prejudice, the antisemitism in ambient society, was a hatred inclucated and nurtured by teachings of church, that was submerged until freed by the nazi occupation of the nation.
That the churches are still continuing the lies used to flame this hatred is something of an open secret, known to all churchgoers who take the church teachings as truth - although this truth is about as true as the gospels validated by church of Rome post Nicea, and allowed to be read by general public.
