The Nazi Officer's Wife (32 page)

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Pepi tying his shoe on a visit to Stockerau in 1939.

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This picture, taken on the same visit, is the only one I have of Pepi and me together. He came to visit me when I was caring for my grandfather, who had suffered a stroke.

My student identification at the University of Vienna, 1933.

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This picture was taken when I was nineteen years old.

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Pepi in 1937, at age twenty-four.

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After the Germans took over Austria—the Anschluss of 1938—all Jews were given new identification cards. Men were given the middle name Israel. Women were given the middle name Sara.

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A reissued passport. It felt strange—it was my old picture with my new middle name, Sara.

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The eviction notice that banished Mama and me from our home. After this, we lived in the Vienna ghetto.

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The asparagus plantation at Osterburg. These were some of my co-workers, bending over the furrowed fields.

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Our overseer’s little daughter, Ulrike Fleschner, then about four years old, holding a Nazi flag.

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Herr Fleschner, the overseer, is on the left, wearing a white shirt. Next to him are Frau Telscher, one of my roommates at Osterburg, and Pierre, a French prisoner of war whom the Germans called Franz. The baskets are for asparagus.

These are letters Pepi and I exchanged to practice English when I was in the slave labor camp. He corrected me but I never corrected him. I was by choice the pupil and he the teacher.

The Nazis required that all ID pictures show the left ear. I used this one, which Pepi took in 1939, because it was the least recognizable photograph of me. The Gestapo had a copy in its files.

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The last notes Mama wrote to Pepi before she was deported. “They won’t let me stay behind,” she wrote. “I have to go…. Please tell Edith…. God will stand by her and me.”

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In this letter, I wrote to Pepi that my friend Mina Katz and I had enjoyed the sweets he’d sent me and that my quota had been raised to 35,000 boxes per day.

The last letter I received from Mina before she was deported. She wrote in code. “Prinz-Eugenstrasse” refers to the headquarters of the Gestapo in Vienna. “Tante” (“Aunt”) refers to Frau Doktor Maria Niederall, who helped me so much.

My Jewish ration card. I was supposed to use it when I returned to Vienna from Aschersleben, but I never did.

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I borrowed my friend Christl Denner’s lilac blouse for this picture, which I gave as a gift to Pepi in 1940 just before I was taken to the
Arbeitslager
, the labor camp. When Pepi died in 1977, it was still sitting on his desk at home.

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Christl Denner Beran, my dear friend, who died in 1992. She gave me her identity papers and saved my life. Christl is wearing a dress my mother made for her.