A Case of Identity
by
Unmistakably among the better screen treatments of the Holocaust is The Nazi Officer's Wife, scheduled to open June 13 at the Two Boots Pioneer Theater in New York. Directed and co-produced by television-award winning Liz Garbus, a 1998 Oscar nominee for The Farm: Angola, USA, at first sight this documentary would appear another tale of survival, in this case that of a twenty-eight-year-old Jewish law student who went underground, assuming a false identity and passing as Aryan in Vienna and then Munich, the very birthplace of National Socialism.
But here an admirable true story adroitly turns into more, for it considers the nature of one's personal, national, racial and ethnic essence. Such questions of individual and group identity are particularly relevant for immigrant-based America, where post-Emerson nineteenth- and twentieth-century culture has grappled with similar issues. "I prayed," recalls protagonist Edith Hahn Beer, 'Let someone remember who I really am.'"
Unusual for such films, this does not oscillate between past footage and present interviews -- aside from Ms. Hahn, a scant four interviewees appear, identified not by subtitles but through their words, with only two interviewer's questions left uncut -- but, rather, proceeds chronologically. Unobtrusively narrated by Susan Sarandon, with Julia Ormond voicing excerpts from Hahn's autobiography, a few photos and well chosen newsreel reminders of cities, combat, ghetto roundups and the 1936 Olympics furnish a feeling of place and developing events. The resultant sense of continuous storyline rises above the jerkiness of many other documentaries.
Moreover, even though this strong woman acknowledges "so much luck, so much help . . . even from Nazis"-- the latter obviously not inscribed among Israel's non-Jewish Righteous Among the Nations -- it was she herself who made the deliberate choices that determined situation and, finally, fate. In this, her active participation makes her more attractive than The Pianist's passive Szpilman (or, say, on another, satiric level, the acted-upon wordless heroes of a Being There or The Brother from Another Planet).
Her happy "assimilated" existence is abruptly undercut by social-economic upheaval and neighbors whose prejudice unmasks as hatred, by a beloved Great War-veteran father's early death and two sisters' flight to Palestine, the arrival of Kristallnacht and Nuremberg Laws, forced labor, her mother's death-camp deportation and her adored Pepi's ending their engagement.
Refusing to register, Edith removes the obligatory Yellow Star and, with papers furnished by a Gentile friend, leaves for Bavaria. Against loss and displacement conveyed through shots of trains, tracks and stations, she becomes a Red Cross Aid swearing allegiance to the Führer -- "nearest to Hitler's heart, he loves you" -- and avoids the advances of German soldiers, only to become involved with the insistent manager of an essential wartime factory (conscripted as an officer only in the last days of hostilities). Werner Vetter knows her secret, but, still unmarried, the two share his Brandenburg flat, where she plays model German housewife. A daughter, Angela, is born in a Third Reich hospital, named for a helpful Austrian Aryan and, by matrilineal law, a Jewish child.
Having masqueraded as what she is not, after the war Edith reassumes her Jewishness and sense of ironic humor and, through documents and two-hundred-fifty letters courageously saved by Pepi, is appointed a judge in the Russian Sector of Brandenburg, though she later flees to the West. To this day, however, her story is not fully resolved, for, baptized for Werner's approval but raised Jewish, Angela did not learn the truth until 1974, and ambivalence and resentment ring in her voice during a brief interview.
Meanwhile, Edith muses about her Aryan ex-husband, the demanding Party member who loved her as Hausfrau but could not live with the independent post-war woman and who, all accepting of National Socialist line, was likely anti-Semitic.
While a few other Holocaust films touch on these problems arising after liberation, most fail to capture so well the trauma that lasts a lifetime. Guilt feelings among the living, the judgmental "outrage" of some coreligionists who did return from extermination camps, the mixture of bravery and cowardice in fellow human beings, all are hinted here. Though one wishes that more space might have been devoted to such themes, screen time is limited and The Nazi Officer's Wife remains a film to see. Beyond its craftsmanship and the love and courage it depicts, lie basic issues of who, exactly, we are and who we may become.
(Released by Moxie FirecrackerFilms/Trillion Entertainment; not rated by MPAA.)