spoken for

Rating: 9

In a nutshell, Edith is a Jew in Austria during WWII who after attending a couple of work camps is allowed to go back home. She’s supposed to report (for eventual deportment) but doesn’t, instead going underground. She gets an Aryan identity of a friend and moves to Germany where she ends up marrying a Nazi party member who becomes an officer when he’s drafted. She has a child by him, a girl. It’s a very good book, an amazing story of survival. The only thing was, she refers a lot to “luck” throughout the book… I don’t think it was luck…

One thing hit me though, towards the end of the book, the author is discussing the very end of the war (Germany’s war, after they were defeated) and she writes,

It took almost six months before we had ration cards again, and then we received a quarter of a liter of skim milk per day for a child.

So after some math, being the American that I am (I only “do” liters in two), I find that 1/4 of a liter is about a cup, .528 pints to be exact.

This does not even fill my son’s cup! And he can drink probably 5 to 6 of is cups a day! And what you see in the cup is also not skim milk, it’s the blue capped stuff… 2% I guess.

I am amazed how anyone lived through that time and place at all… And I am thankful for what we have…

** yes, that measuring cup is SO stained with Hubby’s tea! It looks so nasty, but I swear it’s clean!! Stuff won’t come off!! ;-)

But I really recommend this book. She writes so beautifully, it really sucks you in. Such a story of triumph, though she lost her mother and lost touch with lots of friends and more distant relatives (didn’t know if they survived or not) her two sisters lived as did her brother-in-law and her lover, as she called him, and she gained a daughter.

My favorite part was a page or so after the 1/4 liter, she writes,

I went to the Central Registry and to my horror found myself looking at the same man who had officiated our wedding ceremony.
“Ah, Frau Vetter! I remember you.”
“And I remember you too.”
“It still says here that we have no background papers for your mother’s mother. Perhaps now that our Russian friends have come, they can supply them.”
“I think not. Those were false papers.”
“What?”
“Here, these are my real identity papers. And this is a court order commanding you to register me as the person I really am.”
He stared at my Jewish identity papers, shocked.
“You lied to me!” he exclaimed.
“Yes, I certaintly did.”
“You falsified your racial records!”
“Right.”
“This is a high crime against the state, what you did!”
I leaned toward him. Close. Close. I wanted him to feel my breath.
“Well, I don’t think you will find any attorney in Brandenburg to indict me for it now,” I said.
I was now the real me, for the first time in years. How did that feel, you ask? I will tell you. It felt like nothing. Because, you see, I could not immediately find the old Edith. She was still a U-boat, deep in hiding. Just like the rest of the Jews, she did not bounce back quickly. It took time, a long time.
Forever.
I took my new identity and went to see the mayor of the town, a communist who spent many years in a concentration camp.
“From which camp did you come?” he asked.
I said, “I managed without a camp.”
He looked at my school records, which Pepi had preserved. He saw immediately that I had the qualifications of a junior barrister – a Referendrar. So he sent me to the Brandenburg courthouse, where I got a new job right away and suddenly, incredibly, a new life.

Boo-ya! Take that… damn Nazis.

Of course, that’s not the end of the story, there was yet more hardship to follow, but, of course, she survives that, too. Really, you should read this book. ;-)

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