About this item
Edith Hahn was an outspoken young woman in Vienna when the Gestapo forced her into a ghetto and then into a labor camp. When she returned home months later, she knew she would become a hunted woman and went underground. With the help of a Christian friend, she emerged in Munich as Grete Denner. There she met Werner Vetter, a Nazi Party member who fell in love with her. Despite Edith's protests and even her eventual confession that she was Jewish, he married her and kept her identity a secret.In wrenching detail, Edith recalls a life of constant, almost paralyzing fear. She tells of German officials who casually questioned the lineage of her parents; of how, when giving birth to her daughter, she refused all painkillers, afraid that in an altered state of mind she might reveal something of her past; and of how, after her husband was captured by the Soviet army, she was bombed out of her house and had to hide while drunken Russian soldiers raped women on the street.
About the Author
Susan Dworkin has written half a dozen plays and published 14 books, among them the international bestseller THE NAZI OFFICER'S WIFE, a true story of love and terror in the Third Reich, written with the woman who lived it, Edith Hahn Beer. Susan's definitive biography of beauty queen/public servant Bess Myerson MISS AMERICA 1945 provides a catwalk-view of post war America - wounded veterans recovering on the Boardwalk at Atlantic City, stunned Jews reeling from revelations of the Holocaust, new reform movements fighting racism and sexism.
Early stints at the US Department of Agriculture and as a journalist covering international aid projects left Susan with a fascination for all things farming. Her new novel, THE COMMONS, is a gripping science fiction thriller, set 150 years from now, about an alliance of farmers, plant scientists and young musicians fighting to save the world from starvation. THE VIKING IN THE WHEAT FIELD, a consumer-friendly guide to agricultural politics, is about the crusading seed banker, Dr. Bent Skovmand, and the future of world food security. Her play, THE FARM BILL, (described by one director as "comic and scathing") chronicles the political awakening of a low level clerk at the mammoth USDA. Short, funny, easy-to-produce, it is ideal for classes and meetings.
For ten years, Susan was a contributing editor at MS. MAGAZINE, interviewing celebrities like Meryl Streep, Whoopi Goldberg, Carol Burnett, Danny Glover, and Roseanne Barr. Her classic film study, MAKING TOOTSIE, investigates how Dustin Hoffman, Sydney Pollack and Jessica Lange made the great comedy of a man who must live for a while as a woman. Her biography of Bess Myerson at the Miss American Pageant, MISS AMERICA 1945, won honors from the New York State Historical Society.
Susan's much-praised audiobook productions include Milton Steinberg's AS A DRIVEN LEAF, THE SLAVE and THE MAGICIAN by Isaac Bashevis Singer, Edna Ferber's great coming-of-age novel FANNY HERSELF, and THE STORIES OF I.L.PERETZ (in a new English translation.)
Susan loves to hear from her readers! Please visit www.susandworkin.com to sign up for her newsletters, receive excerpts of new works, hear about upcoming events and read her blog.
