This is the last in my posts on The Nazi Officer’s Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust. (The first three are here, here, and here.)

Sometimes what Edith Hahn Beer calls “personal morality” comes through:

Frieda, the girl who had lost ten teeth, began to wail: “Why is the asparagus so much more important than human beings. [DRH note: Frieda and the author were among the slave laborers on a German asparagus farm.] Why are we living at all when the whole purpose of our life is such misery?”

The overseer, miraculously moved by her outburst, let us go back to the hut.

You see, even the inhuman ones were not always inhuman. This was a lesson I would learn again and again—how completely unpredictable individuals could be when it came to personal morality.

German officer Werner falls in love with her and stays in love even when he finds out she’s Jewish. But she’s not a good cook and she lies to him about that.

Of course, this was a bald-faced lie. To understand Werner Vetter, remember that it was perfectly possible for me to tell him that I was Jewish in Germany at the height of Nazi power, but it was essential for me to lie about being a good cook.

On lying to get scarce rations:

“Listen, Grete,” he [Werner] said. “When you go to the pharmacy for the special milk for the baby, don’t be surprised if they treat you as a tragic heroine. Because to tell you the truth, I lied to them. I told them you had already buried three children and therefore they simply had to give you the milk so this fourth child of yours would not also enter eternity.”

Even now, I have to smile when I think of this. I tell you, of all the things about Werner Vetter that appealed to me, this most of all warmed my heart: He had no respect for the truth in Nazi Germany.