Survival

One of the main themes that emerges from “The Nazi Officer’s Wife,” is one of fundamental survival. Edith began life as a happy, brilliant youngster who loved her family, her school, her religion and her life in Vienna. Edith’s teachers recommended that she go on to high school – unusual for a girl in Vienna during the 1920s. But Edith even topped that when she went onto university and law school. The élan of youth kept Edith from noticing the growing and ominous signs that life for Jews in Austria would soon change and that her future would be drastically altered and her life turned upside down.

With the Nazi invasion of Austria, Jews were hunted down and made to register and required to wear yellow Stars of David to identify them. But things escalated from mere registration and public humiliation to real life or death peril...