The Nazi Officer’s Wife

Synopsis

Edith Hahn was an outspoken young woman studying law in Vienna when the Gestapo forced her into the Jewish ghetto. Knowing she would become a hunted woman, Edith tore the yellow star from her clothing and went underground. A Christian friend gave Edith her identity papers, and Edith fled to Munich. She got a job at the Red Cross, and lived in a boarding house outside Munich. There she met Werner Vetter, a Nazi party member who fell in love with her. And despite her protests and even her eventual confession that she was Jewish, he married her and kept her identity secret. The two of them – the Nazi and his Jewish wife – lived out the war together, even bearing a child. The film explores faith, family, identity and love in this complex portrait of a woman who had to bury her true self in order to survive.

Director

Liz Garbus

Liz Garbus is an award-winning documentary film director and producer. Her film, Bobby Fischer Against the World, opened the documentary section of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, reserved for master American documentary filmmakers.

In 1998, Garbus’ film The Farm: Angola, USA was nominated for an Academy Award. The Farm was awarded with prizes including the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and two Emmy awards. In 2002, Garbus’ film The Execution of Wanda Jean was shown at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2003 she directed The Nazi Officer’s Wife, which was narrated by Susan Sarandon and Julia Ormond. In 2005 Garbus collaborated with partner Rory Kennedy to executive-produce the Academy Award-nominated Street Fight about the 2002 Newark mayoral election. In 2006 the pair worked with director Rosie Perez to produce her film Yo Soy Boricua. Her other producing credits include Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, which premièred at Sundance and won an Emmy for Outstanding Non-Fiction Special of 2007. In 2007 Garbus directed the film Coma, which aired on HBO in July of that year. It is about the experiences of four brain-injured patients receiving treatment at the JFK-Johnson Medical Facility in New Jersey.