TOW#19: IRB "The Nazi Officer's Wife" by Edith Hahn Beer

Safe Is Not So Safe

Elie Wiesel is a famous author known for his memoir, "Night". He wrote about his life during the Holocaust; He describes the torture and the devastation he went through with his father. However, a woman named Edith Hahn Beer, who was also Jewish, went through the exact opposite of what he went through. Yet, she was just as terrified. Beer writes her story in "The Nazi Officer's Wife", and shows that life was actually still terrifying even though she was "safe" by appealing to ethos and using descriptive diction.

Beer appeals to ethos by retelling a true story about herself in order to make herself more credible to the audience. This book is a true story in her perspective about the horrible things that she had to go through during the Holocaust. Because this story is true and in her perspective, she is more credible rather than a person writing about her. If another person had written about her, the readers would think that the author changed a few details here and there to make the story more interesting. But this story is told from the primary source. The readers are, therefore, able to believe Beer and be more engaged with the story. Thus, the readers are more fascinated that all these events in the story are true. 

Beer also uses descriptive diction in order to add detail into her writing to make it sound interesting. She talks about the terrible ride to Munich by saying, “I murdered the personality I was born with and transformed myself from a butterfly back in into a caterpillar. That night I learned to seek the shadows, to prefer silence”. This shows that she was a different person now. By stating "I murdered the personality" shows that she has gotten rid of who she used to be and became a different person; But not in a good way. She also says that she "transformed myself from a butterfly back in into a caterpillar", which also shows that she is now in hiding and in the process of becoming a different person. By using descriptive diction such as "murdered", "transformed", "butterfly" and "caterpillar", she is able to imply her feelings without being banal and too straight-forward, which would not sound as intriguing. 

Beer was able to avoid the torturous Holocaust that many people went through, by meeting a non-Jewish man who promised to keep her identity a secret. However, she lived in fear everyday, fear that she might be caught. Ultimately, she managed to stay hidden for the rest of the Holocaust. Yet, she writes a book about how terrified she was despite her luckiness by appealing to ethos and using descriptive diction.