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. Yet despite the risk it posed to her life, Edith created a remarkable record of survival. She saved every document and set of papers issued to her, as well as photographs she managed to take inside labor camps. Now part of the permanent collection at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., these hundreds of documents, several of which are included in this volume, form the fabric of a gripping new chapter in the history of the Holocaust -- complex, troubling, and ultimately triumphant.

[英]伊迪絲·漢恩·比爾，原名伊迪絲·漢恩，齣生於1914年，成長於奧地利維也納。

·進入大學深造，這在20世紀30年代奧地利年輕女性中極為罕見；

·1941年，她被迫前往德國北部的勞改營勞動，13個月裏每周勞動80小時，分配到僅供充飢的食物；

·1942年，她被遣返維也納，在朋友幫助下化名格蕾特·但納，潛往慕尼黑；

·在慕尼黑，她遇到納粹軍官維納·弗特，並嚮後者坦誠瞭自己的猶太人身份，兩人1943年結婚，前往勃蘭登堡生活，1944年生下一個女兒；

·1945年德國戰敗，伊迪絲重申自己的猶太人身份，並成為勃蘭登堡傢庭法庭法官；

·1947年，伊迪絲與維納感情徹底破裂，協議離婚；

·1948年，蘇聯企圖吸納伊迪絲為東德安全部密探，她逃亡至英國；

·1957年，與猶太珠寶商人弗雷德·比爾結婚；

·1984年，移居以色列，後再移居英國，2009年於倫敦去世。

伊迪絲將私人文件捐獻給美國華盛頓大屠殺博物館，共計800份，這是館內所收藏的屬於單個人的最龐大的文獻之一。

[美]蘇珊·德沃金，美國小說傢、劇作傢，本書閤著者。她的著作包括經典喜劇電影《窈窕淑男》，小說《平民百姓》《花園小姐》等，所閤作的項目曾獲艾美奬、皮博迪奬、國傢圖書奬提名。