By ALLAN HALL
PUBLISHED: 15:37, 6 July 2012 | UPDATED: 16:12, 6 July 2012
The extraordinary love story of a young man who faced off against the power of the Nazi state to try to save his Jewish fiancee from the gas chambers has become a best seller in German-speaking Europe.
‘Love in the Time of Racial Madness’ is an epic account of the doomed relationship between Heinrich Heinen and his sweetheart Edith Sara Meyer.
He was a gentile, she a ‘full Jew’ under the perverse Nuremberg Racial Laws. It meant not only was it illegal for them to marry, but as the war progressed, she was marked for deportation and extermination.
WARNING: Spoiler alert in this story
Best-seller: Edith Sara Meyer (left) is the subject of a new book (right)
What made their story so remarkable was the lengths Heinen went to in order to free her from the grip of her tormentors.
He broke her out of the Jewish ghetto in Riga, Latvia, after she was shipped there in 1941. Using his wiles and cunning, munitions worker Heinen slipped past the S.S. and smuggled her out of the disease ridden ghetto and back to Germany on false papers.
They then attempted to flee into Switzerland from Austria but were captured by Nazi border guards and imprisoned.
Heinen managed to escape from his cell at Feldkirch prison two months later and made it into another part of the jail where female prisoners were held.
Extraordinary: The love story of a young man who faced off against the power of the Nazi state to try to save his Jewish fiancee from the gas chambers of Auschwitz has become a best seller
He searched frantically for her but in vain; another female prisoner told him she had been shipped to Auschwitz just three hours earlier.
He made it to the outside and tried to find shelter in the village of Hohenems. He was denounced by a Nazi resident and shot by the S.S. and the lover he was never to see again was murdered at Auschwitz within hours of arrival.
Sweethearts since 1938, their story is now told by a retired judge, Alfons Duer from Feldkirch, who sat during his career in the same courthouse where the duo appeared after their failed escape to Switzerland.
Herr Duer has researched the book for several years.
He said: ‘Some of these events played out in my court and I sat in his cell, number 52 in the jail next to the court, and I thought what a tragic, human and ultimately inspiring love story this was.
‘They died because the state said their love was illegal.’
They were not the only ones in her family to die. While on the run to Austria the pair stayed at the home of her pregnant cousin Helen Krebs.
Denounced by Nazi neighbours, she was shipped off to Auschwitz and gassed despite the pleas of her protestant husband to spare her.
The book will be translated into English at the end of the year after stellar reviews, and media reports said it is being optioned in Hollywood with a view to making a film.
This kind of story reminds me of the film I have watched many years ago — The Pianist. I love it very much. (And we can’t forget “Schindler’s List” as well)
They’re different type of stories (which are real stories as well) from a “love” one, but they indeed share some similarities, German save Jews. I don’t agree the saying that all German were Nazis and they’re killers during that period of time. There were many hidden touching stories like this, but they were never revealed. We can’t judge and deny all the people just because one of them has done something terribly.
I love The Pianist very much. At first, I watched this film because I loved Chopin’s music, and then I learned Nazi history accidentally. The film shows the cruelness of Nazi, but in the end it also shows not everyone of them has no kindness to the Jews. However, The Pianist contains “strong violence” (which every time I watched it, I couldn’t bear myself seeing the killing parts, not even listening to the screams, the crying and the gunshots. I always had to close my eyes. It was just too painful to watch.), so if anyone is interested in this film, please be prepared!
Know more about the real story of The Pianist, please visit: http://www.szpilman.net/
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