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November 12, 1999 - Image 94

Resource type:
Text
Publication:
The Detroit Jewish News, 1999-11-12

Disclaimer: Computer generated plain text may have errors. Read more about this.

Our Family Invites Your Family
to Sunday Dinner

East Fourteen Mile Road in Warren
810.268-3200

ANDIAMO

I T A L I A WEST

Telegraph and Maple. Bloomfield Hills
248.865-9300

ANDI AMO
OS TER I A

Royal Oak at Main and Second
248-582-9300
Rochester at Main and Fourth
248-601-9330

an iamo

t I eCi

re

frer

Jefferson Avenue
in St. Clair Shores
810-773-7770

What I t vUgvJt., (a-a/c Psvera4t/t to be- !

Sunday Dinner Served Family Style

T RATTOR I A

}A mu

At all locations. Dinner includes soup, salad. entree. vegetable and desert
ONLY $14.95 for Adults $1.95 for Children under age 10

Mack Avenue in
Grosse Pointe Woods
313.886-9933

CALL FOR RESERVATIONS

STYLE Magazine, GREIS Jewelers and WNIC

are looking for interesting or unusual stories about how couples met. Send us your love story.
in 75 words or less and win a fabulous piece of jewelry from Greis. The winning entry will be
featured in STYLE Magazine's Winter 2000 issue and read on the air by Alan Almond on
Pillowtalk...8 p.m.-midnight on 100.3 WNIC.

HOW THE CONTEST WORKS: Send us the story of how you and your partner met in 75
words or less.

THE JUDGES:
• Carla Schwartz, Editor, Style Magazine • Alan Almond, 100.3 WNIC

11/12
1999

94

THE PRIZES:
• First Place: Diamond Anniversary Band • Second Place: His or Hers Movado Watch
• Third Place: Mikimoto Pearl Stud Earrings

Plus the winning entry will be featured in STYLE Magazine and on WNIC.

Employees of Waterspout Communications, Greis Jewelers and WNIC are ineligible.

Deadline is November 30, 1999

Send entry to:

STYLE Magazine's
"HOW WE MET" Contest

27676 Franklin Road
Southfield, MI 48034 or fax to
(248) 354-6069

or e-mail to: Detstyle@aol.com .

Please include your name, address, daytime and evening phone
numbers. Winners may be photographed for STYLE Magazine.

SHY

Cittz).

JEWELERS

11/MCW13

Pr reirr NilsieR6

in August 1942, she met Werner
Vetter, a tall, blond man with a swasti-
ka pin in his lapel, on vacation in
Munich. He took great interest in her.
She writes: "I felt that I had wan-
dered into one of those Heirnat paint-
ings, that I was turning gold and
orange like the idealized cornfields. It
was a strange, surreal feeling. One
month you're a starving, hunted,
undesired liability. The next month
you're a Rhine maiden on a tourist
holiday and the king of the Vikings is
paying you compliments and trying to
persuade you not to catch that last
train to Deisenhofen before the
evening blackout, so you can stay the
night with him."
Vetter, who worked in the aircraft
industry, returned to his home but
after a few months returned to
Munich. He proposed marriage; she
was flabbergasted.
Somehow, she trusted him and felt
that she had no choice but to tell him
the truth — that she was not 21-year
old Grete but 28-year old Edith, a Jew.
But he was unfazed. He then
revealed that he hadn't altogether told
the truth — that he wasn't a bachelor
but in the midst of a divorce. She real-
ized that he was offering her not only
love but safety. "I accepted and
thanked God for my good fortune."
Living with Vetter in Brandenburg,
she had some degree of normal life, as
normal as life under the Nazis might
be, but she lived in fear. She went out
of her way to shop in a store where
the owner didn't require that patrons
offer the Nazi salute. When she gave
birth to her daughter, she would take
no painkillers, for fear that she would
reveal her identity if unconscious. As
she heard the Allied bombings nearby,
she prayed for "release from the prison
of my pretense."
In September 1944, Vetter was
drafted, promoted to an officer, sent to
the eastern front, and then taken pris-
oner by the Soviets and sent to Siberia.
After the war, Beer revealed her identi-
ty and became a judge in the Soviet
zone, but she left for England when
Soviet officials tried to convince her to
become a spy. When Vetter returned
from Siberia, their marriage floundered
— she was once again a strong-mind-
ed, intelligent Jewish woman, not a
quiet wife — and they divorced.
In 1957, Beer married a Viennese
Jew in England; both she and her new
husband told each other their wartime
stories only once and never spoke of
their past again. He died in 1984, and
she moved to Israel three years later.
Over the years, she stayed in

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