Forbidden Love
Courage in the Time of Racial Madness
9789653087330
200 pages
Yad Vashem Publications
Overview
This extraordinary story—one of great love, daring escape, and tragic failure—is the story of Heinrich Heinen and Edith Meyer, a “German” and a “Jewess,” who risked—and ultimately lost—their lives for love.
Heinrich and Edith met in Cologne in 1938. Their relationship, forbidden by the Nazi racial laws, was under constant threat of discovery and punishment. In December 1941, Edith was deported to the East. Having discovered her whereabouts, in April 1942 Heinrich set out to liberate her from the Riga ghetto. Together they traveled more than 3,000 km, hoping to reach Switzerland, where they could find a safe haven for their love. However, they were arrested in Feldkirch, on the Swiss border. Vividly and grippingly, Alfons Dür recounts the true story of a tragic love during the Nazi era, drawing on original documents and photographs.
Author Bio
Alfons Dür (born 1948, Lauterach, Vorarlberg) studied law in Vienna and served as a judge, including as President of the Feldkirch Regional Court from 1998 to 2008. His research focuses on Nazi-era justice and the legal and judicial history of Vorarlberg.
In 1997, Dür discovered a cache of Nazi-era files documenting an attempted escape by young prisoners from Feldkirch prison. Behind these records emerged the extraordinary story of a forbidden love that claimed the lives of German soldier Heinrich Heinen and his Jewish fiancée, Edith Meyer. Drawing on decades of archival research, Dür retraces the couple’s journey, reconstructing their daring escape from the Riga ghetto across Europe to Feldkirch, and recounting its tragic end.
