Dancing with the enemy
Subtitle: my family's Holocaust secret
By: Paul Glaser
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2015
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9781632205810
Subjects: Jewish women; Women dancers; BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs; Jews; BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Historical; HISTORY / Holocaust; BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Women; Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945); Biography
Work titles: Tante Roosje
Description: ""An extraordinary story of an unconventional, nervy woman and her determination to survive." -The New York Post  Raised in a devout Roman Catholic family in the Netherlands, Paul Glaser was shocked to learn of his father's Jewish heritage as an adult. Grappling with his newfound identity and stunned by his father's secrecy, Paul set out to discover what had happened to his family during World War II and what had caused the long-standing rift between his father and his estranged aunt, Rosie, who moved to Sweden after the war. Piecing together his aunt's wartime diaries, photographs, and letters, Paul reconstructed the dramatic story of a woman who was caught up in the tragic sweep of World War II.  Rosie Glaser was a magnetic force-hopeful, exuberant, and cunning. An emancipated woman who defied convention, she toured Western Europe teaching ballroom dancing to high acclaim, falling in love hard and often. Then the Nazis seized power. For Rosie, a nonpracticing Jew, this marked the beginning of an extremely dangerous ordeal. She was eventually taken to prison by the SS and sent to a series of concentration camps.  But her enemies were unable to destroy her and, remarkably, she survived, in part by giving dance and etiquette lessons to her captors. Rosie was an entertainer at heart, and her incredible resourcefulness kept her alive in the midst of horrendous tragedy. Of the twelve hundred people who arrived with her in Auschwitz, only eight survived.  Illustrated with more than ninety photographs, Dancing with the Enemy recalls an extraordinary life marked by love, betrayal, and fierce determination. "--

"Raised in a devout Roman Catholic family in the Netherlands, Paul Glaser was shocked to learn of his father's Jewish heritage as an adult. Grappling with his newfound identity and stunned by his father's secrecy, Paul set out to discover what had happened to his family during World War II and what had caused the long-standing rift between his father and his estranged aunt, Rosie, who moved to Sweden after the war. Piecing together his aunt's wartime diaries, photographs, and letters, Paul reconstructed the dramatic story of a woman who was caught up in the tragic sweep of World War II. Rosie Glaser was a magnetic force--hopeful, exuberant, and cunning. An emancipated woman who defied convention, she toured Western Europe teaching ballroom dancing to high acclaim, falling in love hard and often. Then the Nazis seized power. For Rosie, a nonpracticing Jew, this marked the beginning of an extremely dangerous ordeal. She was eventually taken to prison by the SS and sent to a series of concentration camps. But her enemies were unable to destroy her and, remarkably, she survived, in part by giving dance and etiquette lessons to her captors. Rosie was an entertainer at heart, and her incredible resourcefulness kept her alive in the midst of horrendous tragedy. Of the twelve hundred people who arrived with her in Auschwitz, only eight survived. Illustrated with more than ninety photographs, Dancing with the Enemy recalls an extraordinary life marked by love, betrayal, and fierce determination"--
Notes: Originally published in the Netherlands as Tante Roosje by Uitgeverij Verbum, Laren, in 2010.