ENTERTAINMENT REALM

The Ghost Waltz by Ingeborg Day. Publisher: Harper Perennial (June 2014). Memoir. Paperback.  232 pages. ISBN13: 9780062310002.

“It was simple. If I detested anti-Semitism with my brain and soul, I had to distance myself from my parents to a degree unbearable for me. So I detested anti-Semitism with my brain alone.”

An editor at Ms. Magazine, Ingeborg Day published both Nine and a Half Weeks and Ghost Waltz in the 1980s under a pseudonym. Born in Austria in the midst of World War II, Day didn’t hear about Nazis, Hitler or the Holocaust until she moved to the United States in 1957. However she already retains a hatred for Jews, Jewishness and Israel ingrained into her psyche from an early age. She recognizes that she works with many Jewish people and counts many Jews as her friends. This memoir recounts memories of her Nazi father as well as retracing her mother’s ancestry to Vienna.

“To say, ‘My father was a Nazi,’ is bad enough. To say, “He belonged to the SS,’ and to say it in Manhattan, today means that every listener assumes my father pushed bodies into gas chambers, spend quiet evenings stretching skin into lampshades.”

Day traverses between her past in Austria to her present in New York. She explains the differences between Austria and Germany during WWII and that many people don’t distinguish between the two countries. She provides immense historical background about Austria and the Nazi party. She somewhat comes to terms with her own degree of anti-Semitism as much as a New York magazine editor can. Day connects a dark past, her parents’ even darker existence with her present. She recalls the time she slept with a Jewish guy who thought it rather reckless, even bemusing, that he was having sex with a Nazi’s daughter. He only wished she could dress the part. Ghost Waltz is detailed and somewhat provocative. It’s also indulgent. A glimpse into one’s soul-searching that proves absorbing at parts and tedious at others.

RATING: ***/5

<em>FTC Disclosure: I received this book for review from Harper Perennial/Harper. </em>

purchase at Amazon: Ghost Waltz: A Family Memoir (P.S.)