Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book

Ghost Waltz: A Family Memoir – A Personal Exploration of a Father's Nazi Past and the Legacy of World War 2 Austria

Rate this book
A woman comes to terms with her family’s dark Nazi past in this memoir from the author of Nine and a Half Weeks—A moving and profound exploration of the legacy of war and hate on an individual life. Born in Austria at the height of Word War II, Ingeborg Day grew up knowing little about the early years of her life. When she came to America in 1957 as an exchange student, she heard for the first time references to Hitler, Nazis, and the Holocaust, topics that were forbidden in her homeland and her own house. Day married an American and stayed in the U.S. permanently, a separation that created great physical and psychological distance between herself and her father— a Nazi nobody, an out-of-work locksmith’s apprentice who ended up joining the Austrian army, where his musical talents blossomed in a military band. An early member of the Nazi Party, he was automatically incorporated into the SS after the Anschluss in 1938. But with the fall of the Third Reich, he refused to speak of the past, determined to remain silent. Ghost Waltz , Day’s astonishing and beautiful memoir, tells of her efforts to understand the legacy of her Austrian past—one of unbearable horror mixed with ordinary human patrimonies of family loyalty and affection. Moving back and forth in time, from 1980s New York to World War I Austria under Kaiser Franz Josef, she illuminates her country’s painful modern history as well as her own memories of the war, of the Russian and English occupations, and of the strangely silent 1950s. Day confronts the question whether and how she was bequeathed a legacy of unvoiced anti-Semitism, an inheritance that Ghost Waltz eloquently repudiates and dispels.

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

10 people are currently reading
306 people want to read

About the author

Ingeborg Day

2 books4 followers
Day also wrote the erotic novel 9½ Weeks under the pseudonym Elizabeth McNeill.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs...

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
6 (11%)
4 stars
16 (31%)
3 stars
20 (39%)
2 stars
6 (11%)
1 star
3 (5%)
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
Profile Image for Carol.
1,850 reviews21 followers
May 22, 2014
Ghost Waltz: A Family Memoir by Ingeborg Day is a difficult book to review for more than one reason. This book is a search to find out the truth about what her father did in World War II as a Nazi. Her father never talked about the war. He also never talked about Jews so she wanted to know if her father could have been a monster as depicted in American movies. She grew up in a small town in Austria.

In 1956. when she was sixteen, she went to United States as an exchange student. She was very surprised at how different the two countries were. She became enamored with snack foods like Lorna Doones, and saw late night movie after movie about the horrible Nazis. Back home, there was total silence about them. The main things that she learned in Austria was a strong work ethic and keep to yourself. She had not heard of the Holocaust in her school or her home. So it was all a shock. She stated read everything that she could about it.

When she returned home, her parents easily talked about how they felt about blacks but not Jews. She could not get them to talk. She wanted to escape so when she received a proposal from an American she snapped it up. After being married, having two kids and some major events in her life she starts reading everything that she can find about Nazis and Hilter. Her bed is a sea of red and black books. She had to know what happened and did her father have a role in. She examines her own prejudices and tries to figure how she came to have them. Why did this happen? She offers economic and cultural reasons. How do the Austrians feel about Russia and why. How do they feel about Germany?

This is a very introspective memoir with the author honestly exposing her feelings whether she like them or not, and whether the reader liked them or not. It is a difficult book to read because it makes you think about prejudice, and what your own feelings are.

I do recommend this book for readers who want to know what it is like to be daughters and sons of Nazis, however it is a difficult book to read because of the consequences of prejudices.

I received this advance reading copy from FirstReads as a win but that in no way influenced the thoughts and feelings in my review.

Profile Image for Dana.
2,223 reviews21 followers
June 5, 2014
I won this from Goodreads. "Ghost Waltz" is a dark and twisted tale of the personal destruction caused by Hitler's soldiers that ricocheted throughout Europe as a result of World War II.  Ingeborg Day recounts her life as the daughter of an SS officer, her adoption by a family in a small town in Europe, and then her life in New York. Day reveals small glimpses into her life in Germany and the happy memories of her father, like when he sang her Nazi propaganda songs when she was a child. As a police officer in Germany when Hitler assumed power, her father was automatically enrolled in the SS. Day wrestles with that fact, did it mean her father had no choice but to serve Hitler, or did he welcome the high rank bestowed upon him?

Day further examines her parents' lives to assess whether they were forced to accept the Nazi's ideals, or whether they truly proscribed to them. Were they simply peasant shopkeepers whose need for money drove them to accept a position in the military to ensure the family could buy bread? She provides excellent examples of how economic changes forced such acceptance. The memories of war she recalls were horrific, as were the detailed explanations of her experiences as a young girl. The memoir contains both interesting and repulsive insights into Day and her real parents. Day recounts her own anti-Semitic views to further reveal the feelings instilled in her since birth, which made her a deeply tortured woman and a complex character difficult to sympathize with.

The elegantly written memoir provides an honest view of German officers and Europe during WWII. Overall, the book is intriguing despite some of Day's controversial ideals.

Please read more of my reviews by following me on twitter, @dana_heyde, or subscribing to my blog, http://fastpageturner.wordpress.com
18 reviews2 followers
Read
May 22, 2014
This book about a young girl coming to grips with her Nazi family background grabs you right away with a great introduction. It makes the whys and hows of Nazism personal. The memoir is especially appealing, coming from a young girl's thoughts. The well-written descriptions produce shock, recognition, and empathy all at once. The young girl from a Nazi family is in America after WWII has ended. Once I learned she had a pink chenille bedspread, just as I did in the fifties, I was hooked. This was personal and I could relate. She is learning from the American perspective and spends the rest of her life trying to come to grips with the mysteries of her family doings during the war years. She has inherited the emotions and prejudices of her Austrian parents and works hard to sort it all out.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in understanding the personal lives of the ordinary, everyday Nazi, and the effect of a lost war, lost lives, lost communities, seemingly lost "everything". Along with all of that, the former Nazi has to come to grips with previously fervent beliefs having to do with Aryans, Jews, Germans, and where they all fit in a changed world.

The descriptions were sometimes simple, but chilling. However, at times, I found the descriptions over-whelming and difficult to follow. What was the author trying to say here? For several pages, I felt the book became bogged down in English vs Austrian language analysis and perception. Once past that part, the book continued to be engaging and provoked much contemplation regarding learned prejudices. The ending is well done and leaves us much to hope for.
Profile Image for Bob.
765 reviews27 followers
March 10, 2015
Ingeborg Day grew up in Austria during the nazi years; both her parents were party members. At age 16, some years after the war, she went to the US an an exchange student. Later, she married an American and emigrated to the US.

Her story meanders somewhat, but not so much that it is hard to follow. She was an acute observer of the world around her, and she wrote about what she happened to see and experience.

From the nazi years, she did not apologize for the events, but did not support them, either. She simply told what it was like to be there. She did explain why so many people were seduced by the nazis, who were good at convincing everyone that their party would bring about better economic times. By eliminating those who were being blamed for the years of hardship. This reminded me of something I read once about the Luddites in England: If progress takes your job by devising new technology, then you need to smash the machines. And kill the factory owner; that always helps.

Without really saying so, she seems to have held the nazis in contempt. Her description of goebbels was that he was "a cross between a rodent and a buzzard."

This was an interesting book, one that I am likely to read again in the future.

Profile Image for Spellbind Consensus.
350 reviews
Read
July 25, 2025
* *Ghost Waltz* is a memoir of Ingeborg Day’s life as an Austrian-born woman grappling with her family’s unspoken connection to Nazism and the trauma of growing up in postwar Austria.
* The book moves between Day’s childhood in Graz during and after World War II, and her adult life in the United States, tracing her evolving confrontation with inherited guilt, silence, and historical memory.
* It is not presented chronologically but as a mosaic of recollections, reflections, and emotional reckonings.

---

### **Key Themes and Examples**

* **Family Silence and Complicity**

* Day’s father was a member of the SS, a fact never openly discussed in her family.
* Her mother remained emotionally distant, and the atmosphere of her childhood was defined by unspoken truths and revisionist national myths.
* Austrian society, like her family, erased the war’s moral consequences; schoolbooks had blank pages where Nazi history should have been.

* **Discovery and Denial**

* At age 17, Day left for the United States as an exchange student. There, she encountered open discussion of the Holocaust for the first time.
* This cultural shock marked the beginning of her moral and psychological awakening.
* Later in life, she researched her father's military record, uncovering disturbing details, yet remained torn—struggling to condemn a man she had loved.

* **Internalized Anti-Semitism**

* Day explores her own visceral reactions to Jewish people and culture, especially in her early years—an unsettling reflection of the ideology she had passively absorbed.
* She examines these feelings with brutal honesty, understanding them as inherited prejudices that she worked to dismantle intellectually but could not fully disown emotionally.

* **Memory, Identity, and Emotional Dislocation**

* The memoir constantly shifts in time and place, underscoring the fragmented nature of Day’s self-knowledge.
* Her Austrian and American selves exist in tension: the woman shaped by silence and complicity versus the woman seeking truth and responsibility.
* She often reflects on her feeling of being emotionally exiled from her past and morally homeless in the present.

* **Motherhood and Generational Inheritance**

* As a mother, Day questions what unspoken traumas she may have passed on.
* She considers whether inherited guilt and silence are carried forward even without conscious transmission.

* **Themes Explored**

* **Inherited Guilt:** The memoir confronts the burden of collective and familial guilt passed to children of perpetrators.
* **Historical Silence:** Austrian postwar denial is examined through the microcosm of Day’s family.
* **Moral Complexity:** The book avoids easy condemnation or redemption, opting instead for ambiguity, discomfort, and self-interrogation.
* **Identity and Displacement:** Migration, memory, and emotional duality shape Day’s sense of self and moral reckoning.

---

### **Tone and Writing Style**

* **Tone:** Introspective, haunted, ambivalent, and at times painfully raw.
* **Writing Style:**

* Fragmentary, impressionistic, and emotionally charged.
* Employs shifting tenses, nonlinear structure, and abrupt tonal shifts.
* The prose blends poetic language with sharp confession, often avoiding clear conclusions.

**How the Style Supports the Content:**
The disjointed structure and emotionally unresolved tone mirror the fractured identity Day presents—caught between inherited shame and personal conviction. Her refusal to write a redemptive or coherent narrative reinforces the memoir’s moral seriousness: memory, guilt, and complicity do not lend themselves to tidy resolutions. The stylistic instability becomes a powerful metaphor for the unresolved past.

---

### **Author Qualifications and Their Impact**

* **Ingeborg Day (1940–2011)** was born in Nazi-occupied Austria and emigrated to the U.S. as a teenager.
* She worked as a translator, educator, and editor at *Ms.* magazine, engaging actively with feminism, politics, and literature.
* Prior to *Ghost Waltz*, she published the erotic memoir *Nine and a Half Weeks* under the pseudonym Elizabeth McNeill.
* Her life as both a child of Austrian fascism and a progressive intellectual in the U.S. uniquely positioned her to examine the personal and political legacies of the Holocaust.
* Day’s dual identity—as survivor and inheritor, witness and participant—gives *Ghost Waltz* its distinctive emotional and ethical depth, making it a rare and honest exploration of what it means to come from the wrong side of history.
Profile Image for Alicea.
653 reviews16 followers
November 24, 2017
I read Ghost Waltz: A Family Memoir by Ingeborg Day on recommendation from a patron. She assured me that I would love it and that it was right up my alley as it was a nonfiction book that covered events from WWII. What hooked me into reading it was that it was covering the events of WWII from the perspective of someone who was on the 'other side' aka the Nazi perspective (as opposed to the 3rd person nonfiction narrative or survivor memoir). Ingeborg wanted to uncover the secrets of her father's past and hopefully work out exactly what his role was as a member of the Nazi Party and SS. She revisited old memories of times spent living in shared accommodation with other families, rationing, and the charged silence around the dinner table. She continually reiterated that she had no memories of her parents ever saying anything about Jewish people or showing any violence whatsoever toward anyone...and yet the undertones of the book were very anti-Semitic. I honestly found this a very uncomfortable book to read especially considering that she seemed to vacillate on her own beliefs and feelings towards those who were slaughtered en masse while her father served as a member of the Nazi party. (Her conflicting beliefs made this a very disjointed read.) For those interested in knowing just what his role was and his innermost beliefs, you will be sorely disappointed. There is no clear cut conclusion to be found among the pages of Ghost Waltz. The author herself couldn't seem to work out her own feelings much less those of a man who she had no contact with as an adult (there was an event after she left home which led to a rift). This wasn't my favorite read of the year for multiple reasons but mostly for those stated above: anti-Semitic sentiment and unsatisfactory conclusion. It's a 2/10 for me. :-/
1,162 reviews
February 17, 2023
I was disappointed in what I felt was a confused & at times incoherent account of this retrospective of the Nazi background of the author's Austrian parents, living in Gratz. She wants to know if her father was involved in the Holocaust in a major or minor way. Her father never discussed this period at home with her. She justifies her father's choice to join the Nazi party when young, working as a policeman when the Anschluss(merger with Germany)occurs & the Austrian police is subsumed by the SS. She discusses the antisemitism prevalent in Austria & her own unconscious ambivalence about it in herself. She does make Jewish friends when she moves to the US where she lives for many years, but even then has to struggle against her negative feelings-about orthodox Jews, Yiddish language, etc..., though she is not herself antisemitic.
Profile Image for Annette.
905 reviews26 followers
September 17, 2014
Source: Free copy from Harper Perennial in exchange for a review. All reviews expressed are from my own opinion.
Summary:
Ingeborg Seiler Day, was born in Graz, Austria in 1940. During World War II, her parents were Nazi's. Her father was a member of the Nazi party. Ingeborg had few memories of her earliest of years which was during the war. As a child growing up during the post war years her parents did not discuss the war, if Ingeborg asked a question, her parents rebuffed. A year spent in America as a teenage exchange student introduced her to American culture, the American textbook story of World War II, and her future husband. When she came home to Austria, life was irrevocably changed because of the influence she'd had in America.
In her later years she wrote two books: Ghost Waltz and Nine and a Half Weeks. These books were memoirs of her life at certain stages. Neither book explores in detail her marriage, or children.
Ghost Waltz, explores Ingeborg Day coming to terms with her parents involvement in the Nazi party, anti-semitism and the Holocaust, and Austria's involvement in the war.

My Thoughts:
When the book begins Ingeborg explains she had two sets of parents. One set during the war, another set after the war. She felt as if she was "adopted". I felt this was an interesting way of explaining her parents role as Nazi's during the war years. I don't feel she "came to terms" with her parents nor her birth country. "It" plagued her all of her life. She felt a guilt and a shame which was not hers to carry. I wondered how much counseling she received during life? She died young at age 70 by suicide.
Ghost Waltz is a sad book, with no happiness in-between the covers.
Ghost Waltz explores a topic I've not read before, adult children of Germany-Austria Nazi Party members. Further, her parents antisemitism spilled over into her own ideology. But, I do not feel Ghost Waltz is a complete study in this area of history. Ingeborg Day's memoir gives the reader a small specimen. She is not an expressive person, she hides more than reveals.
The book left me unsettled with more questions than answers. I felt Ingeborg Day lived a hidden life. Concealed behind an exterior of rough sex, which was a mask hiding a fear of what others would think about the real Ingeborg and where she'd come from, as well as the inability to be truly intimate.
Ghost Waltz is a haunting portrayal of a life which could have been so much more. I'm sad she carried what her parents had believed in and done to her own grave.
Profile Image for Michael Duane  Robbins.
Author 8 books2 followers
Read
February 28, 2015
How does one live with the fact that their father was a member of the Nazi party. Ingeborg Day faces up to a hidden and very disturbing past that her parents will never talk about. Day draws you into her narrative as she meanders between past and present, having many awkward conversations with friends who confront her with their own preconceived ideas. Austria is little talked about in the context of both World Wars, people generally focusing on the sins of past German regimes, and I like to get into these different perspectives. Short and highly recommended.
287 reviews1 follower
Want to read
June 26, 2023
A fascinating memoir taking place during World War II.

I won this book through the Giveaways.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews

Can't find what you're looking for?

Get help and learn more about the design.