Shanti Elke Bannwart

Dancing on One Foot, Growing Up in Nazi Germany Shanti Elke Bannwart

Dancing On One Foot confronts a major issue: World War II observed during the author's childhood in Nazi Germany. It explores the psychological imprint of that experience and the healing in later years after the author settles in the High Desert of the American Southwest. The book is a tribute to the ability of women and children to survive hardships and celebrate life in all its straight and crooked ways, to dance, even if there's only one foot left to stand on. Here is the account of a woman's lifelong journey to understand what she came to face about war and her native country's part in a great crime. She is driven by a deep urge to lift the veil around the dark mystery of human violence. Yet, an undercurrent of vibrant joy runs inside her and through this book. It infuses all the layers of her memory, as if her wounding and the darkness of her story have fertilized her love of life.