Rosa (Roosje) Glaser (1914 - 2000) was a Dutch dancer and survivor of the Holocaust.
Biography
Roosje Glaser was born in the city of Nijmegen, Netherlands, and grew up in the small town of Kleef in Germany. Before the Second World War Roosje was a dance teacher. She ran four dance schools. She was a Jewish young woman who was betrayed by her ex-husband during the war. She was transported to a total of 7 different concentration camps. First to the Dutch camps Westerbork and next to camp Herzogenbusch. She managed to escape, was re-captured and was punished by immediate transportation to Auschwitz. Roosje survived by teaching dance to the SS officers.
She was liberated by the Swedish Red Cross. After that she decided to stay in Sweden where she lived the remainder of her life. In 2013 her story was published in the book Dancing with the Enemy, in several theatres, as well as in exhibitions.
A young girl before the war
When Roosje Glaser was a toddler, in the small town of Kleef in Germany, she saw people dance. She was fascinated by it and dancing became her passion. Roosje Glaser grew into an emancipated woman who defied conventions with flair. She became a very successful dance teacher, dancing in Amsterdam, London, Paris, Berlin and Brussels. She lost the love of her life in 1936, found consolation in the arms of another and married Leo Crielaars on May 7, 1937. When the Nazis occupied the Netherlands, it was the beginning of a very dangerous adventure for Roosje Glaser, 25 years old and Jewish. The danger became acute when her husband started to show Nazi sympathies. Their marriage ended in divorce.
In May 1940 The Netherlands are invaded by the Germans. Roosje Glaser, being Jewish, is soon affected by the first anti-Jewish measures. She finds these measures too much of an interference of her freedom of movement and decides not to obey the discriminatory rules, despite the threat of severe punishments for disobeying them. Every Dutch person with a Jewish background has to have a capital letter ‘J’ in their passports. Roosje removes the letter from her passport so that she can walk the streets and pass checkpoints at railway stations without any problems.
Sometimes she even likes to play a game: she sits in a café terrace with a sign over her head saying: ‘prohibited for Jews’, preferably next to a German and asking people to take a picture. Since she had grown up in Germany and was educated at German elementary schools, her German is fluent.
She starts four dance schools and they become successful. Her success is further enhanced by publicity because she introduces dances from abroad, especially from Paris, London and Brussels where she has joined various dance associations. Her picture appears in a number of magazines. Roosje Glaser also gets in touch with the Dutch cinema news. This results in her being seen in all the Dutch cinemas.
Dancing and betrayal
In 1941 Roosje Glaser's ex-husband Leo reports her Jewish identity to the ‘Kulturkammer’. She is forced to close her thriving dance schools immediately. Roosje Glaser's passion, however, does not allow her to become inactive. Illegally, she continues the dance school in the attic of her house. Suddenly betrayal comes again. In the spring of 1942, Leo Crielaars and his brother Marinus Crielaars betray Roosje to the commissioner of police and the mayor, for not wearing a star of David on her clothes. She is arrested and handed over to the SS. After six weeks in jail she is set free again.
Towards the end of the dance season Roosje Glaser wants to organize an end-of-season ball. However, due to Leo's and Marinus’ betrayal, everybody in town knows she is Jewish and Jews are not allowed to hire a ballroom. Doing nothing is not her style so she organizes an alternative end-of-season ball. She meets her students at the railway station in the morning and they cycle into the countryside where they dance and have fun in a remote recreation area with a wood-built cafeteria.