Swing Under the Nazis

Book excerpt: They included the Ghetto Swingers, a Jewish jazz band that "toured" Auschwitz and Theresienstadt; the Luftwaffe pilot who listened to Glenn Miller while bombing London; the Berlin swing gangs and Zazous (Parisian jazz enthusiasts) who risked persecution and imprisonment for the opportunity to dance openly to prohibited swing records; Django Reinhardt, the brilliant guitarist who refused to flee Nazi-controlled France; and many others." "Swing Under the Nazis also explores Zwerin's confrontation with a past that still has claims on the present as he recalls his own encounters with contemporary oppression - most notably a concert tour through apartheid-controlled South Africa with his multiracial jazz group."--Jacket.