This is the definitive account of Willy Rosen's life written in narrative form. Full of facts the book displays wide knowledge and expert research.

For the longest time, researchers have ignored the history of popular musical theater when researching the Holocaust; as if the horrors of the latter couldn’t be associated with “entertainment”, even though many famous artists from the world of operetta, cabaret, Schlager and revue were sent to concentration camps and died there. Only in the past 20 years have German language publications addressed this openly in a wider analysis of the Nazi era. However, the English-speaking world has so far not taken note of these groundbreaking studies, with the possible exception of the 2020 Cambridge Companion to Operetta, which included a single essay on the topic. This makes When the Music Stopped…Willy Rosen’s Holocaust the first big English language study on one of the famous figures of the German entertainment world of the 1920s. Willy Rosen emigrated to The Netherland, like so many others who hoped to escape the anti-Semitic terror of the National Socialists. He hoped in vain. After his arrest, Rosen performed his quirky song repertoire in the Dutch transit camp Westerbork he even wrote new shows for Westerbork before being transported to Auschwitz. Until now, only Katja Zaich has covered this story in her 2001 book Ich bitte dringend um ein Happyend: Deutsche Bühnenkünstler im niederländischen Exil 1933-1945. The new English publication by Casey J. Hayes will hopefully alert more international readers to the forgotten histories of these once-celebrated artists and also remind them of their life-embracing music, which should not be overlooked because of the backdrop of so much tragedy. Even if the Nazis killed people like Rosen, his music deserves to live on. And his story should be told, after the many decades of silence. So, the Nazis don’t win in the end.

Casey Hayes’ book tells the exciting and eventful story of one of the most important and popular musicians from the time of the Weimar Republic. Willy Rosen’s career and his bitter fate represents as well the many other Jewish artists who significantly influenced and shaped culture in Germany at the time. Willy Rosen also occupies an important part in my feature-length documentary “I Dance, but my Heart is Crying,” which will be released in the fall of 2022 and focuses on the music of German-Jewish artists in Nazi Berlin. The publication of “When The Music Stopped - Willy Rosen’s Holocaust” was long overdue and is an asset to anyone interested in culture and especially the music scene in Germany in the 1920s and 30s.

The existence of Willy Rosen ended years ago in a place synonymous with Hell,  KL Auschwitz-Birkenau. The mere mention of this place conjures images of man's depravity towards others who were intended to disappear and be forgotten, as is they never existed. Professor Hayes in this book When The Music Stopped - Willy Rosen’s Holocaust, will bring to you the memories of many people who the Nazis had labelled as "Untermensch" and members of “Entartete Kunst”, degenerate inferior artists. The characters in the book are real people who were the toast of Berlin one year then rejected and finally murdered. Professor Hayes is perhaps the world's leading authority on the life and works of Willy Rosen, a composer and lyricist of over 600 popular songs, sung on radio, film and recorded thousands of times, during the Weimar Republic and the very early years of the Third Reich. Hayes tells the story of Rosen from his early years, through to the high years of Cabaret and fame in Berlin and to his imprisonment and exile in the Netherlands, with his death in a gas chamber. Hayes answers the question - “Whatever happened to Willy Rosen?” He  tells in story form, his own years of research not only into Rosen's life but also his music and performances, ending in a Transit Camp, which produced the “Best Cabaret in Europe,” for the entertainment of such men as Adolf Eichmann, as well as the thousands due to board trains to their deaths. This is the definitive story of the life of Willy Rosen where you can travel with Rosen and his friends through a time of fame and celebration to one where death could come quickly on a whim. This book will restore Willy Rosen to his place in the world's memory.

We must never forget. Perhaps we are often tempted to think we have more than enough to learn from and about the tragedies of the Shoah. Then riveting research like Dr. Hayes’ into the life of Weimar Cabaret performer Willy Rosen appears. We are left speechless in the face of ever more far-reaching glimpses of evil and of good. What an amazing gift we are given in this book about Germany’s most celebrated one-man show leading up to and into the catastrophe of Nazi Germany. How can the finest cabaret in Europe unveil some of the horrors of the Shoah? Dr. Hayes carefully opens up this fascinating new perspective!