On the morning after Kristallnacht, Toby Sonneman's father walked through broken glass to apply for the visa that saved him from the fate of so many during the Third Reich. In examining her own family history, the author di scovered the similarities between the fate of the Jews and the Gypsies in the Holocaust, both peoples selected on racial grounds for extermination by the Nazis. She traveled with an American Gypsy survivor to Munich, where she stayed with the formidable Rosa Mettbach. This is the story of Rosa and other members of an extended family who survived the Holocaust. Shared Sorrows tells the story of a Gypsy family against the backdrop of a Jewish one, detailing and examining their shared sufferings under the Nazis.