Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Fear, Jeffrey
• Lerner, Paul

Titel

Behind the Screens: Immigrants, émigrés and exiles in mid twentieth-century Los Angeles

Ist Teil von

• Jewish culture and history, 2016-05, Vol.17 (1-2), p.1-21

Ort / Verlag

Abingdon: Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2016

Quelle

Taylor & Francis Journals Auto-Holdings Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• A vociferous and unremitting critic of Adolf Hitler, Lion Feuchtwanger was among the earliest victims of the Nazi dictatorship. He was fortunate enough to be out of the country in January 1933, when the Nazis looted his home and stripped him of his German citizenship, and wise enough not to return. As a Jew, a socialist and an outspoken anti-Fascist, Feuchtwanger and his wife Marta understood that they had no future in Germany immediately after Hitler’s assumption of power. They spent six years in a German-speaking exile community in southern France before the outbreak of war abruptly changed their fortunes again. Lion, interned by the French as an enemy alien, and then again by the collaborationist regime after France’s defeat, was ultimately smuggled out of France dressed as a woman, making his way to first to New York City and ultimately to Los Angeles in 1941. Unlike many other fellow émigrés and exiles who returned to Europe after the war, the Feuchtwangers made Los Angeles their permanent home, a decision that was made for them in light of the fact that Lion lacked proper immigration papers and could never return to the US if he left.