Artists, the Nazis and the Holocaust
Lion and Marta Feuchtwanger
I have been reading and thinking the past few days about the sorts of artistic confrontation and collaboration with evil. There is a house down the street called the Villa Aurora. It is now a home to German artists on artistic sabbaticals. https://www.vatmh.org/en/history.html
It was previously owned by Lion and Marta Feuchtwanger. https://libguides.usc.edu/c.php?g=234957&p=1559413 They were refugees and asylees from the German Reich. He was a famous German author who was on a US lecture tour when Hitler came to power in 1933. In fact, he was having dinner at the German Ambassador’s house who then warned him not to return to Germany. The ambassador resigned the next day. Feuchtwanger was number 6 on the Reich’s list of persona non grata whose citizenship was revoked. He had been a very early critic of Hitler and the Nazis, starting in 1920, understanding, predicting, and writing about their danger from the start, but not actually expecting they would ever ascend to power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Feuchtwanger
The Feuchtwangers re-settled to the south of France until 1940 when the German army invaded France and captured and interned them. The US Vice Consul, Hiram (Harry) Bingham helped them and many others to escape through France, Spain and Portugal at a time before the US entry into WW II when the US State Department in general was not helping Jews or anyone else to escape from Hitler. https://www.holocaustrescue.org/historic-background-of-rescue-in-france Eleanor Roosevelt supported the work of the rescue missionaries who went to France and helped facilitate the escapes of many.
The Feuchtwangers bought and moved into the Villa Aurora and helped other German writers and artists in exile during the war with the proceeds from his novels. For example, he was instrumental in arranging the escape of Berthold Brecht who made it from Berlin to Vladivostok where he caught a freighter to San Pedro. The Feuchtwangers met him at the dock.
He continued to write and publish voluminously until his death in 1958 from cancer. His wife continued his work until her death in 1987; she donated the house and library and all his writings to USC. The German government and a German non-profit maintain the house and the artistic residencies to this day in his honor.