Books: Exiles

Last week scores of German and Austrian novelists, poets, journalists and thinkers still besieged the U. S. consulate at Lisbon, Portugal, trying to escape their Nazi pursuers by getting into the U. S.

Some 120 more waited in southern France with the desperate stolidity of animals who hear the hunter coming toward the trap. In the U. S. two committees were trying to get them out. One was the Emergency Rescue Committee, which claims to have brought to the U. S. since last July some 50 writers-in-exile, including Heinrich Mann, Franz Werfel, Konrad Heiden, Leonhard Frank. The other was the Exiled Writers Committee, a sprout of the leftist-controlled League of American Writers. The two committees seemed to be getting in each other’s hair.

It began when Novelist Lion Feuchtwanger (Power) arrived in the U. S. last month, announced that he had been mysteriously spirited away from a French concentration camp while bathing. Then he had dashed across France disguised as a *woman. Charmed were newshawks by the colorful details, lack of the reticence usual in such cases.

Far from charmed was the Emergency Rescue Committee. They thought Author Feuchtwanger might as well be talking to the Gestapo. They wondered why he talked at all, believed that, whatever his motives, he had gravely jeopardized the Committee’s undercover rescue work in France. They also wondered who had rescued Author Feuchtwanger.

Modestly, the Exiled Writers Committee disclaimed all but a small share in Feuchtwanger’s getaway. In the escape of other writers the Exiled Writers Committee was only too ready to claim a share. Such were grave Heinrich Mann (Thomas’ brother and author of more than a dozen novels) and Franz Werfel (The Forty Days of Musa Dagh). As they bumped over the rough autumn waves from Lisbon a few weeks ago, the two novelists hugged themselves over their narrow escape from the Nazis. One day out from

New York City they received a radiogram from the League of American Writers, summoning them to a banquet at Manhattan’s Hotel Commodore. Thinking they had been rescued by the Emergency Rescue Committee, Authors Mann and Werfel were puzzled. But not wishing to seem rude, they said: all right, they would come.

They were not the only confused people. Awaiting them at the dinner were Harper’s able, amiable President Cass Canfield; Clifton Paul Fadiman (Information Please), who was master of ceremonies; some dozen Manhattan publishers; 1,500 guests who raised $14,000 for the work of the Exiled Writers Committee. But Exhibits Mann and Werfel did not show up.

Once on dry land they had taken one penetrating look around, hastily developed an overpowering fatigue, disappeared. Also unable to attend (for reasons not stated) was Brother Thomas Mann, who, tired of being used as a Communist front, has avoided the League of American Writers for many months. Author Feuchtwanger attended.

Meanwhile the Emergency Rescue Committee made no comment beyond announcing a dinner of its own, also at the Hotel Commodore, in honor of distinguished Exiles Heinrich Mann, Franz Werfel, Konrad Heiden. Distinguished speaker: Thomas Mann.

Last week in the cafes of Nice sat many another German and Austrian intellectual, staring at the Mediterranean, wondering whether any help could ever come now. The Emergency Rescue Committee thought it might, stated that a donation of $350 would enable the Committee to rescue one exile. Promptly the Exiled Writers Committee announced its price: $400 and going up. But rescue at any price looked less & less likely as the Gestapo with the help of the Spanish Government plugged one rathole of escape after another.

Even the fate of the exiled writers left in Lisbon was uncertain. They could do nothing but wait and see. Lisbon was

Europe’s last sally-port to freedom. Well might the trapped men who had once spoken for Europe’s Hellenic heritage recall the words of Aeschylus’ Prometheus: “We have come to the last path of the world, to the Scythian country, to the untrodden solitude.”

*Who once wrote (in his Moscow, 1937)’. ”In the Western civilization there is no longer clarity or resolution. . . . One breathes again when one comes from this oppressive atmosphere of a counterfeit democracy and hypocritical humanism into the invigorating atmosphere of the Soviet Union.”