Those Who Did Not Escape

I confess I have very mixed feelings about these refugees from Hitler, whether racial or political, who found heaven in the California sunshine or on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. They were able there to continue their cultural interests and to pursue their rivalries in peace and comfort as if they were still in Vienna, Prague, or Munich. And some had lost many art treasures which would only be restored to their families almost a century later, thanks to legal processes they could not even imagine.

Why mixed feelings? Well, many of these German and central European refugees escaped after all with their lives and rebuilt them in safer surrounding. But I think instead of the millions who did not escape, who were hustled to their deaths and incarcerations by the Nazis and their collaborators, but not before they were deprived -- not of their artworks, of which they had none -- of even their gold teeth! So the interest in them and in their activities and in their restored art masterpieces leaves me very cold. Very very cold. Please excuse me.