The story, "Emigré Hotel," opens with the departure of a Greek-registered steamship from Lisbon for New York in October 1940. Among the passengers, feeling "a sense of loss and foreboding," were Alfred Döblin, Heinrich Mann, and Hertha Pauli. Others who had already left from the port of Lisbon were Franz Werfel, Leon Feuchtwanger, Alfred Polgar (according to Wikipedia: "one of the most renowned intellectuals of the Vienna coffeehouses"), Heinrich and Golo Mann, and Friderike Zweig (first wife of Stefan). On the ship, according to Cozarinksy, they lived in forced seclusion because of their status -- they had "sufficient funds to pay the extravagant price of a berth on this modest vessel" -- and played "the role of the last scions, emissaries, or survivors of European culture."
Instead of asking why the Jews were passive, I wonder why no one has ever asked this question: why did all the prominent people, whose opposition might have been crucial in combating the Nazis, turn tail and run? Why didn't they stay and resist? If they had, the Jews, too, would certainly have joined them. It was the intellectuals and artists and important people who were passive.
Since I wasn't alive in those terrible days and can't say that I would have behaved any better, I probably should not be criticizing those who went into exile. But the absence in Germany of intellectual opposition to the Nazis must have had an effect on the demoralization of the population, Jewish and otherwise.
Picture credit: The Paris Review
