pumpkinstrokemarrow

Turns out to be a good book indeed, with various points of contact with my own affairs. A novelised account of three lefties who had to leave Germany in something of a hurry after Hitler came to power. The only catch being that as a novelised account, while one might reasonably rely on the general tone of the thing, one can't be too sure about the detail; can't really use it in pub quizzes.

Ernst Toller was Jewish, war hero, poet, playwright and left revolutionary. Joined the army in the nationalist ferment at the start of the first war, keen to prove himself a good German, along with many other German Jews. Famous for much of the twenties and thirties and made a good living from his royalties. Two other main characters are his former lover & secretary and a female cousin of this last. The female cousin surviving to a ripe old age in Australia, where the author of this book came to know her.

My father was rather younger, so a lefty young man at the time this book was set, a lefty young man who had spent time in both Germany and Austria. Not to mention the Soviet Union. So he must have been aware of his namesake, although I don't remember him ever talking about him. I don't think he had any of his plays. Perhaps they were on different sides of one of the internecine disputes which tore the left movement apart at that time.

I was rather shocked to read of the assassinations & kidnappings (which usually amounted to much the same thing) carried out by the German secret police at this time in England, France and elsewhere. Activities which we did not do too much about as we were still in appeasement mode at the time, despite the activities of the likes of Fenner Brockway, who gets an honourable walk on part in the book. And then there was the rule that said that if political refugees from Germany indulged in political activity in England - political activity which might well have been their whole life in Germany and which might have taken the form here of trying to alert the free world both to the true nature of the Nazi regime and the pace at which it was rearming - they were apt to be sent back to that Nazi regime, where they were apt to end up in a concentration camp or worse. Not very honourable at all.

Now we have human rights: see http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/.