It was total serendipity, I was up on the 4th floor of the knowledge factory pulling books and looking for a play by Wendy Wasserman.
As I was looking I saw novels by a man named Lion Feuchtwanger. I thought they might be interesting, so I pulled one title Power down from the shelf, put it on my book truck and returned to my other searches.
So who is Lion Feuchtwanger? Well, it turns out, someone quite important and someone who was quite lucky. He was an important, early 20th century German writer. (1884-1958). Feuchtwanger was a Jew, and after service in the German Army during WWI, a Leftist. He was an early colleague of playwright Berthold Brecht and an early opponent of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.
In the 1930s, Feuchtwanger and wife Marta escaped Nazi persecution and settled in the south of France. When the Nazi's conquered France in June of 1940, his was imprisoned by the Germans and probably would have been executed. But he escaped from his captors with the help of his wife and journalist Varian Fry. After his escape, he and his wife were smuggled into Spain and Portugal by Rev. Waistill Sharp and his wife Martha Sharp. Eventually they settled in America.
Varian Fry was a journalist who helped dozen's of prominent people escaped Nazi persecution. Waitstill Sharp was a Unitarian Minister, who along with this wife Martha founded the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC).
On Jan. 20, 2009, The New York Times published an obituary of Dina Vierny, who was the model of sculptor Aristide Maillol. During WWII, when she was not posing for Maillol, she was a member of Fry's network and also arrested by the Germans.
This type of stuff makes for a wonderful day. Lion Feuchtwanger's book Power has never been checked out. Maybe I'll be able to read it soon. I don't know, I've got piles of the knowledge factories' books at home. That doesn't include another book that I found during my wandering.
That book is entitled Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times by George Fadlo Hourani. It was hidden in an obscure corner and like Feuchtwanger's book has never been checked out.
But that perhaps is another story.
Capitano Tedeschi
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2 comments:
how cool is that ... what a find ... how many pages ... I love the old jewish cemetary in Prague. inspiring and emotional. we must treat our fellow man differently than we have in the past. we are all deserving of respect and freedom.
Power sounds like an interesting book. Have you read Forgotten Fire by Adam Bagdasarian? It's a story based on true events about Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Turks. I think you would enjoy it. Here is a description. Let me know if you ever read it and what you think.
http://www.armenian-genocide.org/Education.73/current_category.123/resourceguide_detail.html
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