THE NEWYORKER, MARCH 30, 2020 3
America.” It published eleven books—
mainly fiction—between 1942 and 1948,
by writers in exile such as Thomas
Mann, Franz Werfel, Bruno Frank, Al-
fred Döblin, and Lion Feuchtwanger.
Pazifische Presse books were hand-
somely printed in editions of a few
hundred copies each. All the books
were in German, an effort by the au-
thors to keep the best of their culture
alive “in the language of Goethe.”
Victoria Dailey
Los Angeles, Calif.
1
PIKETTY’S POINTIn Idrees Kahloon’s review of Thomas
Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology,” he
argues that Piketty’s proposal to heav-
ily tax the incomes of the top one per
cent may be excessive as a means of
solving the most serious social prob-
lems (Books, March 9th). He argues
that, instead, we need to eliminate
poverty and precariousness—without
which, he implies, the extreme con-
centration of wealth at the top is not
necessarily an issue. But inequality cre-
ates problems regardless of the exact
financial status of those in the lower
brackets. For one thing, extreme wealth
allows some to exercise undue politi-
cal influence. For another, living in a
society of great inequality is a cause of
stress for the less wealthy—regardless
of their level of prosperity, or whether
the poorest enjoy a reasonable stan-
dard of living. Such stress leads to a
broad range of medical and psycho-
logical illnesses, as is shown by the
work of Richard Wilkinson and Kate
Pickett in their book “The Inner Level,”
and other studies.
John L. Hammond
Professor of Sociology
Hunter College and Graduate Center
New York CityWEIMAR IN L.A.
Alex Ross’s piece about German writ-
ers and composers who fled to Los
Angeles during the Second World
War is fascinating (“Exodus,” March
9th). He brings to life the émigrés’
sense of dislocation, dissatisfaction,
residual despair—and their infight-
ing. As Ross mentions, many were res-
cued by Varian Fry, who helped art-
ists and intellectuals escape France in
1940 and 1941. Not mentioned in Ross’s
account is Hiram Bingham IV, the
U.S. vice-consul in Marseille, who, to
the State Department’s great displea-
sure, worked alongside Fry. Bingham
issued thousands of U.S. visas to ref-
ugees, including Marc Chagall, Han-
nah Arendt, and ordinary people such
as my mother and grandparents. He
engineered the liberation of the Ger-
man novelist Lion Feuchtwanger from
Les Milles, the French concentration
camp, by disguising him as a woman
and then hiding him at Bingham’s
villa until Fry could get him out of
France. For all this generosity, Bing-
ham was abruptly transferred to Lis-
bon and then to Argentina. He warned
the State Department about the ar-
rival of high-ranking Nazis there—
news the U.S. did not want to hear.
Bingham eventually resigned, and re-
turned to his family’s farm in Con-
necticut. The trauma suffered by the
rescued intellectuals who remade their
lives in the U.S. was as enduring as it
was for people like my parents. Of
course, their horror was nothing com-
pared with what was endured by those
who could not leave Europe.
Jane M. Friedman
New York City
Ross paints a full picture of the lives
of German émigrés in Southern Cal-
ifornia. One thing that is often over-
looked in literary history is a small
press, called the Pazifische Presse, that
some of them established. Its stated
mission was “to give testimony to the
eminent cultural force that was expelled
by Hitler and which found a future in
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