@ossobuco,
Erich Maria
Remarque
Erich Maria Remarque--(22 June 1898 – 25 September 1970), born Erich Paul Remark, was a German author, best known for his novel
All Quiet on the Western Front. The novel, published in 1929, described the experiences of German soldiers during World War I.
On 10 May 1933, the German government, on the initiative of the Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, banned and publicly burned Remarque's works. Remarque finally left Germany to live at his villa in Switzerland. The Nazis continued to decry his writings and claimed that he was a descendant of French Jews and that his real surname name was Kramer, a Jewish-sounding name, and his original name spelled backwards. This is still cited in some biographies despite the complete lack of evidence. The Nazis also claimed, falsely, that Remarque had not seen active service during World War I. In 1938, Remarque's German citizenship was revoked and then in 1939 after he and his ex-wife were remarried to prevent her repatriation to Germany, they left Porto Ronco, Switzerland for the United States of America.They became naturalized citizens of the United States in 1947.
In 1943, the government arrested his sister, Elfriede Scholz, who had stayed behind in Germany with her husband and two children. After a short trial in the "Volksgerichtshof" (Hitler's extra-constitutional "People's Court"), she was found guilty of "undermining morale" for stating that she considered the war lost. Court President Roland Freisler declared, "Ihr Bruder ist uns leider entwischt—Sie aber werden uns nicht entwischen" ("Your brother is unfortunately beyond our reach—you, however, will not escape us"). Scholz was beheaded on 16 December 1943, and the cost of her prosecution, imprisonment and execution—495.80 Reichsmark—was billed to her sister Erna.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Maria_Remarque
(All Quiet on the Western Front was made into a great movie with Lew Ayres who said he became a conscientious objector to World War II because of that film.)
