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The following is a letter by Stefan Zweig, written in 1940 to his friend, Joseph Leftwich, after the Nazis invaded Holland, the latter's home country. The letter reflects the writer's deep dismay at the descent of Europe into Fascism and war. His despair at the state of Europe, which he describes here, led him to take his own life, together with his wife, two years later, in 22.2.1942.The letter was found in the personal archive of writer and translator Joseph Leftwich.
Dear Leftwitch!
Just a line to show you that I do not forget my friends. What will you do now: become British as your country belongs now to the Nazis – I am afraid they will make there a Mussert* government. The Jews did not learn much from our sort, they have prepared a rich spoil for these robbers. My dear, I am often so sad as I cannot describe. Again my books have lost their publisher, again two, no, three countries lost, where I had readers, friends – and all the moral strength I felt in me is slowly giving way to despair - not on personal matters, but it is a kind of despair, who asks god, why he gives all to the wicked. I try to write another book because the Balzac will take too long - a history of my own life. You know me enough to be sure that I will not dwell on my books or personal successes and women stories. I will show the Vienna , our Jewish Vienna, the war, our own fight in the war, the rise to success and the downfall since Hitler, the humiliation, the life of the "sans patries"**. I will call it "My three lives" because I feel that I have lived in three different ages (pre – war, after war, Hitlerism). It is my only distraction in these sad days.
I seldom go away from Bath except the three weeks in Paris where I gave some lectures: I feel that I make a sad companion and bury myself into books and work.
Yours ever,
Stefan Zwieg.
*Anton Mussert, founder of the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands, the only political party allowed to act in Holland after the Nazi occupation.
**Refugees.
