Hell Hitler!

Heil Hitler!

THE OPPERMANNS--Lion Feuchtwangcr --Viking ($2.50). One result of the Nazis' anti-Semite campaign has been to bring Historical-Novelist Feuchtwanger up to date. His best book, Power, was set in the 18th Century, and though Success was a contemporary record it was written from the backward-looking vantage of an historian. But in The Oppermanns Author Feuchtwanger no longer writes as a cool observer of barbarous times but as a member of an injured race. This story of what has been happening to the Jews in Germany will perhaps be taken by Nazi-sympathizers as special pleading. Plain readers will rate it a first-class indictment, a second-class novel. The Oppermann family of Berlin had come through the War and post-War years with colors never below half-mast. In 1932 they considered themselves well and truly fixed as German citizens. Gus- tav, senior partner in the family furniture business, was a 50-year-old bachelor who enjoyed most moments of his ordered life. A connoisseur of women, art and literature, he frequented his club and the theatre and left the running of the business mostly to his brother Martin. Edgar was a world-famed surgeon; Ludwig had been killed in the War. Of the Oppermann women, one was married to a well-to-do German-Jew who had taken U. S. citizenship, the other to a Christian of good family. Martin, a solid businessman, had also married a Christian; his only son Berthold was the family pride. When the Nazis began their climb to power the Oppermanns saw that the anti-Jewish propaganda might have some temporary effect on business. First storm-warning was the advent of a new master at Berthold's school, famed both for its sound scholarship and liberal atmosphere. The new master, a Nazi, disapproved of liberalism, disliked Jews, hated anyone who poked fun at the pompous rodomontades of his Leader. Soon he and Berthold were at daggers drawn. As the Nazi flood crept higher, Martin Oppermann saw that the Jews would have to look for an ark. Almost too late he arranged a humiliating merger with his Christian rival. And then things really began to happen to the Oppermanns. Berthold, confronted with the choice of a public recantation or expulsion from his school, committed suicide. Gustav, who had signed a manifesto against the Nazis, was persuaded to flee the country just before a raiding party came to ''search" his house. Martin was arrested in the middle of the night, taken to jail and beaten. Edgar was expelled from his hospital; on the bandages of the patient he had just operated on was rubber-stamped: "I have been shameless enough to allow myself to be treated by a Jew." Gustav was foolish enough to go back to Germany where he was arrested, clapped in a concentration camp. When the Oppermanns got themselves together again in Switzerland they were no longer solid German citizens: Martin would begin again in England, Edgar in Paris; Berthold was dead; Gustav was dying.

Author Feuchtwanger accuses the Nazis of hushing up such "unpleasant matters." "In a country of sixty-five million people, it had become possible to slaughter three thousand people, to cripple thirty thousand, and to imprison one hundred thousand without trial and without reason, and yet preserve an outward aspect of peace and order." Though Feuchtwanger rarely refers to Hitler except as "the Leader'' or "the Leader of the barbarians." his foreword will enrage Nazis even more than his book. Explaining that he chose the name "Oppermann'' "because it brings to mind similar, generally Jewish names . . . and at the same time has a German sound," he adds: "A parallel in stance occurs in the name Hitler, which is borne by a Jewish family in Moravia as well as by the Chancellor of the Reich." The Author, a native "Munchener" (born 1884), has always been an out spoken critic of his birthplace. He calls its art "narrow-minded, pompous, academic," its inhabitants "mouldy, stuffy and alcoholic." In 1912 he married, went abroad. The War found him in Tunis, where he was interned as an enemy alien. His wife smuggled him aboard an Italian boat; he got back to Germany in time to serve in the army. During the War his writings were constantly suppressed. Not until 1926. when Power was published, did he become widely known outside Germany. Poetic playwright as well as novelist, he has written Warren Hastings, Vasantasena, Die Kriegsgefangencn (Prisoners of War). Nervous, twitchetty, bespectacled, he has a big nose, prominent mouth, receding chin, looks like a fat-cheeked rat. Exiled from Germany last year. Author Feuchtwanger now lives in Sanary, on the Riviera.

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