After going into exile, many emigrants had limited access to information about the affairs, events and political developments within Germany. Nonetheless, publications in the exile press and commentaries on happenings in letters and diaries show that, at least at first, a good deal of information found its way out. This is also confirmed by the diary entries of René Schickele. However, since he had already moved to South Africa in autumn 1932, he did not experience the months surrounding Hitler’s seizure of power in the flesh, as those who first fled Germany in early 1933 did.

In this letter to Alfred Neumann from 14 July 1934, René Schickele expresses in a most immediate fashion his personal experience upon hearing Hitler’s Reichstag speech from 13 July 1934 on the radio. Schickele had borrowed the radio from the Yiddish author Schalom Asch, who lived in his neighbourhood in Nice, and had listened to an Italian broadcaster’s transmission of Hilter’s speech after the so-called Röhm Putsch. A day later he wrote to his friend Annette Kolb about the same experience: “Don’t look back over the Rhein, dear Annette, turn your back to it! It will end, I tell you, with a world-historic rape and murder. You see, the victims love their executioner – they love him! Since the day before yesterday I’m finally sure of it!”