So this issue brings us squarely into the cultural climate of 1933, when books were dragged from university libraries to be burned in a pile, in Berlin: or of 1937, when the Nazi party curated and hosted a “Degenerate Art” exhibit in Munich. What happened to me brings us squarely into a climate in which specific American writers, artists, sculptors, musicians, social activists, can be identified as enemies of the state, or identified as culturally or socially untouchable. “Degeneracy” in 1937 was defined essentially as that of which the Nazi party did not approve.
