S.N. Behrman, Comedy, and the Extermination of the Jews: Broadway, Christmas Eve, 1934

S.N. Behrman’s Rain from Heaven premiered on Broadway Christmas Eve, 1934. In the play, Hugo Willens, a refugee Nazi Germany, describes pamphlet he had written in Germany that led to his exile: satirical narrates extermination of all Jews but one. Tracking wide reading, which recorded diaries, shows anticipation genocide was widely shared by writers public sphere belonged. Behrman intended story last Jew as joke, some audience understood, it joke with political force. The fictional comic part larger project remaking comedy manners for purposes anti-Nazi resistance.