When I was in my early twenties my sister splurged and took me to a Broadway show for my birthday. I had talked at home about Bertolt Brecht, the playwright, because I had studied his work in my German class. The show she took me to see was The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui The play parallels the rise of Hitler in Germany. Brecht wrote it while he was in exile, waiting desperately for a visa to the U.S. Fascism was spreading rapidly across Europe. Not only had Brecht written plays critical of Hitler and the Nazis, but his wife was Jewish (which meant, according to the Nazis, so were his children). Germany was not a safe place for him or his family.