'' Friedenstag '' was premiered a few months before the Kristallnacht atrocities on 9-10 November 1938 . On November 15th , Strauss rushed back from Italy to Garmisch because his wife Pauline had telegraphed him to return because his Jewish daughter-in-law Alice was under house arrest . Strauss managed to obtain her release , but from then on the position of Alice and grandchildren Christian and Richard became perilous . In December 1941 , Strauss moved to Vienna , where the Nazi governor Baldur von Schirach was an admirer of Strauss and offered some protection . Strauss was to experience at close quarters what was happening to Alice ’s family . In 1942 , Strauss became involved in the attempts of his son Franz to get Jewish relatives out to Switzerland , including an ill-fated visit to the concentration camp at Theresienstadt . Many of Alice 's relatives died in the holocaust . Son Franz and Alice were put under house arrest in Vienna in 1943 . The position of Alice and her children was never without fear . Zweig ’s books had been banned and burned soon after the Nazis came to power and he spent most of his time in London . On the verge of becoming a permanent resident , with the outbreak of war he suddenly became an enemy alien and had to give up his dream of living in Britain . He moved to the US and then Brazil . Depressed by the growth of intolerance , authoritarianism , and Nazism , feeling hopeless for the future for humanity , he committed suicide with his wife on February 23 , 1942
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Friedenstag