Trivia

The screenwriter and director Richard Arvay was a drama student by Max Reinhardt and he impersonated smaller roles on stages in Berlin till 1933.

During World War II he emigrated to France but was interned. He was able to flee in 1943 via Italy to the USA. There he spent the rest of his life and he died in New York in 1970.

He brought his wife after the war to America, settled in New York City, and worked as a writer.

In 1951 he became a U.S. citizen.

Richard Arvay lived at Fort Ontario for about 18 months. On a form stating that he did not want to return to Europe, he added a handwritten explanation: "I would also find it impossible to live in a country where all my family have been killed.".

In 1944, he was one of about 1,000 refugees picked to come to America to live in the newly established Fort Ontario Emergency Refugee Shelter in Oswego, New York. President Roosevelt had established the camp to respond to political pressures to do more to help Jews in Europe and to sidestep immigration regulations.

After Germany occupied France in 1940, Arvay was sent to a concentration camp for a year. He escaped to Italy in 1943, when he was threatened with deportation to Poland.