Franz Werfel was one of Austria's most renowned writers at the end of the 1920s. In the 1930s, however, the humanist, anti-genocide stance he expressed in works such as The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, as well as his Jewish heritage, attracted the censure of the Nazis. His books were among the many that were burned amidst accusations of conspiracy and decadence. In 1940, Werfel fled to the United States via France and Spain and settled in Los Angeles.