AustLit

This piece focuses on the events leading to the death of German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin. Benjamin took his own life whilst detained in a hotel in the border town of Port Bou after his attempt to flee occupied France was thwarted by border police. The authorities had intended to send the group Benjamin travelled with to a concentration camp. However, the order was overturned in the morning following his suicide and Benjamin's fellow refugees were allowed free passage into Spain. There is also reference to a series of radio scripts for children that Benjamin broadcast during the early 1930s when he worked for the new radio stations of Berlin and Frankfurt. The scripts were lost, presumed destroyed, until ten years after his death.

Source: ABC website, www.abc.net.au (Sighted: 30/05/2007)