Dear Time-Reader

I was in the beginning very fat, with no nose whatsoever. That sounds incredible now. I further had, when I was three years old, a deep basso voice with which I frightened people who forgot to look into the baby buggy. I further liked to bite little girls.

Many of you have had a good word to say about the art that accompanies these letters, and others have asked who the artist is. Having no reason for keeping him under cover, I can say that he is a tall, gangling, affable young man named Richard Erdoes, and let him continue his story:

"I was born shortly before the outbreak of World War I in Frankfurt am Main. The place was accidental. My father was an opera singer and happened to have a contract with the Frankfurt Opera at the time. He was Hungarian; my mother was Viennese. My father died by accident four weeks before I was born. My mother lived henceforth with her two sisters, who were actresses and very beautiful.

"I became sickly and measly and, when I was seven, a doctor recommended that I be sent to the Odenweldschule, a very modern and experimental school in the woods. I arrived there in midwinter, and was led into a snow-covered enclosure where many little boys and girls hopped around merrily in the nude. I had on a heavy overcoat, a sailor suit, a flannel shirt, a union suit. I was peeled out of all this after a heroic fight and was left in the snow, naked and howling. My health improved from there on, and I spent most of the time making surrealistic paintings, once it was discovered that I liked to draw.

"When I was about 14 and going to school in Berlin, I came for the first time into contact with a Nazi belonging to the Hitler Jugend. He went to school with me and once invited me up to his place. His father, who had been an officer in the German Imperial Navy, had transformed the best room of the apartment into a replica of a U-boat. Each evening a sacred ritual took place. The father would assemble the whole family to "sink Englishmen." Through a circular hole (all that was left of the window) he would push a kind of telescope; bells rang, red and green lights flashed, and everybody roared commands through megaphones. When it was over and three English cruisers were sunk, I was asked how I liked it. I told them, frankly, that I thought they were crazy. Whereupon the whole family fell upon me and beat me up. I had the satisfaction of wrecking most of the U-boat in the process.

"At 17 I entered the Berlin Academy of Art. It was the time of the reactionary Papen government, which prepared the way for the Nazis, and the behind-the-stage work to make Hitler chancellor was already in full swing. A group of us who were united in our opposition to the Nazis decided that we should do something about it. We started off with what was called Haus und Hof propaganda: invading the courtyards of apartment houses with guitars and accordions to attract attention, then making speeches while others went from door to door passing out mimeographed sheets with our youthful interpretations of the political situation. This kind of anti-Hitler propaganda was forbidden even under the Papen regime.

"When the Nazis finally came to power our little group disintegrated. Some of us got caught; some were sent to concentration camps; one was beheaded, in 1942. A few of us got away. One turned Nazi. I stuck it out for about four months. One day, on the way home, I was stopped by a friend who gave me a toothbrush and a ticket to Vienna, telling me that the Gestapo was in my apartment and just to beat it. The next day I was in Vienna.

"In order to earn my living I became a permanent contributor of articles and illustrations to the Tag and Stunde, the only democratic papers left in town. In 1938 the Nazis came. To my early Berlin sins were added all the anti-Hitler newspaper work I had done in Vienna, and I had to go into hiding. The dominant thought of all of us hunted for political, racial, or both reasons, was to get out. Under the quota I would have to wait two years to get my U.S. immigration visa. Meanwhile, the problem was to keep alive and away from the Gestapo.

"I finally made my way to Paris. The war broke out; I was handed a gas mask and told to go to Bordeaux for my American visa. Months later I escaped to London. Then, exactly on the dot, two years after applying, I received my American immigration visa. I arrived in Manhattan at night and immediately went to a friend who lived near Inwood Park. At dawn I rushed to the window to see the skyscrapers. I saw only the park's rocks, trees, squirrels and blue-jays. I decided then and there that I was going to like it here."

He did. And last week all of us here at TIME were pleased to learn that Erdoes had become a U.S. citizen.

Cordially,

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