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Why did Billy Wilder leave Germany in 1933?
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Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder in a promotional photograph for Sunset Boulevard (1950), which he directed.
Billy Wilder left Germany in 1933 because the Nazis had seized power, leading to the systemic persecution of Jewish people in the arts. As a Jewish artist, Wilder was among the many who fled the country to escape the Third Reich, which had officially banned Jews from the film industry and placed cinema under the control of Joseph Goebbels.12