Patricia Highsmith and her ashes were interred in its columbarium. She left her estate, worth an estimated $3 million, and the promise of any future royalties to the Yaddo colony, where she spent two months in 1948 writing the draft of "Strangers on a Train". Highsmith bequeathed her literary estate to the Swiss Literary Archives at the Swiss National Library in Bern, Switzerland. Her Swiss publisher, Diogenes Verlag, was appointed literary executor of the estate. Highsmith was a resolute atheist. Although she considered herself a liberal, and in her school years had gotten along with Black students, in later years she became
Patricia Highsmith Door" to the Palestinian people: The inscription was dropped from the U.S. edition with permission from her agent but without consent from Highsmith. Highsmith contributed financially to the Jewish Committee on the Middle East, an organization founded in 1988 that represented American Jews who wanted the United States to "dissociate...from the policies of Israel." She wrote in an August 1993 letter to Marijane Meaker: "USA could save 11 million per day if they would cut the dough to Israel. The Jewish vote is 1%." After graduating from Barnard College, before her short stories started appearing in print, Highsmith wrote for