I think that one Jew one who calculated the Theory of Relativity was pretty heroic.
Didn't he once work for the Nazis and came here to help us?
In January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. One of the first actions of Hitler's administration was the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service which removed Jews and politically suspect government employees (including university professors) from their jobs, unless they had demonstrated their loyalty to Germany by serving in World War I. In December 1932, in response to this growing threat, Einstein had prudently traveled to the U.S. For several years he had been wintering at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California,[75] and also was a guest lecturer at Abraham Flexner's newly founded Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.[76]
The Einsteins bought a house in Princeton (where Elsa died in 1936), and Einstein remained an integral contributor to the Institute for Advanced Study until his death in 1955. During the 1930s and into World War II, Einstein wrote affidavits recommending United States visas for a huge number of Jews from Europe trying to flee persecution, raised money for Zionist organizations and was in part responsible for the formation, in 1933, of the International Rescue Committee.[74][77]
Albert Einstein receiving his certificate of American citizenship from Judge Phillip Forman in 1940.
Albert Einstein receiving his certificate of American citizenship from Judge Phillip Forman in 1940.
Meanwhile in Germany, a campaign to eliminate Einstein's work from the German lexicon as unacceptable "Jewish physics" (Jüdische Physik) was led by Nobel laureates Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark. Deutsche Physik activists published pamphlets and even textbooks denigrating Einstein, and instructors who taught his theories were blacklisted—including Nobel laureate Werner Heisenberg, who had debated quantum probability with Bohr and Einstein. Philipp Lenard claimed that the mass–energy equivalence formula needed to be credited to Friedrich Hasenöhrl to make it an Aryan creation.[78][79]
Last edited by ATG (2008-08-24 08:32:59)