Jews Without Jobs

Two German-Jewish winners of Nobel Prizes were without jobs last week. Both are full of years and distinction. Dr. James Franck, 51, was a professor at Gottingen University. He won his Prize in 1925, for experimental physics. Professor Fritz Haber, 64, was director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical & Electrical Chemistry in Berlin. He invented the important synthesis of atmospheric nitrogen and hydrogen into ammonia which supplied Germany with explosives and fertilizers during the War. Like Nobel Laureate Albert Einstein, Laureates Haber and Franck resigned their German jobs to avoid Adolf Hitler's white pogrom.

More than 50 other German-Jewish professors of pure, applied and medical sciences have either been forced to resign or have been rudely thrown out of their chairs. No other eminent scientists have followed the example of Professor Hermann Jacobsohn, Indo-Germanic philologist at Marburg, who threw himself under a train. But many a Jew in Germany is known to be carrying an ampoule of poison for escape in case of race riot.

Surprisingly few of Germany's persecuted German-Jewish savants are known to have received invitations to teach or work in other countries. Dr. Einstein is among the luckiest. The chair of mathematics in the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, which he will assume this autumn, gives him security. In addition he holds posts in the University of Madrid and the Sorbonne.

Others count themselves lucky merely to get occupation outside Hitler's jurisdiction. Last week Kurt Goldstein, Berlin neurologist, was in Switzerland. Ludwig Halberstaedter was in Palestine, where the American Jewish Physicians' Committee and Hadassah (women's Zionist organiza- tion) hope to build a hospital and medical school. German refugees would have staff opportunities with both. Bernhard Zondek, Berlin gynecologist who helped devise a positive test for pregnancy, has invitations from Stockholm and Leyden. Safely back in Manhattan, where he is a naturalized U. S. citizen, is Gustav Bucky, Berlin cancer specialist. Another able medical emigre in Manhattan is Professor Leopold Lichtwitz, authority on metabolism. A group of Manhattan doctors is warily looking for other able German-Jews to bring into U. S. Medicine.

In Germany the Jewish savant now has no chance at all to earn a living. Aryan scientists made that plain last week when the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of the Sciences held its annual meeting. To Chancellor Hitler, Physicist Max Planck, the Society's president and a Nobel Laureate, sent this salute: "The Society begs leave to tender reverential greetings to the Chancellor and its solemn pledge that German science is also ready to cooperate joyously in the reconstruction of the new National State."

A sharp Swedish cartoon last fortnight flayed the Jewish scientist's plight in Nazi-land. The cartoon showed two browbeaten Germans eyeing a burly lout in the Nazi uniform who was striding through a university hall. First citizen: "What is the policeman doing here?" Second citizen: "Sh, sh. That is the man selected to succeed Einstein."

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