Albert Einstein Seeks to Continue Important Aid Being Provided to Jewish Settlers in Palestine

He cites two men prominent in Jewish aid to Palestine

On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler took office as Chancellor of Germany, and in April the Nazis proclaimed the Nuremberg laws that made Jews second-class citizens. Far-sighted Jews began to leave Germany right away, though many escaped with just the clothes on their backs.

Einstein had been in the US for a visiting professorship at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena at the time of Hitler’s assumption of power. He and his wife Elsa returned by ship to Europe in March 1933, landing in Belgium. He soon found that their cottage in Germany had been raided, and learned that his name was on a list of assassination targets. Einstein turned in his passport to the German consulate and formally renounced his German citizenship. He resided in Belgium at the coastal village of Le Coq for some months and then moved to England for a short period. On October 17, 1933, he returned to the US and took up a position at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey.

Karl Frankenstein was a psychologist in Berlin prior to the Nazi takeover, and was actively involved in Jewish relief organizations. He was Director of Hilfswerk für Jüdische Künstler und Geistesarbeiter – Aid for Jewish Artists and Intellectuals – an organization to which Einstein had accepted honorary membership. Frankenstein went to France in 1933, and immigrated to Palestine in 1935. There he served as liaison between the Zionist National Committee and the British Mandate authorities in the fields of welfare and education. At the time of the establishment of the State of Israel, he was appointed head of the Henrietta Szold Institute (National Institute for Research in the Behavioral Sciences) in Jerusalem. He was also the leading figure at the School of Education established by the Israeli Ministry of Education at the Hebrew University in 1954. Afterwards, Frankenstein was a faculty member at the Hebrew University, and served as a professor of education. His principal areas of study were developmental sociology, rehabilitation, problems in Immigrant absorption, psychology and psychopathy. He received the Israel Prize in 1965.

Erwin Loewenson was a pioneer of literary expressionism in Germany before World War I, and an author who contributed to a number of noted magazines at the time. Under the influence of Martin Buber, he became a Zionist. In 1922 he took over as Secretary of the German Palestinian Relief Society, which provided needed aid to settlers. In the Zionist movement Loewenson engaged in organizational and journalistic activities and emigrated to Palestine in 1933.

Thus the German-Jewish world was in flux, and on the road, and a prime concern was how to maintain and continue the important scientific, literary, charitable, and Zionist work that was being done.

Typed letter signed, on his typed temporary letterhead, Le Coq, June 25, 1933, being a letter citing Frankenstein and encouraging a funding source to assist Loewenson. “As an honorary member of the ‘Aid for Jewish Artists and Intellectuals’ (founded by Mr. Frankenstein whose efforts I have supported), I am confirming Mr. Frankenstein’s factual statements and concur with his petition to grant Mr. Erwin Loewenson a stipend to enable him to continue his valuable and very necessary work.”

Although Einstein never moved to Israel, he continued his support of the Jewish state. He was offered the opportunity to become Israel’s first president, but declined. His papers are at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.