The author is Professor Alex Gordon of the Department of Mathematical Sciences - Physics and Computer Sciences at Oranim College, tells about the anti-Semitism that accompanied the famous Jewish researchers, about Einstein's recommendation for Rosen to work in Kiev, about the double loyalty of Podolsky, about Prof. Lev Strom who was executed near Kiev Begin - "sharing Operation with the Gestapo" And more about the difficult history of Jewish scientists in the USSR
Eight years after I immigrated to Israel, in the midst of "perestroika" (reconstruction - 1985-1991) in the Soviet Union, my father wrote to me from Moscow: "There will be no immigration, because everyone who wanted to leave the Soviet Union has already left." He was right: those who started immigrating from the Soviet Union in 1990 were the ones who did not want to leave but were forced to do so. These were hundreds of thousands of Jews who feared the future because the country had changed drastically. First it took away their freedom, while this time it robbed their meager savings, allowed the anti-Semitic movements to rise, and left the Jews in uncertainty. The Jews who did not want to say goodbye to normal life left the Germany of 1937-1938. It took them four or five years to realize that life was no longer normal. It was only after the publication of the law, according to which "Jews are not Germans", that educated Jews, with European culture, began to flow into the desert and marshy Land of Israel from the land of Germany, which had ceased to be their homeland.
People came to the Middle East to whom Germany was dear and the Land of Israel was foreign. Albert Einstein could have been among them, but he preferred the United States, Princeton, where he met the hero of this story, born in the United States and the son of Jewish refugees who escaped the pogroms in the Russian Empire, Natan Rosen.
My acquaintance with Professor Rosen began in a one-sided manner - I knew of his existence, he did not know of my existence. While studying at Kyiv University, I read his joint paper with Albert Einstein and Boris Podolsky. Rosen was for me a man from the books. Our paths crossed about ten years after I read his article. I had no idea how many things we would have in common when we met, but the road to our meeting was difficult and even dangerous for me.
The future Minister of Science of Ukraine asked me not to immigrate to Israel
The year 1978. My colleague, a doctor of physics, future member of the National Academy of Sciences, future deputy of the parliament of the Soviet Union, future minister of science of Ukraine, tried to convince me to give up my request to immigrate to Israel. In a conversation that lasted about eight hours, he only strengthened my desire to leave the Soviet Union. He argued that the restrictions on Jews, in admissions to university studies and workplaces, are not discrimination but the correct policy for regulating relations between the different nationalities in the multinational state: the percentage of Jews studying and working in institutions of higher education and research institutes cannot be greater than their percentage in the population. His worldview met the criterion of "mild anti-Semitism" according to Jean-Paul Sartre's definition in his book "Reflections on the Jewish Question" (1944).
The "moderate anti-Semite" is a polite person who tells you "I don't feel hatred towards the Jews." For one reason or another, I believe that their participation in the life of the state should be limited." This colleague of mine expressed his opinion on the Jewish question after I told him about the persecution of my father and my aunt as Jews in the case of the "cosmopolitans" as one of the reasons for my desire to immigrate. The Cosmopolitan Affair broke out in 1949. The Jews, prominent experts in culture, art, and science, were accused of lack of patriotism, and loyalty to "foreign" culture, art, and science. They were characterized as rootless, as representatives of bourgeois culture hostile to Soviet culture. My father Yaakov, a professor of European literature at the university, and my aunt Leah, a professor of the history of Russian music, the head of the department in this subject, and the dean of the faculty of singing, were fired from their jobs and expelled from Kiev. Their places were taken by representatives of the "Aryan race", their Ukrainian colleagues. As a result of the persecution and the difficult living conditions, my parents separated.
"The Jews did not fight in the Red Army" and other anti-Semitic and false claims
In reply to me, my colleague claimed that the Jews of the Soviet Union did not fight on the front lines of World War II in the uniform of the Red Army, and were saved, while the Russians and Ukrainians fought and died for the homeland. He told this to me, to a man whose uncle was killed in 1941 in the battles in Estonia. In our institute there was a plaque with the names of those who fell in the battles of World War II. According to the data of the plaque and the photos that fall on it, the percentage of Jews killed on the front was much higher than their percentage in the population of Ukraine. Needless to say, the percentage of Jews who were murdered in Babi Yar in Kyiv was dozens of times higher than the number of Ukrainians and Russians murdered there. My colleague made a mistake in calculating the percentage of Jews, and by and large... he was older than me, and claimed that after World War II the Jews were deputy managers in the food stores in Kiev and made a living, while the Ukrainians were hungry. Many Kiev Jews were unable to get the positions of deputy managers in the food stores because they did not need food: they were murdered in Babi Yar by the Nazis and their Ukrainian assistants.
The head of the physics institute where I worked, a member of the Academy of Sciences, summoned me for a conversation regarding my request to immigrate to Israel, and told me that I betrayed the country. As the deputy editor-in-chief of the "Ukrainian Journal of Physics" he made a decision to remove the articles from the magazine a few days before its publication. The article was accepted for publication for professional reasons, and was removed from the journal for ideological reasons. The head of the institute told me that the articles of traitors will not be published in the national journals. Thirty years before, thousands of copies of my father's book, The Cosmopolitan and The Traitor, about the Danish writer Martin Andersen Nekse, were destroyed. In 1933, thousands of books written by famous Jews were burned. I found myself in good company.
"Leaving the Soviet Union will harm other Jews"
My colleague said that my decision to leave the Soviet Union would harm other Jews because he too, the "progressive person", would not hire "potential traitors". He saw the Jews as hostages who bear collective responsibility. He presented me as the enemy of the Jews because I caused them harm with my act. He said that the Soviet Union was in dire straits, and pointed out that I could have contributed a lot to the motherland, but I chose to defect, to show hostility towards the country that had given me so much. He naturally and easily connected to the popular anti-Semitic message in the Soviet Union, and in Ukraine in particular: during the Second World War, the Jews were defectors, traitors. In his opinion I am no different from them because I am a deserter, a traitor, and an anti-patriot. He accused me of the things that were the charges against my father and my aunt thirty years ago as part of the state anti-Semitism campaign, the Cosmopolitan affair. The circle is closed. I earned the title of "traitor to the state", even though I did not violate the laws of the state - my immigration was legal, but it was a shock for him because I intended to move to a country in which his country condemned it for belonging to the capitalist world, to the "aggressors" and the "occupiers".
About three years before our conversation, the United Nations General Assembly passed resolution 3379: "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination." In the Soviet Union this decision was welcomed because there they reached this conclusion a long time ago. The authorities of the Soviet Union spread harsher messages than those included in the UN resolution. Four years before the adoption of the UN resolution, the book by the "scientist" Yevgeny Yevsaev "Fascism under the Blue Star: The Truth about Modern Zionism" was published in the Soviet Union. There the following conclusion was brought: "Zionism is the enemy of the Soviet people, the enemy of peace, and the enemy of humanity." Well, in addition to "traitor", I automatically received the titles "racist" and "enemy of the people". These three characteristics put me at risk. I didn't know where I would find myself at the end of the authorities' handling of my immigration case. However, I was truly a "traitor" because I hated the regime, I did not see the Soviet Union as my country, I studied Hebrew and the history of the Jewish people underground. In that country anyone could be accused of treason - my father who loved it and me who hated it.
July 1980. The narrow and long corridor of the Faculty of Physics at the Technion. On both sides of the corridor are office doors with the names of the occupants of the rooms in Hebrew: "Professor...". The office door at the end of the corridor opens. A thin, elderly man comes out of the room, who greets me with a wide smile as if we have known each other for a long time. I see him for the first time and am shocked by his manners. He is probably an engineer, a technician, an administrator. The professors of the corridor, if they say hello - and this does not always happen - do so with a sense of superiority. This office occupant is too plain and polite to be a professor. As he walks away from the door of his office, I read his name on a small metal plate that reads N. Rosen in French without the title professor. This name is familiar to me, but the shock of immigrating to Israel is a distant past.
In the year I immigrated to Israel - 1979 - the Institute of Physics in Kiev, where I worked, printed a booklet for the anniversary of the establishment of the institute. My name as belonging to the category of "enemies of the people" and "traitors" was deleted from the brochure. At the beginning of the section, in which the history of the institute is told, it was written: "Starting in 1932, for five years, the department of theoretical physics was headed by Professor L. J. Strom. After that, for about two years of his stay in the Soviet Union, he headed the department N. count. He carried out a number of works in the theory of the atom and elementary particles" (the authors of the booklet were wrong: Professor Strom could not manage the department for five years because in 1936 he was no longer alive).
Professor Lev Strom (1890–1936), head of the Department of Theoretical Physics at Kyiv University and Institute of Physics was arrested, accused of terrorist activity, participation in the assassination of Soviet Union leader Sergei Kirov, and collaboration with the Gestapo. A Jew - collaborating with the Gestapo! He was executed on October 22, 1936 near Kiev. Along with him, thirty-six professors and lecturers of the institutions of higher education in Ukraine were murdered, nineteen of them were Jews. The percentage of Jews among the victims was much higher than their percentage in the population! Ström was a talented scientist, an educated and broad-minded man: in addition to physics, he was involved in mathematics and philosophy of the natural sciences. As part of his pursuit of philosophy, he met the professor and member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union Semyon Samkovsky (Bronstein), the famous philosopher of science in the Soviet Union, the cousin of Leon Trotsky, who at that time was Stalin's number one enemy. Strom was arrested several days after Samkowski's arrest.
In 1910-1912 Strom was active in the underground Marxist circles led by one of the prominent leaders of the Bolsheviks, the Jew Moisei Oritsky, later the head of the secret police in Petrograd, who was assassinated in 1918 by the Jewish poet Leonid Kangisar. In 1917-1918 Strom belonged to the Mensheviks and then worked within the Bund, the socialist Jewish organization. It is possible that his activity for the "wrong socialism" of the Mensheviks and the Bund people was considered by the authorities as a crime. However, he stopped engaging in revolutionary and public activity and devoted himself to science. At one of the international conferences he met with Einstein, and received from him a picture of the great physicist with his dedication. On the official website of the Institute of Physics in Kyiv, Professor Strom was not mentioned. He was his predecessor in the role of Count. Over time, Rosen learned that he had inherited the "enemy of the people". He felt a strong sense of fear.
Who was N. Rosen, was not explained in the jubilee brochure nor on the plaque on his office door. Natan Rosen (March 22, 1909 - December 18, 1995) - was an assistant and colleague of Albert Einstein. They are partners in the famous article "Is the description of physical reality through quantum mechanics complete?" with Boris Podolsky, and for articles on the Einstein-Rosen "bridge" and gravitational waves. Rosen was a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and a research professor at the Technion. It turned out that he is the founder of the physics faculty at the Technion, in whose corridor I met him.
Natan Rosen was born in Brooklyn in 1909, two years after his parents' escape from the anti-Jewish pogroms in Tsarist Russia. In 1931 he published together with R. Langer the article "Neutron". The article was published a year before the discovery of the neutron by James Chadwick who received a Nobel Prize for the discovery. In 1934 Rosen received an appointment as Einstein's assistant at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, and worked there until 1936. Einstein's last paper on gravitational waves (the first was written in 1916) was published together with Rosen in 1937. At that time he was a count in the Soviet Union. Einstein helped him get a job in Kiev when he wrote a letter of request to the Prime Minister of Russia and. M. Molotov Bo recommended getting Rosen to work.
What was Natan Rosen, born in the USA, looking for in Kiev?
In the article of the Ukrainian researcher A. J. Koltchikhin (2008) presents the history of accepting Rosen to work in Kiev after Molotov ordered physicists in Moscow to handle Einstein's request to accept Rosen in Kiev. In the archive of a member of the Academy of Sciences, Professor Alexander Goldman, the founder and first director of the Institute of Physics in Kiev, it is written: "In the summer of 1936, the Institute received a letter from Dr. B. M. Wall on behalf of the management of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union in which the request to employ Dr. N. Rosen, the young American theoretical physicist, a close colleague of Professor Einstein. I immediately left for Moscow, inquired about the circumstances of the case and after meeting Dr. Rosen, I began working to get him a job at the institute. I succeeded in my mission after overcoming many difficulties." For two years Rosen taught at Kyiv University where I studied many years later. He did not know Russian, and his lectures were translated to students from English. Dr. Oksana Thomasevich, who was my lecturer and heard his lectures, told me about his special teaching at Kyiv University. For two years he researched at the Institute of Physics where I started working thirty-three years after his escape from the Soviet Union. Rosen told me how he, a young and unemployed American scientist, found a job in the Soviet Union with Einstein's help, and how he realized that he had to flee from there when the Moscow Trials and other events began in 1938-1937.
Why did Rosen look for a job in the Soviet Union? The American astrophysicist and science historian Daniel Kenpick discusses the issue in his book "Journey at the Speed of Thought: Albert Einstein and the Search for Gravitational Waves" (2007), and writes "Rosen, Einfeld, and many scientists of that time were socialists. According to his views, Rosen longed to live and work in the Soviet Union." Rosen was looking for not only a job in the Soviet Union, but the realization of the socialist idea.
Podolsky was a Soviet agent
In 1934-1935 Rosen collaborated at Princeton with Boris Podolsky, born in Russia (1896) who immigrated to the United States in 1913. Towards the end of the collaboration with Einstein and Rosen, he accepted a position as professor of mathematical physics at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio. Before accepting the permanent position in Ohio Podolsky worked in various countries including the Soviet Union ̶ in Kharkiv with L. Landau and Fock in 1931–1933. Apparently Podolsky liked the Soviet regime.
The authors noted that Podolsky cooperated with the intelligence organization of the Soviet Union. According to the book, at the beginning of 1942 Podolsky, on his own initiative, contacted the Embassy of the Soviet Union in the United States, and recommended that work begin on enriching uranium 235 for the preparation of the Soviet nuclear bomb. In April 1942, in the "Amtorg" building, he met with the agents S. M. Semyonov and V. S. Prabdin. The Soviet intelligence organization gave Podolsky the name "Quant". From the encrypted telegrams of the Soviet Union embassy it is clear that on June 14, 1943 "Quant" arrived at the Soviet Union embassy in Washington and told its representatives a. A. Gromyko and S. M. Semyonov obtained information from his contacts with his colleagues - equations describing the gaseous bubble method for separating uranium, which could be used to enrich the uranium 235 needed for the nuclear bomb. The information about Podolsky's activity for the Soviet Union was included in the book thanks to the work in the KGB archive of the KGB officer. third. B. Formerly A. J. Vasiliev, one of the book's authors, who has been living in England since 1996. Podolsky and Rosen worked and communicated closely for about a year. Their collaboration began a year after Podolsky's arrival in America from the Soviet Union. He was thirteen years older than Count. It is possible that Podolsky's stories about his life and work in Kharkov, which were fruitful and pleasant and not dangerous, influenced Rosen's decision to move to the Soviet Union. During a short period of Podolsky's work in Kharkiv, the new institute headed by Lev Landau was an oasis of internationalism and scientific enthusiasm and attracted many physicists from abroad.
Rosen was shocked by Strom's execution
Rosen told me that he was shocked when he learned of the "disappearance" of Strom, his predecessor in both positions - head of the theoretical physics department at the university and the physics institute. The first person Rosen asked me about was Professor Alexander Goldman (1884–1971), Strom's senior colleague. It became clear to me that Goldman's arrest in 1938 was the shock that decided Rosen's fate in the Soviet Union, and caused him to flee from there. Goldman's father, a doctor by profession, was murdered in his clinic in the village of Levdin in Ukraine during the pogrom during the civil war in the Soviet Union (1917-1922). Goldman himself went through a pogrom of a different kind: he was accused of activities against the socialist revolution, terrorism, and attempts to overthrow the Soviet regime. Regime officials brutally tortured him, but he denied all the accusations, did not reveal any names of "criminal partners", and the investigators were not allowed to fabricate cases against other people. Goldman's firm stand against the investigators and his courage caused him to be sentenced "only" to five years of exile, which turned into eighteen years, but his life conditions were much easier than those of the victims imprisoned in the labor camps and prisons. He taught physics in Kazakhstan, first at a school, then at a university. After Stalin's death, Goldman's name was cleared in 1956, and he returned to the Institute of Physics in Kiev in 1959. I got to know him. He was a fascinating and impressive personality, a great physicist and devoted to science. He did research until his last day. At the age of eighty-seven, Goldman had a car accident and was killed under the wheels of a police car. The authorities did not break his spirit but the car of the law enforcement officers, who mainly served the persecution machine, ended the life of the great scientist and brave man. Well, it turned out that the Count and I had a mutual acquaintance and colleague in Kiev. I told him about my brief acquaintance with Goldman, his life, his work, and his sudden death.
One can get an impression of Rosen's life in Kiev from the article of the Ukrainian researcher A. A. Shatzerbek (2012). In the article excerpts from the correspondence between Einstein and Rosen during Rosen's work in Kiev are presented. It describes the content of Rosen's first letter to Einstein from Kiev, written on February 26, 1937. Rosen writes to Einstein, "I conduct research at the Institute of Physics of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and teach at the University of Kiev. I'm busy all the time, I don't have free time like I did at Princeton. But I have something more important: I feel that I am needed, that I am important (without this feeling, life is meaningless). And today I don't need the support of small people in senior positions to earn my living. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping me get here." In 1937, Rosen and his wife had a son (Dr. Physics Joe Rosen) in Kiev.
In the following letters, he enthusiastically tells Einstein about life in the Soviet Union. He even discusses the possibility of finding a job at Dnepropetrovsk University for a chemist from Princeton, but is unable to find a guarantor who can guarantee the candidate's loyalty because "the authorities are afraid of foreign spies." However, a year later in a letter dated March 24, 1938, after Goldman's arrest on January 22, Rosen writes to Einstein: "As you can see we are still in Kiev and still full of enthusiasm for the Soviet Union. <…> I hope to meet you in the summer".
In Rosen's letter, the word "still" appears, expressing the cooling of his enthusiasm for life in Kiev. His last letter to Einstein McCabe was written on July 31, 1938 “When I last wrote to you, I was planning to visit the United States this summer. But my plans have changed. In a few weeks I'm going back to America and will stay there. I am very satisfied with what I saw in the Soviet Union, I really enjoyed living here. The reason for this step is that I am not satisfied with my output. I feel like I'm not doing enough. My doubts do not allow me to stay here. I am returning to America and will look for a job that is not related to research. If I find it, I will work and research in my free time when I don't feel responsible."
Lee Rosen said that it was clear to him that his letters were being checked by the authorities. Upon his return to the United States, he heard from colleagues who had also returned from various places in the Soviet Union about their feelings, the dangers they felt, and the fear that gripped them and caused them to flee to America.
Victor Weiskopf
Among his colleagues who experienced life in the Soviet Union was Victor Weiskopf (1908-2002), the American physicist of Austrian Jewish origin, a colleague of N. Bohr, and Heisenberg, and Pauli, H. Botha and L. Landau, the foreign member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, was involved in the Manhattan Project of the American nuclear bomb. I listened to Weiskopf's lecture at the Technion and witnessed his meeting with Rosen in Haifa. Both remembered that they could work in the same city - Kyiv.
I will explain with the help of the interviews given by Weiskopf. On July 10, 1963, in England, Weiskopf told about his stay in Soviet Russia, and about his work at the Ukrainian Physical-Technical Institute in Kharkiv, where Lev Landau was the head of the theoretical physics department "I had many friends in Kharkiv, residents of Vienna who came there, communists who settled in the Soviet Union. It was a bad time. Many of them were communists, semi-communists, or non-communists, who found themselves in the only place where they could survive. It was a new institute in Kharkiv." Twenty-five years later, on April 7, 1988, Weiskopf was interviewed in Berkeley and the interview is presented in the book "Stalin and the Bomb" (1996). Below is a quote:
Question: At the time you were considering another offer - from the Soviet Union?
Answer: Yes, I visited Russia several times and got to know Russian physicists then. <…> I traveled in Russia. I certainly noticed the worst side of Stalinism. <…> In 1936 I received an offer to become a full professor in Kiev. <…> I must point out that there was a low salary. And it was completely clear to me - I visited Russia for a short time in 1933 - and in 1936 it was completely clear to me that I would not go to Kiev under any circumstances. I think if I had accepted the offer, I'm not sure I'd be alive today. Then I decided to go to America." (200 dollars a month, which is much more than 200 dollars today, but it is still not that much. When I asked Rosen why he worked in Kiev in both places - at the university and at the Institute of Physics - he also stated that one salary was too low. - A. third.)
David Holloway wrote "When at the end of 1936 Viktor Weiskopf arrived in Kharkov, some immigrant physicists with whom he talked advised him not to accept the professorship in Kiev. Instead he chose the University of Rochester in New York. The situation at the Kharkov Institute already in 1935 and 1936 was apparently not good and became worse. Many of the institute's leading researchers during the "great purges" were arrested and accused of monstrous connections against the state. Indeed, in the years 1937-1938, sixteen researchers of the institute were imprisoned, including two foreign citizens.
Kenpik interprets Rosen's letters to Einstein as follows: "Regardless of his opinion about the "really existing socialism" during the great purges, he returned to the United States. <...> His letters to Einstein were full of enthusiastic praise towards the Soviet government - until July 31, 1938 when he suddenly told of his intention to return to the United States as a permanent residence. Reading the letters fifty years after they were written, it is hard to believe that the letter writer's enthusiasm was sincere; These praises are forced. It is clear that the foreigners in the Soviet Union were in physical danger during the purges because the many accusations in the show trials of that period were centered around allegations of injuries and damage caused by the foreigners. Rosen and others, for example the Polish physicist Miron Matheson, succumbed to the hysteria that was undoubtedly in the air, and out of fear of the danger of sudden arrest came to the conclusion that it was necessary to leave the Soviet Union." Kenpik refers to the Polish Jew Myron Matheson (1897 - 1940), an expert in the theory of general relativity, who mastered Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, ancient Greek, Latin, Russian, French, German, and English. Matheson, who fled Polish anti-Semitism, found a job at the head of the theoretical physics department at Kazan University in the Soviet Union. He got the job based on the recommendations of Albert Einstein, Paul Langevin, and Jacques Edmar. All three were foreign members of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. Langevin was also a member of the French Communist Party. They were guarantors of Matheson's loyalty. In his autobiography, Matheson writes: "My fate was determined thanks to correspondence with Einstein on the subject of the study of the electron and equations for electron orbits. Einstein was an external examiner for my doctorate." But Matheson did not live up to the three's promises on the issue of his loyalty. In 1937 he went to a conference in Paris and never returned to the Soviet Union. He writes to Einstein: "I will not return to Zen. Already in May, the situation of the foreigners there was unbearable."
Rosen, who wanted to live in a socialist country and was frightened by the realization of the socialist idea in the Soviet Union, returned to the capitalist country. In the United States, he worked at the University of North Carolina until he immigrated to Israel, where he received the rank of professor at the Technion in 1953. While working in the Soviet Union he learned to read Russian. I gave him the first Russian edition of Einstein's book on general relativity from the library of my late stepfather, professor of physics and member of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Michael Degan, with a dedication. One day I showed Rozen the jubilee brochure of our joint establishment in Kiev in which his name was mentioned. It was the institute from which he fled due to the fear of the inevitable persecution. This was the pamphlet from which my name was erased for being a traitor to the country from which Rosen fled.
We met far from the Princeton and Kiev of his youth, and a long way from the Kiev where I cheated. For fifteen years we lived in Haifa next door, and met at the faculty he founded. He took the jubilee booklet, carefully read the section where his name appeared, examined the photos of the institute where he worked for two years and shook my hand.
More of the topic in Hayadan:
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Experiment
By the way, my grandfather Yosef Beli Dar was drafted into the Red Army immediately after the liberation of the area where he and the rest of the family were hiding. It was in 1944. He fought all the way to Berlin and even won the medals that were lost during the Exodus ride
Thanks
Wow, could be a basis for a movie or series!
Most fascinating.
Thank you.
Great article, thank you very much
Fascinating to read. Thanks!