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David C. Clary, The Lost Scientists of World War II, World Scientific, 2024, 304 Pp

2024; Wiley; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/ntls.20240034

2698-6248

Stefan L. Wolff,

History of Science and Medicine

David C. Clary recounts the stories of 30 scientists who were "lost" or who "vanished" during World War II despite that "they all sought help from agencies to relocate to the UK." He portrays 17 scholars who became victims of the Shoah or committed suicide when facing deportation to the death camps in the East. He also includes a diverse group of 13 scientists who managed to survive under very different circumstances. During the war, their correspondence with relief organizations ceased. Afterward, efforts were made to discover their fate. Since April 1933, so-called non-Aryans, those with at least one Jewish-born grandparent regardless of their religious affiliation, were displaced from their positions in German scientific institutions due to new laws. There was significant solidarity from their colleagues abroad, which led to the creation of relief organizations that helped the affected scientists continue their research outside of Germany with temporary grants. This should have enabled them to re-establish themselves. One of the most important of these organizations was the "Academic Assistance Council" in London (AAC; renamed the "Society for the Protection of Science and Learning" in 1936) founded as early as May 22, 1933. The AAC conducted selection processes to support only those with a realistic chance of continuing their careers outside of Germany. Clary draws upon the files of the AAC, which provide crucial information about all the biographies in his book. Thanks to this support and the forced emigration that followed their early dismissal from their positions, the number of victims of the Shoah among scientists who counted as Jews in the sense of the infamous Nuremberg laws of 1935 was significantly lower than the average. Therefore, the stories of scientists who became victims are particularly tragic, such as those 17 that are told here. The first of them is Clary's starting point for the whole study. In the context of his biography of Erwin Schrödinger, he encounters the fate of the physical chemist Fritz Duschinsky who lost his scholarship in Berlin in 1933 just one year after receiving his PhD. Clary not only used the files of the AAC and its US sister organization but also drew on interviews, correspondence, and patent registers. Equipped with such a multiplicity of sources, Clary can narrate an oppressive and touching biography of Duschinsky describing his emigration to Brussels, Leningrad, his return to his hometown Gablonz in Czechoslovakia, his flight to France in 1938, where he was imprisoned by the Gestapo and subsequently deported to Auschwitz in 1942. Clary includes a lot of information about the families and the scientific contacts in these 30 biographies. But most of the other accounts, besides that of Duschinsky, are less extensive. Clary used biographical articles published previously to which he added further information shedding more light on these, which "have been brought together in this book to provide a comprehensive discussion and comparison of scientists from different subjects." After the first chapter about six victims in physics and chemistry, Clary presents eight survivors who had worked in this field. There are similarities between the three chemical physicists Vladimir Lasareff, Paul Goldfinger, and Boris Rosen who could survive in German-occupied Belgium under lucky circumstances. The well-known biography of Friedrich Houtermans is cross-linked with that of Karl Heinrich Riewe. It is a surprise in some way that Clary presents Otto Frisch and Klaus Fuchs in the next chapter entitled "Top Secret Refugees." Indeed, they "vanished" in some way during World War II for the broader public but not for their colleagues in the Manhattan Project. There is little overlap with the fate of all the other survivors here. This is followed by chapters on refugees in mathematics (4), medicine (5), biology (2), engineering (1), and finally, social sciences (2). However, the heading "refugees" is misleading at least for eight of these 14 scientists as we learn finally that they did not succeed in leaving Germany/Austria/Czechoslovakia and, therefore, never became refugees. In three cases (the mathematicians Robert Remak and Otto Blumenthal emigrated to the Netherlands, and the medical scientist Ferdinand Blumenthal to Estonia), they got out but were deported and murdered. Two of the three survivors do not fit into the scheme of "lost scientists." The story of Vladimir Tchernavin is exciting and deserves much interest. However, he was not a refugee from Nazi Germany but from the Soviet Union. He succeeded in escaping from the Gulag in 1932 and entering England in 1934 where he lived during World War II. The social scientist Robert Eisler did not belong to those lost scholars either. He was imprisoned in concentration camps in Dachau and Buchenwald but was freed just before the outbreak of the war in 1939 and could spend the rest of his life in England. Clary does not explain why he selected just these 30 scientists. Many more had become victims of the Nazis, to mention just an example: there were the brothers Hans Leo and Karl Przibram. Whereas the physicist Karl could survive in Belgium, the zoologist Hans Leo died in Theresienstadt. Clary designates several scientists as Jewish or uses the phrase "was born to a Jewish family" where this does not apply. In the cases of Riewe (p. 103) and Houtermans (p. 106), it is misleading for an understanding of their biographies. Riewe had been baptized a few weeks after his birth and Houtermans probably might not even have been aware of being what was later called a "non-Aryan" when he grew up. Three of his grandparents had been gentile and only his maternal grandmother, Marie Karplus, was from a Jewish family but had left the Jewish community as a young woman of 21 years in 1877 before her marriage. Otherwise, it would have been remarkable if Jews, in the sense of the Nuremberg laws, were exempted from deportation to the death camps. There are several misunderstandings of this kind: Victor Hess (p. 35) was not Jewish but an active Catholic and had a wife of Jewish descent, Herbert Freundlich (p. 47) was not Jewish but had a baptized father from a Jewish family, Bethe (p. 107) was not "a German Jewish scientific refugee" but a "non-Aryan" as his baptized mother was a daughter of Jewish parents and his father a gentile professor at Frankfurt university. A detail in the biography of the mathematician Otto Blumenthal reveals a misconception of the mechanism of Nazi Germany's science policy (p. 147–148). Clary is wrong with the date of Blumenthal's resignation from the "Mathematische Annalen" which did not happen in November 1938 but already in January 1938. There was no connection to a decree of the Nazi Minister Rust concerning the removal of "Jews from membership of scientific societies," as such a decree never existed. It was the decision of the societies themselves to remove Jewish members. Clary mixed it up with that for the statutes of the academies of November 1938. The scientific journals, on the other hand, were a different matter. There had been some interaction between Nazi colleagues and the ministry which resulted in pressure on the publisher Springer who prompted Blumenthal to resign. It is a pity that citations of secondary literature do not include page numbers; the index is incomplete, some names are missing there. Despite the somewhat arbitrary selection of examples, the book provides the reader with a rather rare overview and thus offers a comparison of the fates of émigrés in the various fields of research. There are general basic patterns in which a special age interval was favored. According to this, the candidate should already have a promising academic profile, which could then be assessed, but should also not be too old—above the age of 50 became critical—to still have the prospect of a further, academically fruitful career. The time of potential emigration also played an important role. Scientists from Austria and Prague encountered difficulties in 1938/39 because the previous emigration waves from Germany left them with a limited opportunity for absorption. While physics and chemistry positions outside academic research were also available by industrial companies, Clary sees a problem for those in between both fields, such as physical chemistry as there was no such counterpart outside Germany. Opportunities in other fields were fewer. For physicians, there was the special hurdle of having to undergo further studies with a final examination before they could set up a practice in the UK or the USA, no matter what their scientific standing was. In the last of the 30 articles, the biography of the social scientist Paul Eppstein is discussed. Here, we encounter the Shoah quite directly. As a representative of Jewish organizations in Berlin, he negotiated with Adolf Eichmann before the war. On June 23, 1944, as a "Jewish Elder" in Theresienstadt, he had to guide a Red Cross delegation through that "town," which drafted a report on the life of the Jews in the euphemistic sense the Nazis desired. Eppstein was shot there in September 1944 by the SS, his wife was deported to Auschwitz. Clary conveys a lot of the sometimes tough selection processes in scientific emigration. The reader gains knowledge about the scientific and family environment as well as of the often futile endeavor to leave Germany/Austria/Czechoslovakia. It will be difficult to lay aside this book without feeling touched. The peer review history for this article is available at https://publons.com/publon/10.1002/ntls.20240034.