October 21, 2022

Finest Hour 195, First Quarter 2022

Page 33

By Martin Gilbert

Reprinted with permission. For more information, please visit martingilbert.com

Many famous people visited Winston Churchill at Chartwell, including the most famous scientist of them all. In his 2007 book Churchill and the Jews, the late Sir Martin Gilbert described the significance of this fateful meeting.Many famous people visited Winston Churchill at Chartwell, including the most famous scientist of them all. In his 2007 book Churchill and the Jews, the late Sir Martin Gilbert described the significance of this fateful meeting.

Among Churchill’s visitors in the spring of 1933 was German-born Albert Einstein, who had been in the United States when Hitler came to power. Being Jewish, neither his fame nor his Nobel Prize could help him. In Nazi eyes, as a Jew he was an outcast. Einstein, who was five years younger than Churchill, visited him at Chartwell, where he asked Churchill’s help in bringing Jewish scientists from Germany. Churchill responded at once, encouraging his friend Professor Frederick Lindemann—who was at Chartwell during Einstein’s visit—to travel to Germany and seek out Jewish scientists who could be found places at British universities. Lindemann did so. As part of a nationwide British university effort, he was able to offer university places to German Jewish scientists who, as a result of these invitations, were able to leave Germany.