Today is August 12, 2023. Since Elliot and I saw the movie Oppenheimer on our ninth anniversary this past Thursday, August 10, I was intrigued with an analysis by a writer for The Jerusalem Post, Barbara Sofer, who noted that it was Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany who beat the Nazis in developing the atomic bomb, and thank God, they did! Her piece is entitled ‘Oppenheimer’: How Jewish refugees beat the Nazis to the atomic bomb – opinion.”

In an opening paragraph, Sofer writes that many Jewish scientists fled Nazi Germany and wound up working on the Manhattan Project. “They knew how important it was to beat Hitler to getting nuclear bombs first.”

Sofer then opines how unthinkable it would have been if the Nazis had succeeded in building the bomb first. We cannot imagine in good conscience what would have happened if the Nazis did control the nuclear option before the Americans succeeded in doing so first: the war would have definitely gone a different way and not the way we could imagine it.

Then Sofer points out that the Christopher Nolan-directed film doesn’t obscure the Jewish identities of J. Robert Oppenheimer and most of the other scientists. Though Oppenheimer was certainly not an observant Jew in any shape or form; however, he did identify as being Jewish, which is brought out in several scenes in the movie.

Sofer does state that she would have liked “more insight into what must have been more fascinating personal conversations among these scientists for whom Jewish observance was secondary to scientific passion – persecuted for their Jewish genes and meeting in safety in the United States.” Maybe this does occur in the large source material from which Nolan derived his impression of the slender, gawky theoretical physicist, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Martin J. Sherman and Kai Bird. (By the way, I saw the tome in a bookstore today on 93rd Street and Madison Avenue called the Corner Bookstore, and I was daunted by the book’s size: it’s 721 pages.)

The writer of this analysis notes that the situation with the sciences was far different before World War II in that Germany won 33 Nobels, Great Britain won only 18, and the huge United Sates of America had won only six. Thus Germany was far ahead of America in the first 32 years of the Nobel Prize (1901-1932). These awards crowned Germany’s half-century of scientific advancement.

At the same time, antisemitism was already brewing in the ranks of German science. Sofer mentions Aryan physicists Philipp Lenard and Johan Stark deriding “Jewish science,” calling the breakthroughs in relativity and quantum mechanics “a Jewish bluff.” Lenard, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1905 for his research into the properties of electrons (“cathode rays”) wrote, “There was a Jewish way of doing science, which involved spinning webs of abstract theory, detached from the firm and fertile soil of experimental work.”

After Adolf Hitler was appointed Reich chancellor in January 1933, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service was passed that April and became the basis for expelling staff of Jewish descent from government agencies.

Because of this law, renowned and not-yet-renowned scientists were fired from their jobs. Many found positions abroad. More than 1,000 scientists moved to the United States. She writes, “Among the Jewish scientists who were booted out by the Nazis, 15 would go on to win Nobel Prizes.” Of those who could not or did not flee, many were imprisoned and murdered in concentration camps.

Eight decades after World War II, Los Alamos, New Mexico, is still a company town, Sofer writes. After the war, the U.S. Congress decided to keep the well-equipped laboratory there and establish the civilian Atomic Energy Commission. The Los Alamos National Laboratory was moved from downtown to a nearby mesa. Gray and beige utilitarian-looking buildings cover 43 square miles of forests and canyons. Today, some 12,000 employees conduct security, space, and energy research.

It’s noted that Los Alamos today has a Jewish center and a Hadassah chapter, where Sofer has been privileged to speak.

The importance of the principals’ religion is brought home in Nolan’s biopic, in that the man who led the inquisition against Oppenheimer post-World War II was his supposed friend and colleague, Lewis Strauss (who in one telling scene downplays the semitic pronunciation of his last name, preferring to anglicize it, which says a lot about this man than anything else).

The refugee scientists working feverishly in Los Alamos understood quite well the consequences of the race toward developing the atomic bomb. Their relatives were being incarcerated, tortured, and murdered in their home countries.

University of Haifa physicist Alex Gordon writes in the online magazine Mosaic in 2021 about how the Nazis’ hatred of the Jews boomeranged against them, ultimately, in ending the war. He writes thusly, “Their zoological hatred of the Jews boomeranged back to them. In the work of the Manhattan Project, perhaps the only real Jewish conspiracy in history took shape, a conspiracy of Jews against the Nazis who had made them aliens in their own country.” This is quite a brilliant observation of the Nazis whose all-consuming enmity of the Jews blinded them to seeing how all of this scientific knowledge was flowing out of the country because of their despicable treatment of anyone deemed Jewish. In a perverse way, the banishing of these scientists to the shores of America should be considered “Hitler’s gift” to us.

As for my being in Manhattan on the Upper East Side, today I decided to do a mitzvah, visit one of my breakfast girls at Mount Sinai Hospital, located on 1468 Madison Avenue, around 100th Street. She had been hospitalized sometime last week and I spoke to her two days ago and mentioned that I would see her today. Elliot preferred to stay home and relax.

Unfortunately, I could not see “Carol” upstairs in her room since I was informed she was taken downstairs for some sort of procedure. I arrived around 3:10 with a bouquet of yellow carnations and was told by a nurse at the nurse’s station that she was unavailable. So I went downstairs to the first level and had a coffee in the cafe and waited to go up within a half hour or so.

It was close to 4 when I took the elevator up to 6 West where Carol was situated and was met by an orderly who checked to see if Carol were back in her room. She wasn’t. So I decided to write Carol a note and stuck it on the bouquet of carnations that were now put into a pitcher.

Originally, I contemplated seeing a play, but it was already after 4, so I decided to come home instead. That’s when I sought out the bookstore on Madison Avenue. I remembered entering it sometime ago when Elliot and I were in the neighborhood for some reason or another. That’s when I saw the 2005 biography of Oppenheimer on a shelf. I did not buy it.

A developing terrible story regarding our war with Mother Nature is the death toll arising from wildfires on the island of Maui, Hawaii, in the last few days. As of Saturday, the death toll has risen to 89 dead, according to an announcement by the state’s Governor Josh Green. A total of 2,207 buildings and other structures have been damaged or destroyed as of Friday, while 2,170 acres have been burned. The devastation from this cataclysm marks the wildfire as the deadliest in modern U.S. history. The death toll will likely rise as more bodies will be sadly unearthed by rescuers working to find more victims of the disaster.

Now we are on an “indictment watch” out of Georgia. The charges can be handed down as early as early next week, possibly next Tuesday or later, from what I’m hearing on MSNBC tonight. So let’s see if Dumpf will have a stunning four indictments within the year. I say, “Bring it on!’

Have a good Sunday.

Stay safe and be well.

I saw this cool-looking rectory on my way toward the Corner Bookstore on Madison Avenue. It’s the Church of St. Thomas More, which is on East 89th Street.