Einstein’s Letter to Atatürk
Sami M. Günzberg, a Jewish Turkish dentist, was attending a conference of OSE in Paris. There he met Einstein and together they came up with a plan to seek the help of the Republic of Turkey. Einstein wrote this letter to the Prime Minister, Ismet Inönü;
“I beg to apply to your Excellency to allow forty professors and medical doctors from Germany to continue their scientific and medical work in Turkey. The above mentioned cannot practice further in Germany on account of the laws… in granting this request your Government will not only perform an act of high humanity, but it will bring profit to your own country.”
Einstein’s letter is dated September 17, 1933. Günzberg translated Einstein’s letter into Turkish submitted it to the Turkish Government. Inönü’s handwritten message at the bottom of the letter reads, “Their salaries will be unaffordable for us.” He rejected the offer. But when Atatürk heard about the letter, he convened a meeting with the Prime Minister, the Minister of Education and Dr. Günzberg, and ordered them to accept Einstein’s offer immediately.
As it happened, not just the forty that Einstein requested, but many scores of German and Austrian Jewish scientists, their families, and their assistants, moved to Turkey. Thus the reform of higher scientific education got underway in Turkey, catalyzed by Einstein’s letter. For the next 10–15 years the medical schools, and science and technology departments, especially in Istanbul flourished.
However, by the 1950s many of these scientists immigrated to the newly created State of Israel, and to the United States. Many of them went on to staff the medical schools of Hopkins and Harvard, Columbia and Chicago.
It is Atatürk’s driving principles, science and reason over superstition and dogma, and diligence and merit over ethnicity and religion, fueled his secular Republic. It would be German and Austrian Jewish physicians, scientists, archaeologist, linguists who would prepare the next generation of Turkish scholars, just as it had been Armenian and Greek builders, with reputation for sound engineering and good construction, that had been hired to build Ankara, the new Capital of Turkey.
Shades of a distant past:The foregoing story is somewhat evocative of a development four-and-a half centuries earlier. The Ottoman Empire had always been a polyglot, multiracial country, with wide religious tolerance. The Empire’s footprint at its peak resembled that of Rome at its peak, including Anatolia, the Middle East, the Balkans, North Africa, and lands ringing the northern coast of the Black Sea. In the 16th century the Mediterranean was referred to as the “Ottoman Lake.” In 1492, Spain, fresh from expelling the Moors from the Iberian Peninsula, made it clear to the Jews they were no longer welcome, “…convert or leave!” The resulting Jewish exodus led in two directions — east to the Ottoman Empire and northeast to Eastern Europe.
“I beg to apply to your Excellency to allow forty professors and medical doctors from Germany to continue their scientific and medical work in Turkey. The above mentioned cannot practice further in Germany on account of the laws… in granting this request your Government will not only perform an act of high humanity, but it will bring profit to your own country.”
Einstein’s letter is dated September 17, 1933. Günzberg translated Einstein’s letter into Turkish submitted it to the Turkish Government. Inönü’s handwritten message at the bottom of the letter reads, “Their salaries will be unaffordable for us.” He rejected the offer. But when Atatürk heard about the letter, he convened a meeting with the Prime Minister, the Minister of Education and Dr. Günzberg, and ordered them to accept Einstein’s offer immediately.
As it happened, not just the forty that Einstein requested, but many scores of German and Austrian Jewish scientists, their families, and their assistants, moved to Turkey. Thus the reform of higher scientific education got underway in Turkey, catalyzed by Einstein’s letter. For the next 10–15 years the medical schools, and science and technology departments, especially in Istanbul flourished.
However, by the 1950s many of these scientists immigrated to the newly created State of Israel, and to the United States. Many of them went on to staff the medical schools of Hopkins and Harvard, Columbia and Chicago.
It is Atatürk’s driving principles, science and reason over superstition and dogma, and diligence and merit over ethnicity and religion, fueled his secular Republic. It would be German and Austrian Jewish physicians, scientists, archaeologist, linguists who would prepare the next generation of Turkish scholars, just as it had been Armenian and Greek builders, with reputation for sound engineering and good construction, that had been hired to build Ankara, the new Capital of Turkey.
Shades of a distant past:The foregoing story is somewhat evocative of a development four-and-a half centuries earlier. The Ottoman Empire had always been a polyglot, multiracial country, with wide religious tolerance. The Empire’s footprint at its peak resembled that of Rome at its peak, including Anatolia, the Middle East, the Balkans, North Africa, and lands ringing the northern coast of the Black Sea. In the 16th century the Mediterranean was referred to as the “Ottoman Lake.” In 1492, Spain, fresh from expelling the Moors from the Iberian Peninsula, made it clear to the Jews they were no longer welcome, “…convert or leave!” The resulting Jewish exodus led in two directions — east to the Ottoman Empire and northeast to Eastern Europe.