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The Albert Einstein Memorial
The Albert Einstein Memorial on Constitution
Avenue in the nation’s capital is a bronze masterpiece of unique vintage.
It portrays Einstein, one of the world’s greatest master minds, seated, with
his “Energy Formula” in his right hand.
The statue is the work of world-renowned sculptor
Robert Berks. It was unveiled in l979, being dedicated to the memory of
this brilliant physicist and mathematician. It was the genius Einstein, a
Jewish immigrant from Germany, who said that the more complex and intricate
this calculations of the universe became, the more assured he was of the
reality of a Supreme Creator.
Albert Einstein’s Formative Years
Einstein was born in 1879 in the town of Ulm,
Wurtemberg, Germany. His school days were spent in Munich, where he
attended the Gymnasium until his 16th year. After leaving
school at Munich, he accompanied his parents to Milan, whence he proceeded
to Switzerland, six months later to continue his studies.
From 1896 to 1900, Albert Einstein studied
mathematics and physics at the Technical High School in Zurich, as he
intended to become a secondary school (Gymnasium) teacher. For some
time afterwards he was a private tutor, and having meanwhile become
naturalized, he obtained a post a engineer in the Swiss Patent Office in
1902, which position he occupied till 1909. The main ideas involved in
Einstein’s most important theories date back to this period. Amongst these
may be mentioned: The Special Theory of Relativity, Inertia of Energy,
Theory of the Brownian Movement, and the Quantum Law of the Emission
and Absorption of Light (1905). These were followed some years
later by the Theory of the Specific Heat of Solid Bodies, and the
Fundamental Idea of the General Theory of Relativity.
Einstein’s Professional Years
During the interval 1909 to 1911 he
occupied a post of Professor Extraordinarius at the University of Zurich,
afterwards being appointed to the University of Prague, Bohemia, where he
remained as Professor Ordinarius until 1912. In the latter year Professor
Einstein accepted a similar chair at the Polytechnikum, Zurich, and
continued his activities there until 1914, when he received a call to the
Prussian Academy of Science, Berlin, as successor to Van’t Hoff.
Professor Einstein was able to devote himself freely to his studies at the
Berlin Academy, and it was there that he succeeded in completing his
work on the General Theory of Relativity (1915-17). Professor
Einstein also lectured on various special branches of physics at the
University of Berlin, and, in addition, he was Director of the Institute for
Physical Research of the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft.
A Test Case for Humanity – Einstein’s
Treaties
On October 1939, Albert Einstein wrote the
treaties A Test Case for Humanity. This work originally appeared in a
1944 issue of the Princeton Herald, New Jersey, in reply to an
article by Dr. Philip K. Hitti, the Arab scholar. It is hereunder
excerpted, as follows:
“Both Jews and Arabs are said to stem from a
common ancestor, from Abraham who immigrated into Canaan, i.e. Palestine,
and so neither of them seem to have been earlier in the land than the
others. Recent views assume that only part of the Israelites migrated to
Egypt – as reflected in the Joseph story – and part of them remained in
Palestine. So of the Canaanite population encountered by the Jews when they
entered the promised land under Joshua were Israelites too. Therefore, the
Arabs have no priority on the land.
To the Arabs Jerusalem is only the third holy city, to
the Jews it is the first and only holy city, and Palestine is the place
where their original history, their sacred history, took place. Besides, to
the Arabs Jerusalem is a holy city only insofar as they trace their
tradition back to Jewish origins, insofar as after the Arab conquest of
Jerusalem in 637, the Omar Mosque, the Dome of the Rock was
erected by the Omayyad Caliph Ad el Malek on the very place where the Jewish
Art of the Covenant and the Temple of Solomon had stood, on a rock Even
Shetiyah (world foundation stone), which was considered by the Jews as
reaching down to the bottom of the cosmic ocean, the navel of the world.
And Jerusalem was a qiblah, a direction of prayer, under Mohammed
only as long as he counted on the Jews as the main supporters of his new
creed; he changed it, when his hopes failed, together with other
institutions established out of pure consideration for his Jewish adherents,
as, for instance, the fasting on the Jewish Day of atonement – both are
today abolished in their religious significance. It seems a little far
fetched to use this abrogated rite as an evidence on which to base the Arab
claim to Palestine.
If, finally, the Arab conquest of Palestine is
considered holy it would be only fair to admit the corresponding holiness of
the peaceful claim and the peaceful reclamation of the country by the Jews.
To refer to the legitimacy of a “holy war” sounds rather queer for the
people which denounces peaceful immigration as a violation of their rights.
No people, unfortunately, understands why it
should contribute anything to the solution of the Jewish problem. The
surface of the globe is everywhere occupied, and wherever the Jews could be
given a piece of land to live under fair climate conditions, they would
encroach on some property rights and sovereignties and would face friction
with a population already firmly established on the spot. No country has
been found where the Jews could possibly form an autonomous community,
however small.
Palestine – Its
Religious Foundation and Historic Tradition
There is still one difference between the other
peoples and the Arabs. Every people has one country of its own which it
developed with all the care of its generations and none of these countries
has any connection with a specifically Jewish tradition or concern. The
Arabs possess four major countries – Saudi Arabia, which harbours their holy
places, Yemen, Iraq and Transjordania – we leave aside Egypt, which is only
partly Arab, Syria and all the North African colonies and provinces as yet
not enfranchised from European rule. And the least and obviously most
neglected of their settlements was the part they occupied in the tiny
Palestinian country; only nine hundred thousand of fifty million Arabs live
there. This tiny Palestinian country, on the other hand, is the only place
in the world legitimately and most deeply connected with the Jewish people,
its religious foundation and its historic tradition as an independent
people.
In order to clarify the Palestinian problem let us
compare the situation of the Jews with that of the Arabs. The Jews are and
have always been numerically a small people. They have never exceeded
fifteen and a half million. Deprived of their homeland through the ancient
and medieval conquests of Palestine, they lived dispersed all over the
world, and what they have suffered since by persecutions, expulsions and
tortures of all kinds, are far beyond anything that other peoples had to
endure. Of the fifteen and a half million computed in 1938, at least two
millions have been slaughtered or starved to death by the Nazis, in the
various European countries during the past few years. So the Zionist
movement, or better the striving for a haven in the place of Jewish origin,
is by no means an “exotic, artificially stimulated movement” (as Professor
Hitti calls it), but a movement urged forward by utter need and distress.
The promise held out to the Jews in the Balfour Declaration after the First
World War has been whittled down bit by bit in the course of the British
appeasement policy yielding to interests partly British, partly Arabian – a
policy bitterly denounced by Mr. Churchill himself before he became Prime
Minister. Palestine is a link in the Lifeline of the British Empire between
the Near East and India; and the Jewish people, by necessity a dependable
ally of the British, have been sacrificed to the Arabs, who, by their
numerical and political strength and the trump of the Islam portion of the
Indian population, were in a position to sell dearly even their neutrality
in the present conflict. The final result has been the complete prohibition
of Jewish immigration into Palestine at the very moment when hundreds of
thousands of Jews were threatened with annihilation.
Arab and Jewish Needs Compared
This is the Jewish situation; and there is no
guarantee whatever against the persistence or recurrence of anti-Semitic
outbreaks everywhere after this war. Even if we put aside the spiritual,
religious and cultural ties making Palestine the only place in the world
which persecuted Jews could consider their home, and develop with all the
devotion a homeland inspires – there is not even any other country
acceptable to human beings, which the numerous refugee conferences were able
to offer to this hounded people. The Jews are prepared for extreme
sacrifices and hardest work to convert this narrow strip which is Palestine
into a prosperous country and model civilisation. What Jewish youth has
already achieved in the few decades of Zionist settlement may be gathered
from Mr. Lowdermilk’s book.* They took over from the period of Arabian
predominance, deserts and rocks and barren soil and turned them into flowing
farms and plantations, into forests and modern cities. They created new
forms of co-operative settlements and raised the living standard of the
Arabian and the Jewish population alike. The Jews are willing and ready to
give any guarantee of protection for the holy places and the civil rights,
indeed the autonomy, of Arabs and Christians, a guarantee safeguarded by the
overwhelming power of their neighbours, on whose co-operation they depend.
They offer their assistance and their experience for the economic and
scientific advancement of the Arab countries, for the lifting of the
population to a modern standard of living.
But this, unfortunately, is just what the Arab
leaders do not want. For the true source of Arab resistance and hostility
toward a Jewish Palestine is neither religious nor political, but social and
economic. The Arabian population of Palestine is negligible in comparison
with the vast number of Arab elements in the European provinces of North
Africa and Asia. The Arabian chieftains did not arouse the Moslem world
against Mussolini’s regime in Libya: most of them were on splendid terms
with him. The Mufti of Jerusalem and other Arab leaders were greatly
honoured guests in Rome. The rich Arabian landowners did nothing to improve
the nature, the civilization, or the living standards of their countries.
The large Arabian states are underpopulated, the masses of the people are
held in a backward and inferior condition. “Life in the Damascus of the
eighth century was not greatly different from what it is today,” says
Professor Hitti in his book about the Arabs. But the big Effendis fear the
example and the impulse which the Jewish colonization of Palestine presents
to the peoples of the Near East, they resent the social and economic uplift
of the Arab workers in Palestine. They act as all the fascist forces have
acted: they screen their fear of social reform behind nationalistic slogans
and demagogy. If it were not for these leaders and instigators, a perfect
agreement and co-operation could be achieved between the Arab and the Jewish
people.
Why a Jewish-controlled Palestine
The purpose of this statement is not a
nationalistic one. We do not, and the vast majority of the Jews does not,
advocate the establishment of a state for the sake of national greed and
self-glorification, which would run counter to all the traditional values of
Judaism and which we consider obsolete everywhere. In speaking up for a
Jewish Palestine we want to promote the establishment of a place of refuge,
where persecuted human being may find security and peace and the undisputed
right to live under a law and order of their making. The experience of many
centuries has taught us that this can be provided only by home rule and not
be a foreign administration. This is why we stand for a Jewish-controlled
Palestine. We do not refer to historic rights, although if there exists
something like an historic right on a country, the Jews, at least as well as
the Arabs, could claim it on Palestine. We do not resort to threats of
power, for the Jews have no power; they are, in fact, the most powerless
group on earth. If they had had any power they should have been able to
prevent the annihilation of millions of their people and the closing of the
last door to the helpless victims of the Nazis. What we appeal to is an
elementary sense of justice and humanity. We know how weak such a position
is, but we also know that if the arguments of threats of power, of sacred
egoisms and holy wars continue to prevail in the future world order, not
only the Jews but the whole of humanity will be doomed…
Ancient Home of the People of the Bible
The Jews will never abandon the work of
reconstruction which they have undertaken…I cannot believe that the greatest
colonial Power in the world will fail when it is faced with the task of
placing its unique colonizing experience at the service of the
reconstruction of the ancient home of the People of the Bible. The task may
not be an easy one for the Mandatory Power, but for the success it will
attain it is assured of the undying gratitude not only of the Jews but of
all that is noblest in mankind.
*Palestine, Land of Promise by Walter Clay
Lowdermilk. (Gollancz, 1944, 4/6.)
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