̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - nazism

Exposing a Nazi: ̽��ֱ��exhibition destroying a myth

ta385 — Thu, 13 Jun 2019 07:00:00 +0000

In 1941, the Nazis banned Emil Nolde from painting, for life. For the past 50 years, many Germans have viewed him as the persecuted artist but now a major exhibition in Berlin, co-curated by a Cambridge historian, has shattered this myth and sent shock waves through the country.

Exhibition highlights the untold story of Nazi victims in the Channel Islands

sjr81 — Thu, 19 Oct 2017 11:18:26 +0000

On British Soil: Victims of Nazi Persecution in the Channel Islands, opens today at the Wiener Library for the Study of Holocaust and Genocide, London, and seeks to highlight the stories often omitted from the British narrative of ‘standing alone’ against Nazism and celebrations of the British victory over the Germans.

̽��ֱ��exhibition draws upon the Library’s wealth of archival material, recently-released files from the National Archives, personal items belonging to the victims themselves and current research from Dr Carr.

“For anyone who wants to come and learn about the last untold story of the German occupation of the Channel Islands, this is the exhibition to visit,” said Carr, a senior lecturer in archaeology at St Catherine’s College and the Institute of Continuing Education (ICE).

“ ̽��ֱ��Islands were the only part of British territory to be occupied and the victims of Nazism are almost entirely overlooked by those who prefer (incorrectly) to see the islands as a hotbed of collaboration. There are so many heart-breaking stories. We think of the Holocaust or Nazi persecution as something that happened only on the continent – but it happened on British soil. British citizens experienced the most horrific concentration camps, and Jews were deported from British territory to Auschwitz.”

From the experiences of a young Jewish woman living quietly on a farm in Guernsey and later deported to Auschwitz and murdered, to those of a Spanish forced labourer in Alderney, and the story of a man from Guernsey whose death in a German prison camp remained unknown to his family for over 70 years, the exhibition highlights the lives of the persecuted, and the post-war struggle to obtain recognition of their suffering.

Other exhibits going on display in London include a Christmas card made by a little girl and given to Frank Tuck from Guernsey as he suffered in Neuoffingen hard labour camp and a key of a prison cell from the notorious Cherche-Midi prison in Paris, belonging to Henry Marquand, deported for his role in sheltering two British commandos to Guernsey.

“ ̽��ֱ��search for these unknown stories continues,” added Carr. “ ̽��ֱ��exhibition coincides with the launching of a new website https://www.frankfallaarchive.org/ which is dedicated to finding and reconstructing the full journey of all deported Channel Islanders through various Nazi prisons and concentration camps. Theirs is the last untold story of the German occupation of the Channel Islands.”

Frank Falla, the Guernseyman after whom the archive is named, was a former prisoner and survivor of Frankfurt am Main-Preungesheim and Naumburg (Saale) prisons. In the mid-1960s, Frank took it upon himself to help his fellow former political prisoners in the Channel Islands get compensation for their suffering in Nazi prisons and camps.

In 2010, Frank’s daughter gave Gilly her father’s extensive archives – the most important resistance archives to ever come out of the Channel Islands – and the project was born. Falla’s briefcase, used to collect the testimony of those persecuted by the Nazis is also on display in London from today.

“I’ve been writing the background stories for the website of islanders deported to Nazi prison, concentration and labour camps,” added Carr. “So far I’ve written 75 out of 200 plus. Every story is a labour of love. I see each as a form of ‘rescue’. While I can never go back and rescue any of these people from their camps and prisons, I can rescue their story and experiences for their families and for the Channel Islands.”

Carr says the experience of researching these stories brings about a strangely bonding experience with her subject matter as she becomes a co-witness to the horrors they faced – and responsible for making their stories more widely known.

“Each person whose story I trace becomes a kind of ‘friend’ in a strange way. You get to know them so well and I have been lucky enough to meet many families of those deported. I feel I can be a link between the living and the dead and tell the living what the dead were never able to.

“I’m interested in hearing from anyone in the Channel Islands or further afield who had a family member sent to a Nazi prison or concentration camp from the Channel Islands to help supplement the journeys we have reconstructed from archival materials. Please contact me via the website with photos, documents and stories. I'd love to hear from you.”

On British Soil: Victims of Nazi Persecution in the Channel Islands until 9 February 2018, has been supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

̽��ֱ��untold stories of slave labourers, political prisoners and Jews who were persecuted during the German occupation of the Channel Islands during the Second World War will be revealed from today at a new exhibition co-curated by Cambridge’s Dr Gilly Carr.

Each person whose story I trace becomes a kind of ‘friend’ in a strange way. You get to know them so well.

GIlly Carr

Marianne Grunfeld was born in Poland to a German-Jewish family before taking a farm job in Guernsey in 1939. She was deported in 1942 and was murdered in Auschwitz

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Born identity revealed in newly-opened archive

sjr81 — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 00:10:27 +0000

̽��ֱ��Centre, nestled in the grounds of Churchill College, already houses some of the most important political, military and scientific papers of the 20^th century, including those of Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, John Cockcroft and James Chadwick.

But the story contained within Born’s archive, who fled Nazi Germany in 1933, opposed the dawn of atomic weapons and corresponded with all the major physicists of his age, draws a compelling portrait of the man who helped formulate quantum mechanics with his assistant Werner Heisenberg and who is renowned for his many major contributions to 20^th century physics.

Not only was Born, who came to Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� after fleeing Germany, a close and lifelong friend of Einstein, he also taught nine Nobel-winning physicists including Heisenberg, during a period often referred to as the ‘golden age of physics’.

Others that received their Ph.D. degrees under Born at Göttingen ̽��ֱ��, before Hitler ordered the expulsion of Jews from universities in 1933, included J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, Max Delbrück, Walter Elsasser, Friedrich Hund, Pascual Jordan and Maria Goeppert-Mayer.

Lynsey Robertson, who has worked on the collection, said: “Born’s story is an incredible one. Although a pacifist, he was the teacher of the inventors of the atomic bomb. He was forced to flee Nazi Germany and was a friend of Einstein’s for 40 years. He provided the first self-consistent mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics and developed the concept that, at the atomic level, physical processes are determined by probabilities, a completely different perspective from that of classical physics.”

Allen Packwood, Director of the Churchill Archives Centre, said: “ ̽��ֱ��archive provides a wonderful window on the personal development and private life of one of the twentieth century’s greatest scientists. It is appropriate that his papers should sit alongside those of many of his contemporaries, including John Cockcroft, James Chadwick and Lise Meitner who, like Born, fled Nazi persecution.”

Included in the archive, which amounts to some 84 boxes of material, is original correspondence that illuminates Born’s complex relationship with 1932 Nobel Prize winner Heisenberg, who worked on Germany’s nuclear weapons research during the Second World War.

They met again after the war and in correspondence with his son, Gustav, in 1947, Born said Heisenberg had become ‘somewhat infected by Nazi ideas…but in spite of all that we liked him immensely’.

Many, including Heisenberg himself, felt that Born should have shared the 1932 Nobel Prize. That he did not was a passing sadness to Born but he did not complain about it. Many years later, in a 1952 letter from Born to his son, he remarks that many of his discoveries had been wrongly attributed to Heisenberg.

However, Born did finally receive the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1954 for his work on the interpretation of Schrodinger’s wave function.

Also included in the archive are letters from Born to his wife and children recording his views on contemporary scientific work, his colleagues and international affairs -including the dropping of the atomic bomb and what he saw as man’s failings on the nuclear issue. He went on to become one of the founding members of Pugwash – the movement opposing such armed conflict – alongside Bertrand Russell.

Of particular note to those with an interest in the history of science, the archive also holds Born’s handwritten notes, including lectures to the Kapitza Club, as well as a volume of the young Born’s notes of the famous mathematician David Hilbert’s lectures.

Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Professor Malcolm Longair, who has studied the original Born scientific papers for a new book entitled Quantum Concepts in Physics, said: “Max Born was a brilliant mathematical physicist who made some of the most important technical advances which led to the first fully self-consistent theory of quantum mechanics.

“Born was also remarkably modest about his achievements, claiming he lacked the intuition of people like Niels Bohr and Heisenberg, but he had the mathematical and technical knowledge to convert Heisenberg’s revolutionary concepts into the first complete theory of non-relativistic quantum mechanics.”

Born, who lived from 1882-1970, was born into a Jewish family in Breslau (then Germany, now Poland) but converted to the Lutheran faith following his marriage to Hedwig Ehrenberg, a practicing Lutheran. He was educated and taught at some of the best German universities.

He went on to study at the ̽��ֱ�� of Breslau, Heidelberg ̽��ֱ��, the ̽��ֱ�� of Zurich, ̽��ֱ�� of Göttingen and, during 1908-1909, he studied at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

He became a lecturer at Gottingen in 1909 and married Hedwig Ehrenberg in 1913, having three children together. It was in 1915, while Born was Professor of Theoretical Physics at the ̽��ֱ�� of Berlin, that he met Albert Einstein.Returning to Gottingen in 1921, following a stint in Frankfurt, Born created its School of Theoretical Physics, making Gottingen one of the most important international centres of the new ‘quantum mechanics’, which he named in 1924.

In 1925, he recognised the key concept of non-commutativity in quantum mechanics which had appeared in Heisenberg's revolutionary paper of 1925 and which caused Heisenberg great concern. Born showed that this phenomenon can be naturally described in terms of matrix calculus and this led to the formulation of matrix mechanics which he worked out with his assistants, Heisenberg and Pascual Jordan.

In 1926, Schrodinger showed how quantum mechanics could be formulated more transparently using wave functions and Born went on to demonstrate how this could be interpreted in terms of probabilities, the work for which he was belatedly awarded the Nobel prize in 1954.

Although a convert to Lutheranism, he was condemned as Jewish according to Nazi Germany’s anti-Semitic laws. Fleeing from Germany in 1933, Born accepted the position of Stokes Lecturer of Applied Mathematics at Cambridge before moving to Bangalore for a period of six months. In 1936 he accepted the post of Tait Professor of Natural Philosophy at the ̽��ֱ�� of Edinburgh where he remained until his retirement in 1953.

Following his retirement he returned to Germany where he lived until his death on January 5, 1970.

̽��ֱ��archive has been deposited by Max Born’s son, Professor Gustav Born FRS (etc), an eminent medical scientist, assisted by members of his family. His daughter, Max Born’s grand-daughter, Georgina Born, was responsible for initiating the connection with Churchill College when she was Professor of Sociology, Anthropology and Music at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� (2006-10).

Other grandchildren include Sebastian Born, Associate Director of the National Theatre in London and Grammy-Award winning singer and actress Olivia Newton-John.

A Nobel Prize Medal, a postcard from Einstein and a Hitler-stamped letter of expulsion are among a fascinating archive of documents and other material belonging to Max Born – one of the fathers of quantum mechanics – being opened by Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Churchill Archives Centre.

Born’s story is an incredible one. Although a pacifist, he was the teacher of the inventors of the atomic bomb. He was forced to flee Nazi Germany and was a friend of Einstein’s for 40 years.

Lynsey Robertson

Churchill Archives Centre

Max Born

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